Granny and Pap loved sweet potatoes and we had them often when I was growing up. Most of the time they were baked in the oven and served piping hot alongside the cornbread with butter within reach.
Their favorite sweet potatoes were the white variety. I hadn’t thought about them in a long time, till the other day.
When I take Granny to doctor appointments in Peachtree she always wants to stop at the produce stand to see what they have. Over the years we’ve gotten to know the kind folks who manage the stand and consider the whole family friends.
On our recent trip Granny was looking around and I spied the bin of white sweet potatoes. I got a bag full while she finished up.
We ended up roasting the white sweet potatoes in the coals of our first outside fire of the season. They were so good! Chitter declared they were the best sweet potatoes she’d ever eaten.
As I sat around the fire warming that night I thought of the times I’d eaten them as a child. I could almost feel the coziness of Granny’s kitchen and hear the scrape of the chairs as we all set down at the table to eat.
Seems like I remember Pap’s friend Clyde Ashe growing both white and orange sweet potatoes and sharing them with us. I asked Granny about it and she said “Well someone grew the white ones but I just can’t remember for sure who it was we got them from.”
I hope to plant some white sweet potatoes next year even if I have to plant them in a container.
Last night’s video: Our First Fire – Steak, White Sweet Taters, Salad, and Smores!
I have never heard of white sweet potatoes either until you mentioned them Tipper. Now I gotta see if I can find some to try. I love the orange variety so I am sure I would love the white ones as well.
White sweet potatoes are my favorite, but I have a hard time finding them. They are on my list to grow next year, even if I have to build a new raised bed just for them!
Never heard of a white sweet potato. I don’t believe I have ever seen one. May they don’t grow in the Midwest—or maybe I’ve just never looked. Now, you’ve peaked my curiosity.
I sure did like to hear about your love of white sweet potatoes! I had bought some of them a week or so ago and was wondering what would be a good way to cook them. My Mother loved white sweet potatoes and I sure do too. I’m 75 years old and I remember the time when Mama and I walked to Uncle Chap’s and Aunt Marthie’s home to visit them. Aunt Marthie had a pan of cold baked sweet potatoes sitting on her wood stove and she gave me one. I remember eating it and enjoying every bite of it. Thank you for sparking up some sweet memories for me. I believe our good memories are a gift from God so that we can remember the way things used to be and be thankful for living in the mountains, living, loving, and appreciating God for all of His Wonderful Bounty. I’m baking two white sweet potatoes right now and they are smelling soooo good. I can’t hardly wait until they get done. I’ll think about ya’all as I enjoy them. Again, thanks for doing the things you do to celebrate our lives in Appalachia. I’d like to move way back up in the mountains again but my husband just laughs when I ask him if he’s ready to move back. He just doesn’t know what he’s missing. I do, and that’s what gets to me.
I never knew there was such a thing as white sweet potatoes, but I’d like to try some! 🙂
When I was first stationed in Yokohama, Japan, in the early sixties, the street vendors would push their carts with the charcoal burning in the bottom, roasting the White Swee Potatoes. We would hear their whistleblowing and rush out to get a delicious, perfectly roasted potato.
I’m late today. Thought about not posting but wanted to say we had both white and ‘red’ (orange?) sweet potatoes when I was a kid. It is a very dim memory of why but I was not a fan of white ones. As best I recall, they got a gray streak in them and had an ‘off’ taste. Maybe they had gotten frosted on or something.
On our ridge there was an old man that gave the Halloween trick more treaters a baked sweet potato. Don’t know what the others did with theirs but I ate mine. I thought it was a smart idea and was better than candy.
When we bake sweet potatoes, we load them up with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. But I think having them from a campfire would be even better without the frills.
I make a white sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving that my friends and family enjoy. My boys always ask for this and say, ” Be sure it’s the white potatoes”, lol!
I had never heard of white sweet potatoes until hearing about them from you, Tipper. I must try them. What is the difference in the taste between orange & white sweet potatoes?
Wow, we must have grown up in the same family! My father only liked white sweet potatoes. They are much harder to find than the red. Since just lost him I know I’ll still buy a few every year, just to keep his favorites on my holiday table while his memory is kept close to all your hearts. I know he is with Jesus and momma, but I sure do miss him.
