Silky Smooth Sweet Potato Purée

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Use this recipe when you have sweet potatoes and aren't sure what to do with them. Or when you're in the mood for mashed potatoes but don't want to do any work.

Or if your annoying coworkers won't stop talking about how "going Paleo cured his eczema" and you want to dip your toe.

It only takes 4 ingredients to blow your mind. Seriously. Try it.

Ingredients

a lb of potatoes makes about 2-4 Servings

• 100% Sweet potato [Unless you live in Central or South America, you've likely never eaten a yam.]

• 20% Butter

• 30% Water

• 1% Kosher salt

If you don't have a scale [can you feel my rage?] you should get one. They're $10 on Amazon or in Walmart and it'll seriously help you get better in the kitchen. If you want to cook this right now without a scale, just guess. Start with a few tablespoons of butter and water. If it starts burning, add a bit more water. For salt, add some, stir and taste. Repeat until it tastes good.

Recipe

Peel sweet potatoes and slice into small pieces about 1/4 in thick.

Weigh the sweet potatoes, and then measure out butter, water, and salt. If you have 500 g sweet potatoes—which is about a pound—then you'll need 100 g butter, 150 g water, and 5 g salt.

Heat a pan over medium heat and add the butter. If you like the flavor of brown butter [you should], let the butter sizzle, bubble, and brown. It's done browning when you smell nuts. If you don't like brown butter [and I judge you] go to the next step.

Add water, salt, and sweet potatoes and raise heat to high.

You don't need to stir this. Maybe once or twice. We want the potatoes to steam, but we also want them to fry. Frying them means browning them. Remember the brown butter from above? Brown = flavorful. Taste one. If it's soft-ish, or if it's at least lost its crunchy starchiness, turn off the heat.

Add everything from the pan into a blender and blend on high until it's smooth. If you have a Vitamix, blend for a minute and, if not, blend until Tuesday. You can add more butter or water if it's too thick. I usually blend on low because I like mine more sweet potato-ey and less buttery purée.

PRO TIP: You can make this into a soup by adding more chicken stock/water and continuing to blend.

Reserve to a plastic container. It'll keep in the fridge for 5-7 days.