A “Cooking For Two” Side Dish: Roasted Sweet Potato Hash
November is Sweet Potato Awareness Month, National Roasting Month, and National Gluten-Free Diet Awareness Month. Here’s a Cooking for Two recipe that fits all three.
When we started gardening a couple of years ago, one of the first things we tried to grow was sweet potatoes. We eat them all the time, and we had heard they were easy.
A Florida gardener I follow says to skip the whole process of starting slips. She just sticks a whole organic sweet potato in the ground and watches it grow. So we went to the organic section at the grocery store and bought a couple Natural Beauty Orange potatoes. We stuck them in a five gallon grow bag full of potting soil the first week in May.
To our amazement, they sprouted and grew like weeds. We had multiple vines trailing several feet from the pot. I learned that you can eat the leaves of a sweet potato plant. So we harvested those and added them to smoothies and salads all summer.
As with everything to do with gardening down here, the rules are different for growing and harvesting sweet potatoes in Florida. Up north, you can tell it’s time to harvest when the vines start to die off and the potatoes protrude from the ground. Sweet potato vines are a perennial in our zone, so the main way to tell when they’re ready is by calculating how long they’ve been growing.
We were so excited when we harvested or first “crop” of sweet potatoes!
Around the first of September, after approximately 120 days, we emptied out the grow bag. I laid the scissors and the trowel next to the potatoes in the photo for scale. As you can see, we got some decent-sized tubers! We thought it was a great first effort, especially since we were growing them in a relatively small bag.
Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to replicate those results since then. We’ve tried four different varieties of sweet potatoes, in addition to the Natural Beauty Orange. We used larger grow bags. We moved them around the yard, trying for different amounts of sun. We even tried ordering slips from a nursery. The results have been somewhat disappointing.
(I will admit that once we harvested the wrong grow bags. I got mixed up about when we had started which bags, and didn’t realize we dumped the wrong ones until after we did it. Oops!)
No matter how small the potatoes come out, I want to find a way to eat them. So I started making Roasted Sweet Potato Hash.
When you put all that work (and money) into gardening, you want to make sure nothing goes to waste. Many of the sweet potatoes we’ve gotten have been too small to bake or slice for fries. My favorite way to use those is for a hash.
We typically get a few small potatoes from each of the varieties we’re trying to grow. I like to use an assortment of purple, orange, and white ones for the hash. The mix of colors and flavors makes it look and taste appealing. You can probably find different types of sweet potatoes at your local organic grocer, health food store, or farmer’s market. But it’s okay if you only use the oranges ones.
I tried leaving the peel on, but I don’t like the texture or the taste in this dish. I’ll admit, I go to a lot trouble of peeling the little spuds I typically use. But if you’re using normal-sized potatoes, you’ll only need one or two (depending on how big they are) to feed two people.
Other than the peeling, Roasted Sweet Potato Hash is a pretty fast and easy side dish.
I cut the peeled potatoes up into very small pieces (like 1/4 – 1/2″) so they will cook quickly. Then I add some finely diced red onion to the potatoes, and spread those out on a small baking sheet. I drizzle some olive oil over the potatoes and onions and sprinkle on a generous amount of salt and freshly ground black pepper. You can also use whatever herbs you like, such as rosemary or thyme. This goes into a hot oven for about 15-20 minutes. I usually give it a stir about halfway through.
We love this hash with our Ground Chicken Meatloaf. It’s also great in place of fries with a burger or a wrap. It would even be a wonderful addition to your Thanksgiving table. (I must admit, I’m not a fan of the mashed stuff with the marshmallows on top.) Roasted Sweet Potato hash is a delicious side dish to serve with just about anything.