Crash Hot Sweet Potatoes

I love the name. I love the potatoes even more. I think the recipe originated here, but it's been making the rounds on lots of different websites. With good reason. They are sweet and spicy and creamy and completely addicting. Try them. Try them right now.

Ingredients:

• As many sweet potatoes as you think you can eat (and you'll be stuffing yourselves with them). My amounts will be for about 4 medium-sized sweet potatoes. Adjust as needed.
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp kosher salt (I used no salt and substituted onion salt for onion powder)
• 1 tsp ground cumin (don't be scared, it tastes great in the end)
• 1 tsp New Mexico chili powder
• 1 tsp smoked sweet paprika (regular paprika, if regular and hot are the only two choices)
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp chipotle chili powder
• 1/2 tsp ancho chili powder
  
• 1/4 tsp granulated garlic (I'm sure garlic powder would work, too)
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil
  

I found the chili powders and the paprika (and the granulated garlic) at The Spice Merchant in Wichita. I'm sure they're not too difficult to find. And they're worth it. Actually, the original recipe didn't call for ancho chili powder, but ancho chili powder is a bad idea never, amiright?

Peel your sweet potatoes and then slice them about an inch and a half thick. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Drop in your sweet potatoes, be suspicious of any that sink, and boil them for 10-20 minutes, until they're smashable but not cooked completely through.

Take them out and let them cool.

Now, if you're adventurous, you smash them. You can do it right on the parchment paper (yes, you need parchment paper. They'll stick otherwise.) with a clear bowl so that you can see what you're doing. Use a spatula to slide the smashed potatoes off the bottom of the bowl. What we're doing here is making pretty edges, and giving them an opportunity to get sort of crispy and brown in the oven. Mine didn't, so I might not be smashing them next time. You could even do this to an entire sweet potato, but for that I would recommend smashing it, just to get more surface area for the spices.

Mix the spices in a bowl and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Melt the butter in small bowl, mix with olive oil, and then brush onto each potato. Sprinkle some of the spice mixture onto each one. Don't be stingy. Try gently patting the spices on to make sure they stick to the butter and oil. Flip each one over. They flip surprisingly well. Brush on the butter and oil, sprinkle with the remaining spices, and pop them in the oven for about 15 minutes. Take them out, flip them over (this does not work surprisingly well - it's kind of messy), eat all the crusty black caramelized sugar-spice from the spatula, and put them back in the oven for another ten minutes or so.

ETA: If you want a quicker and/or potluck appropriate dish, try it this way: Peel and slice your sweet potatoes like you're making scalloped potatoes (if you have a food processor with a slicing blade, it works just fine) and spread about half of them in a greased baking dish. Brush over some butter/olive oil mixture, then sprinkle a goodly amount of spice over them. Add another layer of potatoes and brush with butter/olive oil again. Sprinkle on some more spice. Bake, covered, until potatoes are tender - about 45 minutes to an hour. In the meantime, prepare some more spice mixture by combining it with equal part of brown sugar - we have a lot of surface area and we don't want it to be too spicy. Spread this over the top, put it back in the oven uncovered for another fifteen to twenty minutes to get the top all caramelized, and you're good to go. I think I may actually prefer them this way.