Impossibly Easy Mashed Sweet Potatoes

These are the sweet potatoes I will be serving for Thanksgiving.

Literally.

Meaning, promptly after shooting the photos of this heavenly mash, I sealed it up in a storage container and hid them away in the freezer. I don’t know who I’m hiding them from. Mr. Hausfrau doesn’t like sweet potatoes, so it’s not like he is going to come stalking through the house, all fire-breathing dragon-like, “give me the sweet potatoes or give me death!”

The dogs haven’t figure out how to open the freezer. But give them a few more years. I may come home to a big mess one day yet.

Realistically, I’m probably hiding them from myself because, realistically, I would like to swim down deep through those sweet potatoes depths, breathing and unfurling with each silky, sweet wave.

There I go again with my issues. Matter of fact, I don’t have issues – I have subscriptions.

These potatoes are so impossibly easy and impossibly perfect that you’ll wonder how it is possible you lived without them. They cook and braise in a little bit of half and half and their own juices while being babysat by the crock-pot.

On a side note, check out that crock-pot. I bought it something like 8 years ago at Walmart for fifteen bucks. Like herpes, this thing is a gift that keeps on giving.

I dream of having a beautiful fancy-schmancy crockpot one day from the likes of Williams- Sonoma. I have to wait for this one to give up the ghost, but it just keeps tickin’, and I can’t get any neighborhood squirrels to chew through this cord no matter how much nut butter I smear on it (I’m keeping the crock-pot unplugged, of course. What kind of animal do you think I am?)

Anywho, when the potatoes are all helpless and crumbling, they get pureed in the food processor. Dunzo. No need for any butter or sweetener, just some salt to coax out every last bit of flavor. You see, since the sweet potato juices have nowhere to go (like evaporating out into a roasting oven or leaching out into boiling water), it all stays right there, in that crock-pot, doing the Tango and making little flavor babies.

It’s a thing of beauty, of which sonnets and 80’s love songs are written.

“I’m all out of (sweet potato) love, I’m so lost without you!”

Send medicine. The stabilizing kind.

Just do me a favor – when you make this and hide it in your freezer, just be sure you hide it alllllll the way in the back. I have no shame when it comes to raiding other people’s freezers.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes
(heavily adapted from Cooks Illustrated)

4 pounds of sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
1/2 cup half and half
salt, to taste

Pour approximately 1/4 cup of half and half into the bottom of the crock-pot and layer the potatoes into the crock-pot horizontally. Once the potatoes are layered, pour the remaining half and half over the potatoes. Cook on low for approximately 6 to 10 hours, while stirring a few times to move potatoes around. Larger crock-pots will mean less layers and a faster cooking time. The potatoes are done when they crumble easily.

Transfer the cooked potatoes to a food processor and puree until smooth. Season with salt to taste. Serve immediately or store in the refrigerator/freezer until later use.