Sweet Potato Patties

If you ask my mom what some of my favorite foods are, there is a good possibility that she will mention yam patties.  I don’t know what it is about those things but I loved them when I was a kid… It seems like it has been at least 15 years since I have had some. This week a friend of ours let us know about a great deal on sweet potatoes 25 pounds for 8 bucks…. so we bought 50 pounds of sweet potatoes.  So I instantly started thinking about all the things we could make with sweet potatoes, and of all things to come to mind… sweet potato patties!

Just to be clear here… the patties I ate as a kid were pre-made and I have no idea how they were made.  But I figured “how hard can it be?”  so I ended up in the kitchen tonight cooking yam patties.   I have to admit I had several failures before realizing success.  (a side note… mashed sweet potatoes don’t fry very well all by themselves)    so with a little experimenting I landed on a concoction that gave me the desired effect and 35 minutes later I was eating the awesome yam patties of my youth!

so without further ado….  the recipe

ingredients:

about 2 – 3 lbs of sweet potatoes
1 egg
cinnamon
sugar

peel the sweet potatoes and cut them up in chunks so that they will cook quickly. boil them until they are soft,  drain them in a colander and mash them in a bowl. beat the egg and pour it over the mashed sweet potatoes,  sprinkle a little cinnamon and sugar and whip it all together until it is really smooth.  spoon everything into a quart sized ziplock bag.  heat up a nice size frying pan on medium heat and drop in a tablespoon of butter let it melt and begin to sizzle.  squirt the sweet potatoes into the frying pan making a dollop about  two inches across (be sure to hold the tip very close to the pan so that the sweet potatoes spread out evenly, instead of piling up in a heap.)  after the patty has  fried for about  a minute use a spatula to  flip it and press it down a little until it is about  1/2 to 3/4 inches thick. After another minute  flip it onto a plate and sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar and your yam patties are done!

Try this out and let me know how it works for you!    do you have some improvements? suggestions?