As secular Thanksgiving has become a part of Amish culinary culture, it's not surprising that sweet potatoes have become popular on holiday menus. Historically, sweet potatoes were not a huge Amish hit. If you go through old Amish cookbooks sweet potatoes are not found a ton. The sweet potato has an incredibly muddled history. You can read more here.
The Amish are not among that muddled history, so sweet potatoes were just sort of introduced to the Amish at some point, and certain recipes "caught on."
So, on a typical Amish Thanksgiving spread you might find a bowl of mashed potatoes, a turkey, maybe some ham, green beans, and something with sweet potatoes, like this easy Amish sweet potato casserole.
It's interesting to me how wide the variations are among Amish communities on who celebrates what days. The Amish in your most conservative settlements scarcely observe the day, but in larger more progressive Amish settlements that are more intertwined with the surrounding non-Amish world, you do see a lot more Thanksgiving celebrations. I remember one very conservative Amish community I visited in Switzerland County, Indiana where a tiny Amish bulk food store was open on Thanksgiving and New Years's, those days just weren't considered very noteworthy in that church district.
For this Amish Sweet Potato Casserole you want to peel and mash the potatoes as your first step. You can use the back of a spoon, a potato masher, a fork, anything you have at your disposal to mash them!
Then add eggs, brown sugar, flour, and other ingredients. At this point you could use an electric mixer to really whip them up good or just keep using a wooden spoon. Most Amish would use the spoon.
And this is the delicious casserole. Now you could use a nice parchment paper like I did to completely avoid doing dishes. Or you can just put it directly in the pan. Either way once you add the topping and bake you get a delicious casserole! Also, you can use pecans in the topping or, if you don't want to spend a fortune, you can use walnuts instead and get the same nice crunch for a fraction of the price!
The brown sugar is a great addition to this and if you want to add more than 3 tablespoons go right ahead.
🥘 Amish Sweet Potato Cassserole
- 4 cups mashed sweet potatoes (2 3 /4 pounds before peeling)
- 5 tablespoons butter, melted
- 2 beaten eggs
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 /2 cup milk
Topping
- 1 /2 cup brown sugar
- 1 /4 cup flour
- 2 1 /2 tablespoons butter
- 1 /2 cup chopped pecans.
📋 Instructions
- Peel sweet potatoes and then mash them.
- Add all other ingredients and stir well.
- Put in shallow 2 quart baking dish.
- Mix together topping ingredients and sprinkle over casserole.
- Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.
🍠 More Sweet Potato Recipes
Full Recipe
Easy Sweet Potato Casserole
Ingredients
- 4 cups mashed sweet potatoes (2 3 /4 pounds before peeling)
- 5 tablespoons butter, melted
- 2 beaten eggs
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 /2 cup milk
Topping
- 1 /2 cup brown sugar
- ¼ cup flour
- 2 1 /2 tablespoons butter
- ½ cup chopped pecans.
Instructions
- Peel sweet potatoes and then mash them.
- Add all other ingredients and stir well.
- Put in shallow 2 quart baking dish.
- Mix together topping ingredients and sprinkle over casserole.
- Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.
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