Grilled sweet potatoes and bananas mashed with coconut milk taste so wonderful. All the best features of all the flavors you associated with those words combine into something even more fabulous than the sum of its parts.
Heres the recipe that got me started on the whole idea of having a Jamaican-themed cookout at my workplace, and, in turn, started my love affair with Jamaican food. I was leafing through the pages of the grilling chapter of Alton Brown’s book Im Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York, 2002) when my eyes fell on a recipe he called Tropical Mash. It is scrumptious. The recipe here is very close to the one in Brown’s opus.
After making it, though, I decided it wouldnt scale easily enough for the quantities we needed at the cookout. I would have had to grill 80 sweet potatoes the day before the cookout. Thats lotta coals. So although it inspired my first big Jamaican feast, it didn’t actually make it into the feast itself. That shouldn’t stop you, though!
If youre cooking out at home, it’s perfect use of any extra inches of grill space you might have going. Brown says to start up the grill an hour early to dispatch the veg, but I have found it just as easy to find a little corner for this treat.
So easy to make. You can think of it as mashed potatoes tropical.
Jamaican Grilled Sweet Potatoes, Banana And Coconut Recipe Extra Notes
Alternately, you can roast these in the oven – a great wintertime option. But a charcoal grill imparts a special flavor.
Contents
Jamaican Grilled Sweet Potatoes, Banana And Coconut RecipeThe Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 small or 2 large sweet potatoes
- 1 banana
- 1 cup coconut milk
- 2 Tbs. butter
- 1/8 tsp. salt
- several grindings pepper
Equipment That Bears Mentioning
Rubber gloves (optional)
Grill
In A Nutshell
Grill bananas and sweet potatoes. Mash everything together.
Detailed Instructions
Prick sweet potatoes and banana all over with a fork so they dont burst in the heat. Grill sweet potatoes about 1 hour or until tender. Grill banana about 1/2 hour or until tender.
As soon as you can handle them, remove peels from sweet potatoes and banana. You can wear rubber gloves to ease the process
In a saucepan, heat coconut milk and melt butter into it. Add salt and pepper.
Transfer to a mixing or serving bowl, and mash potatoes and banana into it.
Source Recipe
Tropical Mash – I’m Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking Alton Brown,Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York, 2002