White sweet potatoes are the best!! When I watched the video last night, I could almost smell them. When I was growing up that was the only kind mama baked and the smells coming from the kitchen was heavenly! Now days, they are hard to find but when I can, I always get some to bake. For a snack I can remember daddy and I getting us one and we ate them with cracklins. That was a real treat!!
We grew mostly white sweet taters when I was growing up. They weren’t the chubby ones that resembled the yaller ones or the Arsh tater. They were long and slender, sometimes 8 to ten inches long. One that was two inches in diameter would be considered huge. Most were an inch or less.
We washed and baked them in the oven without wrapping them in tin foil. Tin foil was a luxury reserved for the rich folks that lived in town. I don’t know the temperature they were baked at because the thermometer on the old Rome Eagle Lassie wood cookstove gave up the ghost years prior. They were baked until a fork would go into them with no resistance.
Some of the family split them open, filled them with butter and ate them like an Arsh tater. Not me, I wouldn’t eat them hot. I waited until they were cold. When they have been left overnight the skin will turn loose and you can peel them easily if you choose to. The baking, then cooling, process seems to set the sugars in the flesh. It begins to look and taste more like a candy than a vegetable.
I remember taking a white sweet tater, baked the night before, to school for dinner. Not a great long one that would poke out of the poke, but a small one or one cut in half.
You know the phrase from the song “take an old cold tater and wait”? Make that an old cold white sweet tater and I will gladly oblige!
The white potatoes the lady would bring my daughter were long and slender. I have saw them for see at a produce stand near me. I think he would get them in NC along with his apples. They were also long and slender.
I noticed a misspelled word that should be sale and I think they were a few in my other comment. I’m sorry and as my wife would tease me and say low down too. Lord how I miss her, our wedding anniversary would have been this Wed on Oct. 26
Ed-the ones we ate when I was a child were also slender 🙂
I’ve never had or heard of them but I’d sure like to try them. I’ll have to look at our local farmers market and maybe ask some growers if they know where to find them if there’s none to be had there. They looked really good at your meal, I love a camp fire nothing like it. Have a good week!
Last Friday the Mennonite farmer market near Tellico Plains had white, purple, and two kinds of orange sweet potatoes. We went with the orange because we wanted to get a whole box so we could share with our daughter.
This year I started my own slips from the purple ones and some of the Japanese ones that our son really liked when he lived in Japan for 9 years, I prefer the purple ones that are so dark they look black but they did rather well so we have plenty for the winter and may keep a smaller one of each to start some slips.
I’ve never had white sweet potatoes or seen them, but I’ll be looking for them at farmers market. Thanks for sharing!
New to me! I have never heard of those!
Mom’s favorite sweet potato was the white ones that she baked in the oven and fried with lots of white sugar. I always thought the white taters were a bit dry unless one had fresh churned butter to smother them with. Sow True Seeds offered fabulous white sweet tater slips a few years ago. They were heavy producers with high sugar content, just like the slips mom raised in a galvanized tub covered with plastic year after year. Rodents found my tater ridge right before harvest and left very few for me that they didn’t sample.
I’ll have to try to find some of the white kind. We’ve always had the orange variety. One of my garden goals for next year is to grow my own sweet taters.
This post brought up the sweet memory of how much my mom loved sweet potatoes. I learned to grow the slips by suspending the sweet potato in glasses of water with three toothpicks. They had to be started in February, as they were very slow growing. Much like Granny, she loved the white ones. They were not easy to find, and I never tried starting slips from them. I caught sweet potatoes on sale at Thanksgiving and bought loads of them to always keep her favorite food on hand. I cooked and froze in portions for pies until my daughter rebelled one Christmas and asked why I didn’t make ‘’a normal pie.”
I worked in a neighboring county where I passed a food bank. Occasionally, a Good Samaritan would dump what appeared to be a pickup load of sweet potato culls in a grassy area by the food bank. To keep my mom in her favorite food, I would unashamedly hop out in my uniform, even in the rain, and fill bags with these treasured root vegetables. On arrival home while I was cooking some sweet potatoes to mash and freeze, Mom would get busy calling everybody she knew in that county to tell them about her good fortune. I later found out one of her friends canned loads of the sweet potatoes. I would watch each day on my run as the pile diminished! Very seldom do I ever eat sweet potatoes anymore, but sure wished I liked them!
