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Grilled Sweet Potatoes
Plunge four medium sweet potatoes into two quarts boiling water with half teaspoon salt and boil for thirty-five minutes. Drain, skin, then cut each one into four even slices, lengthwise. Oil the inside of a double broiler, arrange the potatoes on the broiler and broil for five minutes on each side. Remove, lightly roll in a tablespoon melted butter and serve.
A simple two-stage method: boil the potatoes through, then finish them over direct heat for color and a little char. The only real pitfall is overboiling.
- The hinged "double broiler"This is not a double boiler. It means a two-sided hinged wire grid that closes over the food so it can be turned in one motion over coals or under a gas flame. A grill basket does the same job; a sheet pan under an oven broiler or a ridged grill pan both work, though you must turn the slices by hand.
- Boiling timeThirty-five minutes suits large, dense potatoes. Medium ones are usually tender at 20-25 minutes. Stop when a knife meets slight resistance at the center rather than sliding through cleanly, or the slices will collapse when you move them.
- Cool before slicingLet the drained potatoes sit until they can be handled. Skins slip off easily while still warm, but lengthwise slices cut from a hot, steaming potato tend to break.
- Broiler heatHigh heat, close to the source. If you are using an oven broiler instead of a hinged grid, run it hot with the rack near the element; the recipe itself gives no temperature. Five minutes a side is right for browning, not cooking, since the potato is already done.
- Oil the grid, not the potatoSweet potato sugars stick hard. Brush the wires generously and let them heat before the slices go on.
- The butter at the endA tablespoon of melted butter rolled on after broiling, rather than brushed on before, keeps it from burning to bitterness. Salt at that point too.
- YieldFour potatoes cut into four slices each serves four as a side dish.
Sweet potatoes reached European kitchens from the Americas well before the white potato became common, and by the early twentieth century they were a staple of American cooking, especially in the South, where boiling and then finishing them over fire is often said to have been ordinary practice. The hinged wire broiler this recipe calls for was standard equipment when broiling still meant an open flame or a bed of coals rather than a gas element, and the name "double broiler" is generally traced to the tool's two hinged halves. Placing the dish in a chapter called The World's Kitchen reflects the habit of general cookbooks of that era, which gathered dishes from many places under national or regional headings.