North Carolina has been ranked the top sweetpotato grower in the U.S. since 1971. We’ve always been fond of candied yams (a starchy type of sweetpotato – not technically yams) and sweetpotato pie at Thanksgiving. When sweetpotato fries started sidling up to our burgers, we opened our minds to sweetpotato potential.
After all, they provide 300 percent of our daily requirement of vitamin A and about one-third of our daily vitamin C. Nutritionists encourage us to pair about a teaspoon of butter with a sweetpotato to help our bodies absorb all of those vitamins. Butter rounds out the delicate, almost nutty, slightly sweet flavor. Sweetpotatoes are high in fiber, low in calories, contain no fat and taste delicious. What’s not to love?
Sweetpotato Fritters
A variety of European, Asian and African cultures have a potato pancake of some kind. Hungarians serve it with goulash. The Germans serve it with blueberries. Swedes prefer a side of pork and lingonberries on top. And Jewish people the world over serve potato pancakes known as latkes with applesauce and sour cream for Hanukkah. North Carolinians naturally gravitate to the native sweetpotato crop in place of the Idaho. These Sweetpotato Fritters veer off the traditional path by adding a bit of pepper jelly in place of the applesauce and full-bodied Greek yogurt instead of sour cream.