Never even heard of them. I don’t recall them being offered for slips nor for starts norfor sale. Something new to reach out for and try – thanks.
There is a couple of varieties of white sweet potatoes grown traditionally here, one being the Nancy Hall and the other I can’t think of right off. There is another variety that’s come to the fore recently but, being an import somewhat, it has several different names that I’ve seen it called by. Japanese Reds is what they are called by the seller of the slips I got. Don’t let the name fool you though–the skin is red but the meat is white. And it’s probably the same variety we get at the Mexican grocers.
Not nearly as moist as the American varieties, a bit waxy, and not nearly so sweet, I like them better than than the American white varieties.
I have never ate white sweet potatoes. A coworker of my daughter brought some to her and she loved them. In returned my daughter would that this lady Cherokee Purple tomatoes and her co worker loved them. This lady was raised in the Johnson City, Tennessee area. I never knew anyone to grow white sweet potatoes around here. My daughter would take the the Cherokee Purple tomatoes and her coworker friends would each bring another item and have a tomato sandwich lunch several days a week.
I do love a good baked sweet potato, hot out of the oven with butter. I also enjoyed your video last night. Sitting around a nice campfire with family and great food is a very special thing.
I don’t remember every eating a white sweet potato. I wonder do they taste the same? I do enjoy a nice sweet baked potato every now and then. That sweet potato in the picture looks like it was roasted on an open fire, bet it’s good!
I’ve heard of white sweet potatoes, but have never tried them and I’ve never seen them in our local grocery stores either. What I’ve read about them is the flavor is sweeter and better. So I’ll to see if I can track some down somehow or just grow some next year.
Great video last night! It’s been too dry here to have a campfire, but we’re suppose to get some rain tomorrow. If that happens we’ll have our fire as well. Fred has the wood stacked and ready to burn in the fire ring!
We like the white sweet potatoes also but they are not as easy to find 🙁
Mornin’…As I watched last night the wrapping of the potatoes caught my eye. I have tried to do that before and evidently I do not put enough foil around them. Mine just don’t come out as well as yours did. I will try more or maybe two layers of heavy duty foil. I have to agree that cooking over an open fire does something, for the food and for those enjoying the meal. Also, I noticed the, what looks like some sort of framework behind you guys and was wondering if that is something new your are adding or building. Just being nosy cause your videos are always so interesting. Give my best to Granny, she is a trouper for sure. God Bless
Glenda-that is a deer stand Matt has set up to practice shooting is bow from 🙂 So glad you enjoyed the video!
Sweet potatoes are quite delicious and one of my favorites in the winter respectably. They’re very nutritious as well. Yours surely look tasty right out of the fire with all the black outer roasted layer and pretty, tender inside with melted butter layer! A dash of brown sugar never hurts but I don’t add it cause I’m a tater lover!!! If you can grow sweet potatoes, I think that would be a very good thing!!! I always like stopping at the produce stand. Ours is run by a family who goes to Cana, NC every week to buy produce and flowers in the summer. You can’t go wrong supporting local business and friends in the community!!! I’d like us as a peculiar people to move back to local shopping. The Mart is simply a place I REFUSE to walk into- online with delivery is another matter because I can’t shlep big bags of cat food and other heavy stuff much anymore….
I’ve not had the white sweet potatoes but I really like the purple ones a lot. will head to Peachtree tomorrow to see if they still have the white ones.
I don’t think I have ever had white sweet potatoes. Most of my life I refused to even eat the orange kind. It has only been about four years or so that I have actually started eating them. And now I love them in a multitude of ways. Thank you for this post! I could almost hear the chairs scraping the floor and the voices of your family as they sat around the table eating, too. And I love real butter slathered on my sweet potatoes fresh out of the oven, and anything else, for that matter!! In fact, I ate crackers with butter on them with my vegetable soup last night – so good!
Donna. : )