Kitchen Experimenting: Sweet Potato Crocks

After Thanksgiving, I had a lone sweet potato living in the fridge, dying to be eaten. But after plenty of mashed sweet potatoes and baked sweet potato fries, I was looking for something a little different. And frankly, I was feeling creative!

I love scalloped potatoes in individual crocks, so I decided to do a sweet potato play on that. And instead of using cream and cheese, I used butter and spices!

Individual Sweet Potato Crocks

Sweet potato
Butter
Brown Sugar
Smoked Paprika
Chipotle Powder
Ancho Chile Powder
Salt

First of all, you'll notice that I have no measurements listed above. Well, there's a refined reason for that, and a not so refined reason.

Refined reason: this recipe should be built to your tastes, so if you like more sweet than smoky, add more brown sugar, less smoked paprika, etc.
Less refined reason: I was making this up as I went, I have no idea how much I used.

So here we go!

Grab your sweet potato, and using a mandoline, slice it into even circles.



Melt some butter (I used about 1.5 tbsp), pour over the sweet potatoes, and add the brown sugar, smoked paprika, chipotle powder, ancho chile powder, and a pinch of salt. A note on chipotle powder vs. ancho chile powder: chipotle is VERY spicy, and slightly smoky, where as ancho chile powder is more of a sweet spicy. Be careful with the chipotle powder if you don't like too much spice!

Toss it all together to get all the slices coated in the butter/spice mixture. Next, layer them in some individual sized corningware crocks, and sprinkle a little extra brown sugar on top.



Put them in the oven at 375 degrees for 1 to 1.5 hours, or until the layers are all fully cooked. I took them out after 45 minutes thinking they'd be done. They weren't.



Spicy, smoky, sweet, delicious!