What? Sweet potato...jam? Y'all, I know it sounds suspicious, but it's both delicious and gorgeous. I've now made it twice, once last summer and once a few weeks ago and I'm gonna keep making it because it tastes good and it's easy.
I bought a book sometime in spring of 2020, before the US acknowledged that a pandemic was on the horizon. I was still on the job market and flying what felt like every other day. After my 4th time passing through the Charlotte airport in as many weeks, I finally cracked and bought this:
A book of recipes including sweet potatoes. I may have bought this in a moment of travel induced fatigue, but no regrets! It's worth it just for the jam.
I have changed close to nothing on purpose, so I'm copying the recipe down here for easier reading:
Ingredients (Makes about a 12 oz jar's worth):
1 1/4 pounds of peeled sweet potatoes (about 2 medium sweet potatoes)
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Directions:
Grate the sweet potatoes. (You can also use a food processor)
Mix the grated sweet potatoes in a bowl (or the pot you plan to use).
Put the mixture in a medium-large saucepan over medium heat. Cover and cook, stirring frequently and masking the mixture against the sides of the pot to help the potatoes collapse. Cook for about 30 minutes or until the potatoes have mostly collapsed.
Turn the stove off. Mix in the lime juice, salt and almost extract.
After it cools, put in a lidded container and store in the fridge.
You can see above how it sort of started breaking down from the first picture to the second! The sweet potatoes start sweating when you mix them with sugar, whether or not you put them on the stove. The second picture is about halfway through cooking.
Notes:
When in doubt, just go with a bigger pan! It gives you more space to do all the stirring!
The second time I made it, I went lighter on the sugar and heavier on the lime juice because I *love* lime. I think you need the sugar to help it fully break down, so use the full amount in the recipe!
I also cooked it for more like 45 minutes. Not on purpose; I just forgot to pay attention to the time. It ended up being more broken down and I ended up really liking that.
I just throw it in any old jar that I have laying around.
It's sometimes very firm after being the fridge. You might want to take it out a little before you want to use it.
I put it on anything. Bread. Cake. I even threw some on a tortilla chip. I made a trifle with it (Also from this book!). This jam is versatile. Someone told me they made a sandwich with this and almond butter and it was amazing.
Anyway, the hardest part of this is grating the sweet potatoes and you can skip that if you have a food processor. Make it, and you too can send your colleagues a slightly confusing text that says: "Do you like sweet potatoes? Do you like jam? I got something for you."
Look how gorgeous that orange is! I'll follow up at some point with the sweet potato jam trifle!