Orange Yams Colonial

November 14, 2019

Orange Yams Colonial is a nice side dish addition to your holiday menu.

If you like to serve yams on your holiday table, this is a good recipe to try. And if you’ve never had yams before, you might consider giving them a go this Thanksgiving.

Yams have always been a classic side dish for Thanksgiving. I didn’t grow up eating them since no one in my family ever had them on their menu. Nowadays, I make them myself, and I think they’re pretty delicious.

There are so many ways to prepare yams, and everyone has their favorite. Mashed yams or sweet potatoes are quite a popular choice for many families. And there are plenty of people who like their yams cooked in a sweet, syrupy mixture and topped with marshmallows. My orange yams are a simple and flavorful, 4-ingredient recipe.

How to make Orange Yams Colonial:

You’ll boil the yams (unpeeled) in water until they are tender. Then you’ll drop the cooked yams into ice water and you can slip the skins off at that point. Next, you’ll chop the yams and put them into a bowl. Melted butter, orange juice and zest and honey are added to the yams. Then you’ll toss them to let those flavors coat the yams and then add them to a casserole dish. Lastly, you’ll sprinkle the yams with salt, pepper and nutmeg. The yams are baked in the oven for 30 minutes.

What I love about this recipe:

The yams are coated in a sweet and buttery sauce. Orange is a great flavor pairing with baked yams, and the addition of a little nutmeg makes them so perfect!

What’s the difference between Sweet Potatoes and Yams?

This is a very popular question, and people often get the two confused when trying to choose the right one at the store. And stores often have them mis-labeled, which adds to the confusion! There are two varieties of sweet potatoes in North America. One has golden skin with creamy white flesh, and the other has a copper colored skin with an orange flesh. The copper colored ones are often labeled as “yams” in your local markets. True yams have a blackish skin and are more common in Africa and Asia.

For this recipe (and other recipes calling for yams), use the copper colored skinned sweet potatoes with the orange flesh. They’re technically sweet potatoes, but they’ll be labeled as yams in the US.

Make-ahead instructions:

This is a good make-ahead recipe. You can prepare it to the point of getting the yams in the casserole dish. Cover and refrigerate until ready to bake. When you’re almost ready to bake them, take the casserole dish out of the refrigerator for at least 20 minutes. Then go ahead with baking.

Here are a few more holiday side dish recipes you might like to try: