Thanksgiving Yams: 5 Sweet Potato Recipes

The Thanksgiving yams in this collection are orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. USDA’s Agricultural Research Service explains that sweet potatoes and true yams are unrelated plants, although sweet potatoes are often called yams in the United States.

Start with the shape you want on the plate: saucy pieces, a scoop of mashed casserole, or roasted cubes. Then choose the topping and cooking equipment. These five complete maker recipes offer different ways to fill that Thanksgiving side-dish spot.

Fresh peeled slices bake in a sauce of butter, pure maple syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and vanilla. They stay in pieces, without the boiling and mashing required for a casserole filling. Choose them when the sauce is part of what you want to serve.

This recipe needs a baking dish and a saucepan, so reserve both while planning the rest of dinner. Orange zest, rosemary, and flaky sea salt are optional additions. They can stay off the shopping list unless you want Sally’s suggested finish.

Peeled, chopped sweet potatoes cook in a sauce of salted butter, white and brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla. Cornstarch and water are part of this recipe too. It is its own cinnamon-sugar version, with no maple syrup or marshmallow oven finish in the selected dish.

An oven-free dish can still need attention: Rosie includes stirring during cooking. Put that check into your holiday plan, and read her method before deciding when to start. The benefit here is moving one side off the oven schedule.

The selected fresh-potato version has a mashed filling with brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, vanilla, salt, and pepper. Pecans appear in the mash and on top with the marshmallows. This is a soft casserole under a toasted topping; the actual recipe lists no eggs or flour.

You’ll need a pot for boiling and a casserole dish for the oven. The pecans are part of Holly’s complete recipe, so keep them in mind when choosing for your guests. Read her make-ahead notes if you want to prepare some of the casserole before Thanksgiving Day.

The filling combines boiled, mashed sweet potatoes with butter, brown sugar, nutmeg, and eggs. Its topping is a separate mixture of brown sugar, butter, all-purpose flour, cinnamon, and chopped pecans. This selected version finishes with pecan streusel across the top, without marshmallows.

Plan for boiling, mashing, making the topping, and oven space. Eggs in the filling and flour in the streusel are useful distinctions from Holly’s casserole when shopping for your table. Jennifer’s own preparation notes can help you decide which work to do before the holiday.

Jeanine Donofrio and Phoebe Moore’s selected recipe uses skin-on cubes, extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper. There is no butter or sweet glaze in this version. Its short ingredient list makes the sweet potatoes themselves the focus of the side.

Check that you have room for two large baking sheets before choosing this option. The authors leave space around the cubes to help them brown. Fewer sauce ingredients do not mean less oven space, so compare the sheet-pan footprint with your casserole dishes.