I feel like my family does not eat near enough sweet potatoes. They truly are one of my favorite foods, but I don’t prepare them too often because one person doesn’t like them much. (It’s interesting how that one person can affect the family dining habits.) Earlier this week I was at the store to pick up some regular potatoes for making scalloped potatoes when I saw the display of sweet potatoes. I wandered over and considered picking some up when out of the corner of my eye I spied some more exotic varieties. In particular, the purple ones. They were priced at only $1.99 per pound, which is a little high, but normal for this particular store. I hadn’t recalled ever hearing about purple sweet potatoes before- I needed to know about these! This past summer I got over my fear of eating blue potatoes (yes, I really couldn’t eat them), so why not try these out too? I picked out four of the healthiest looking ones and added them to my New Year’s Eve menu.
I decided to roast them in the oven in their jackets and then mash them afterward. I wanted to lightly sweeten them and top them with marshmallows- I had this visual in my head of purple potatoes with a crown of white marshmallowy goodness and I couldn’t get it out of my head.
So I poked them with a fork, put them on a baking sheet and popped them in the oven. Here they are, freshly pierced and ready to cook.
I baked them for about an hour- which was apparently a touch too long, as one of the potatoes burst their jackets, but I was seriously surprised by how purple they were on the inside. Like play-dough purple. And they were insanely sweet. In a delicious way, but there was no way I was going to add any brown sugar or top with marshmallow. I added a few pats of butter, a drizzle of milk, and a tiny pinch of cinnamon, salt and pepper, and mashed them up. Here they are in their serving bowl- I stuck a white handled knife in so you can see how purple these really are.
These really are delicious sweet potatoes. The sweetest I’ve ever had, and they also had a denser texture- it must be all that sugar, because they were almost sticky. I will totally purchase these potatoes again when I see them. My picky child still didn’t like them, but Andy and I loved them, as did Abigail. Abigail was saddened to learn these would not get their crown of marshmallow, so I allowed her to add a dab of marshmallow cream to the top- she said the flavors went together perfectly.
I will suggest that if you do find these and want to cook them up that you make sure they are on a baking sheet or a layer of foil for baking. They oozed a lot of purple goo that would have made quite the mess on the oven bottom. I want to get them again soon and see if they retain that vibrant purple color when boiled, or if they drift closer to a blue tone. But seriously, as I ate these last night I thought about some crazy potential for these potatoes. I recently had some amazing red velvet cupcakes where the red dye was actually beet juice, and all I could think about was some delicious sweet potato cupcakes made with these purple potatoes. I also couldn’t help but think about how purple in fruits and vegetables equals a high level of antioxidant goodness. These have to be some kind of super food- I wonder why I’ve never heard of them?
Have you ever seen or had these purple sweet potatoes?