This weeks Thing Write Thursday has us all thinking about our favorite Thanksgiving recipe.
Now, for me the Thanksgiving meal at my Nana’s house was the Christmas meal as well as the Easter meal. I loved it as a child, that continuity and comfort of those deliciously familiar foods lovingly made from scratch by my Nana. The one exception were the pies (yes plural – pumpkin, apple, and lemon meringue) that my Aunt Arlene made…she is quite simply the best pie maker I have ever known.
From the ham and turkey (yes, both!) to the insanely good mashed potatoes, to the stuffing, to the gravy – it was a feast fit for kings! And it was always at my Nana’s house – where there were two eating areas. The eat-in kitchen where the grand-kids and the aunts all sat and the living room where the uncles all watched football on TV. (Please note, my Nana never sat down to eat, until her daughters would make her! It became a great game – a battle of wills, as it were. However, my Nana explained to me that tasting all day did not leave much room for eating!)
There was much laughter, so much good cheer, and so much love. They are the fondest memories I have of my childhood.
And then you grow up, get married and holidays become more of a challenge. You have new families to be part of with new family traditions. It can feel not very holiday-like when you are missing all those familiar things.
There is one dish my Nana made that I carried with me – sweet potato casserole. The taste of those oven roasted sweet potatoes mashed with lots of butter, some brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg – baked until bubbly perfection and then topped with a billion marshmallows to brown quickly under the broiler. It was the most incredibly concoction ever and just filled me with my Nana’s love and care.
As a child, I loved the sweetness all by itself – it was the epitome of the perfect child’s dish, and as I grew into adulthood; I appreciated the sweet – savory combination of stuffing and sweet potatoes or sweet potatoes and gravy. However, anyway you have it is is simply delicious!
This dish is the one dish that ties me to my childhood and the memories I have of this dish are perhaps some of the oldest memories I have.
Not the best photo, but oddly the only one I could find!
Nana’s Sweet Potato Casserole:
- 6-7 large sweet potatoes – washed and scrubbed
- 2-3 sticks of unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3/4 cup to 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 ½ tsp. ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp. nutmeg (I use freshly grated)
- 1 tsp. kosher salt
- ½ to ¾ cup whipping cream
- 1 bag of miniature marshmallows (or 1 bag of large marshmallows – your choice)
Pre-heat the oven to 375°F.
Place the sweet potatoes on a foil lined baking sheet and put in the oven. Bake until soft – about an hour to an hour and a half depending on the size of your potatoes. You want them very soft. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before removing the skins.
Place skinned potatoes in a mixing bowl and begin adding butter. Mix on a medium-low speed, incorporating more butter. The goal here is a very buttery mixture – you might need 2 sticks – you might need 2 and a half sticks – you might need all three sticks, it really depends on the size of your potatoes.
Add in the brown sugar and spices and mix well.
Add in the egg and mix well until it is all incorporated into the potatoes.
Add in the cream in ¼ cup intervals – again, the larger your potatoes, the more cream you will need. I generally add a half a cup, but if all my potatoes were giant – I would add more cream in. Mix well to combine.
Spoon mixture into a baking dish. (Now is the best part – you can make this the day before. Just cover it and put it in the refrigerator. Be sure to bring it to room temperature before you bake it in the oven, otherwise the cooking time will be much longer)
Bake in the oven until the mixture is bubbly – and you can bake it at whatever temperature you are baking everything else at on Thanksgiving.
When it is done, remove from oven – cover top with marshmallows – and I mean cover. Really, be generous! More is always better!
Place under the broiler to toast them. Please note, you can do this while your turkey is resting and you are making gravy. You just want them under the broiler long enough to brown and melt into the top!
My family and I hope that this recipe brings you as much joy as it has for us over the years.
mmm, I’m a little hungry right now. My mom made the best sweet potato casserole and now my sister carries on the tradition. I love how foods evoke memories and times gone by. I make the pumpkin pies each year and it reminds me of the Thanksgivings past.
Oh yum! Sounds wonderful. Thanks for the recipe.
My oh my does that sound delicious. Sweet potato casserole is new to our Thanksgiving (maybe 5 years or so) and was brought by a niece-in-law from the south. They won’t be here this year but her sister-in-law has taken on the task! And we are very happy about that!
Your memories and recipe are similar to who things worked in my childhood home. Mom loved to bake and Thanksgiving was a big day whether it was just our family or a houseful of extended family (sometimes a crazy number of kids!). Thank you for sharing!
Whoa that sounds yummy! Thanks for sharing the recipe. 🙂
You’ve made your Nana’s sweet potatoes sound so delicious and full of love and memories that I may even make them for John this year. I don’t really like sweet potatoes myself (I was made to finish some one year as a child when I had a stomach virus with unfortunate results), but I have put a billion marshmallows on my grocery list and John is going to be thrilled with you, your Nana, and his sweet potatoes!
Damn that sounds good! And it’s not something we ever had although I know it’s a tradition for a lot of families at Thanksgiving. Thanks so much for the recipe!
Yum – that sounds like dessert! We never lived near family when we were growing up, so I really treasure the time and memories I get with my family now.
I love Thanksgiving best of all the holidays — because it’s really pretty simple: food, family, traditions, and memories. Thanks for sharing yours!
We always just had plain baked sweet potatoes – this recipe sounds so delicious. Norman usually fixes the sweet potatoes; he uses the pre-prepared patties (found in the freezer at local grocery stores) and then doctors them up…doesn’t add marshmallow tho.’ We’re also taking sweet potato to the Thanksgiving gathering…maybe we’ll give your Nana’s recipe a try.
Cheers~
I was just reminiscing about those huge raucous holiday dinners at my grandmother’s house! Aunts, uncles, cousins — the kids’ table! How my grandma pulled that off year after year, with all those kids underfoot… Well, I’m sure she had a ton of help from her daughters and -in-law. Like yours, she was the last to sit down! My favorite part of any of those meals was after… my siblings and cousins would run off and I’d sit while the adults lingered over coffee and told stories, usually with lots of laughter! Thanks Kat!!