Sunday, January 26, 2014

"Healthy" Caramel? Color Me Skeptical...

sweet potato caramel

When I saw this on the bon appetit blog, I thought, "Wow! Caramel sauce with no refined or processed ingredients? I have to try this!" Well, I tried it, and came away disillusioned. The recipe seemed simple enough: roast 3 pounds of potatoes in a little water, then let drain into a saucepan. Cook down the resulting liquid.

Here are the potatoes, ready to go into the oven:


Here are the roasted potatoes, draining in a cheese-cloth-lined strainer:


And, after an hour and a half of roasting, an hour of draining, and another half hour of cooking down the liquid, here is what I got:


A third of a cup of syrup (never got to a caramel-y state of thickness) that still tastes overwhelmingly like sweet potato.  At least I had enough mashed sweet potato to make sweet potato pancakes (just add some of the mashed potato to your regular pancake batter) and sweet potato biscuits.  :-)  As for the "caramel sauce", I'm still skeptical, but I saw enough promise to try it again -- roasting the sweet potatoes uncovered for longer to concentrate the sugars more might do the trick.  It just seems like a lot of time to take up just to make a small amount of caramel sauce.  Still not sure what I'm going to do with the small amount of syrup I have, though.  It seems a shame to just waste it.  Simple syrup for a cocktail, perhaps? Send me any thoughts you have!  :-)  

No comments:

Post a Comment