jmcquown wrote:

> Siobhan Perricone wrote:
>
>>I was just wondering if baked sweet potatoes are a common side dish in
>>restaurants in the southern US.
>>
>>We just ate at a Longhorn Steak House (it's new in Burlington, VT) for
>>lunch, it was nice enough. Decent ribeye that I didn't have to cook or
>>clean up after. Anyway, one of the side choices is baked sweet
>>potatoe and I wondered it that was a common thing in the south or an
>>affectation.
>
> Well, I live in the Southern U.S. and I often bake sweet potatoes as opposed
> to regular baking potatoes and I'll tell you why. They are moist and tasty
> without requiring a lot of butter, sour cream or other toppings to make them
> taste good. I treat them as I would a regular spud; rubbed with a little
> butter or oil, baked at a high temp for an hour. Split open and add just a
> tad of butter, salt & pepper. Oh yum!

In a couple of my restaurants, we *smoked* sweet potatoes. We
dry-smoked them in one, and pressure-smoked in another. The dry-smoker
was the same unit we used for catering jobs that called for BBQ. We
also had a commercial pressure smoker (Smokaroma, if anyone knows
them) that could do most of a case at once. Extravagantly wonderful.
Also did white potatoes. Grand.

Served them with too much butter. Heavenly.

Pastorio