These candied yams are sweet potatoes tossed in brown sugar, butter and spices, then baked until caramelized. Add a sprinkle of marshmallows and you’ve got the perfect holiday side dish with minimal effort!
Every holiday meal must include sweet potatoes. When I’m in charge of Thanksgiving dinner, I often make side dish recipes such as Hasselback sweet potatoes, Ruth’s Chris sweet potato casserole, mashed sweet potatoes, or this sweet and decadent candied yams recipe.
Candied yams are a holiday staple for good reason – they’re elegant, easy to make and taste absolutely delicious. This dish is the perfect way to showcase sweet potatoes, whether it’s for a special occasion or a simple weeknight dinner.
Pair your yams with an Instant Pot turkey breast, baked ham, Cajun turkey or smoked turkey breast for a memorable meal. Don’t forget the Thanksgiving salad on the side!
Table of Contents
- Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Candied Yams Ingredients
- How Do You Make Candied Yams?
- Tips For The Perfect Candied Yams
- Quick Tip
- Recipe FAQ
- Make Ahead Instructions
- Candied Sweet Potatoes Variations
- More Side Dish Recipes
- Candied Yams Video
- Love This Recipe?
- Candied Yams Recipe
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Classic: Candied yams is a classic dish for Thanksgiving and the holidays. My husband’s cousins in the South love this dish and enjoy it for the holidays or for a southern Sunday dinner.
- Candied: What makes candied yams so special is that they are coated and baked in a in a brown sugar and butter sauce. The sauce brings out the flavor of the potatoes and makes for a sweet and delicious dish.
Candied Yams Ingredients
This candied yams recipe contains yams (also known as sweet potatoes!), brown sugar, butter, ground cinnamon, salt, ground nutmeg and miniature marshmallows. Amounts and details are in the recipe card below.
- Yams: Look for sweet potatoes with orange or red flesh. Jewel and garnet sweet potatoes work great! Don’t use canned yams.
- Butter: Butter helps turn the sugar and spices into a sauce that coats the yams to make them delicious.
- Brown Sugar: Look for dark brown sugar, not light brown sugar, to give your yams the best flavor.
- Nutmeg: This recipe uses a little ground nutmeg to give the yams a good spiced flavor. You can buy ground nutmeg or grind your own nutmeg with a box grater or microplane grater.
How Do You Make Candied Yams?
To make candied yams you want to find some fresh yams with a nice, orange interior. Peel the yams, then dice them up into small slices or chunks and place them in a baking pan or casserole dish that has been coated in cooking spray. Make the delicious brown sugar glaze that “candies” the yams by whisking together brown sugar, butter, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl. Be sure to add the secret ingredient, a pinch of nutmeg.
Pour the sauce over the yams and toss gently to coat. Bake everything up until the yams are fork tender and caramelized. The finishing touch is a handful of miniature marshmallows. Sprinkle them on the yams and put the dish back in the oven for a few minutes to toast the marshmallows. Take the dish out of the oven and enjoy!
Tips For The Perfect Candied Yams
- I like to choose long, thinner sweet potatoes at the grocery store because they are easier to cut into similar size pieces.
- Make sure you cut your yams into even sized pieces so they cook at the same rate. You also want your sweet potato chunks to fit on a fork and be bite sized.
- This dish is best served immediately upon coming out of the oven when the marshmallows are nice and hot and the yams are fork tender.
- If you need to feed a larger crowd, you can double or even triple the recipe.
- You do not need to boil your potatoes ahead of time. They will cook to perfection in the sauce in the oven!
- Leftover candied yams will stay fresh in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
- While I often serve these yams around the holidays, they’re really good all year long. Pair them with a roasted chicken, London broil or baked mac and cheese for a dinner that the whole family will love.
Quick Tip
Watch your dish carefully after you add the marshmallows because they can go from melted to burned in just seconds!
Recipe FAQ
What is the difference between a sweet potato and a yam?
Yams in the grocery store are sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes come in different colors and shapes. Sometimes grocery stores label the orange fleshed sweet potatoes as yams. However, there is a difference between sweet potatoes and true yams. A true yam is a root vegetable from Africa and Asia with a rough, brown skin. You do not want to use a true yam for this recipe, you will not get the same results. Feel free use any orange or red fleshed sweet potato for this recipe. I like to use the jewel or garnet varieties of sweet potatoes for this dish.
Is candied yams considered dessert?
While this dish tends to be sweet in nature, candied yams are most commonly served as a side dish rather than a dessert.
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Make Ahead Instructions
You can partially prepare this candied yams recipe in advance to make things go a little easier when you’re entertaining. You can coat the uncooked yams in the butter and brown sugar mixture, then store them in a bowl covered with aluminum foil in the refrigerator for up to 8 hours. Pour the yams into the baking dish and proceed with the rest of the recipe as directed. The butter mixture may solidify in the fridge, but that’s totally fine.
The other option is to coat the potatoes in the brown sugar and butter, then bake them as directed, cool and reheat later. You’ll want to add the marshmallows when you reheat them, not during the initial baking. The yams may have a softer texture if they’re baked then reheated since they’re essentially being cooked twice.
Candied Sweet Potatoes Variations
You can make these yams a number of ways for any holiday or dinner. Here are some fun variations.
- Sauce only: You can omit the marshmallows and just enjoy the flavor of the brown sugar sauce.
- Nuts: Feel free to add chopped nuts like pecans or walnuts. You can sprinkle the nuts on top of the yams or mix them into the dish.
- Vanilla: You can also add a dash of vanilla extract to the butter and sugar sauce.
- Sweet: Swap out the brown sugar for maple syrup or add a little molasses for a different flavor.
- Streusel Topping: Instead of marshmallows, try a streusel topping. You can make a quick streusel by mixing in a bowl 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar, 1/2 cup of flour, 4 tablespoons of melted butter and 1/4 cup of chopped pecans. Mix everything in the bowl until if forms crumbles. Place crumbles on the yams before they go into the oven and bake according to the recipe.
- Citrus: Add extra flavor with a squeeze of orange juice or fresh orange zest.
- Spices: You can also add more warm spices such as ground allspice, ground cloves or ground ginger.
Candied yams is a classic dish that is great for holidays, special occasions or any time you want a particularly fabulous dinner. If you want to enjoy this dish with soul food favorites try some Southern mac and cheese, collard greens with bacon, slow cooker black eyed peas and Mississippi pot roast. If you love sweet potatoes, you’ll adore this recipe!
