I was unable to find a small ham for our Christmas dinner, so I went ahead and purchased a large one. I have had fun coming up with new ways to use the leftover ham, especially since this has given me an excuse to play with some of my Christmas presents.
My entire family loved the scalloped sweet potatoes with ham, giving it the highest compliment in their vocabulary, “this is bloggable”.
You can use yams instead of sweet potatoes, though there was some debate about whether you should change the name to Scalloped Yams with Ham if you do. We universally agreed that scalloped yams did not sound as delicious as scalloped sweet potatoes, but some of the younger members thought that Scalloped Yams with Ham sounded like something from a Dr. Seuss book. If you spend a little too much time sounding like Sam-I-Am at the dinner table, you should probably go with the most appetizing name you can think of. 🙂
Scalloped Sweet Potatoes with Ham
Yield – 4 servings
Preparation Time – 5 minutes
Cooking Time – 55 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons butter (or dairy free margarine)
- 1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch (or 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour)
- 2 cups milk (or almond or rice milk)
- 1 teaspoon basil
- 1 teaspoon ginger
- 1 Tablespoon parsley
- 3 medium sweet potatoes (~2lbs.), peeled and thinly sliced
- 1 1/2 cups diced ham
Directions
- In a sauce pan, cook the onion in butter until it is tender.
- In a small bowl, combine cornstarch and milk. Add the milk mixture to the onions. Cook over a medium flame until it begins to boil, stirring regularly. Remove from heat and stir in spices.
- Place a third of the sweet potatoes in a large greased casserole dish. Then top with a 1/2 cup of diced ham:
- Cover with a third of the sauce:
- Repeat the layers.
- Bake, covered at 350 F for 40 minutes. Uncover; bake for an additional 30 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Let stand for 5 minutes before serving.
- The top layer of sweet potatoes are slightly crisp while the underlayers are tender.
Your “This is bloggable” comment cracked me up because that’s the same thing my husband says when I make something he considers to be one of my best recipes. 🙂
If you really knew what a YAM was, you would not mention it in this recipe. Lots of Caribbean stores and people in my area. They know what a YAM is. It is not the same thing as a sweet potato.
Not that it matters at this point, but if she didn’t know a YAM was NOT a SWEET POTATO, she wouldn’t have used the word “instead” in referring to the tuber in question (starchy tubers, either way, at any rate). You make it sound as though a YAM is some kind of kinky sex toy or an unmentionable body part (or even excrement) of an exotic animal. A comment thread is not a place for snide remarks. Try being NICE.
Most Americans, including myself, were raised to believe that a yam is very similar to a sweet potato. It’s how they’re sold as produce. Many of us, unless we’ve traveled to places where actual yams are traditional fare, have never seen an actual yam. Honestly, it’s like the difference between American football and what the rest of the world knows as football, America calls soccer.
So, the alternative use of yam as part of this post is referring to what most Americans commonly know as yams.
It’s well and good to offer factual information to clarify when there may be confusion, but, there is no need or constructive purpose in doing so in a condescending, mean-spirited manner.
We had something similar except we made Au Gratin potatoes with diced ham.
ATL Cook, why dont you tell us what a YAM is?
I was curious enough, so I went and looked and ended up at about.com. Here is what they say the difference is:
http://homecooking.about.com/od/howtocookvegetables/a/sweetpotatodiff.htm
Ham plays so well with so many frugal ingredients (eggs, potatoes, beans, pasta) and it only takes a handful of diced ham to make an otherwise meatless dish seem more satisfying!
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