Ina's Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Chipotle Orange Butter

On today's episode of "The Ina Chronicles," I made her roasted sweet potatoes with chipotle orange butter. We had it alongside some steak, basted with a garlic and thyme infused butter, and citrus green beans. The flavors between each component of the dish blended perfectly. The Chipotle Orange Butter was really something new, and I'm thinking about how I'd like to use it with something besides sweet potatoes...stay tuned on that one.

Let's break it down.

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PREP

The prep on this was pretty simple, but the recipe calls for a stand mixer to combine the ingredients of the butter. In the future, I would probably soften the butter a bit more and mix the whole thing either with a spoon or a fork. It felt like extra work to be doing this in the stand mixer, but it certainly helps combine the flavors evenly throughout the butter.

Once the butter is combined, you are supposed to use a rubber spatula to spread the butter in a strip alongside the long end of a piece of parchment paper, and then roll it up and stick it in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. The syrup mixed in the butter was having a hard time mixing in, so it got a little messy, but it worked. I had the butter in the fridge for at least 20 minutes, maybe closer to a half hour, as the sweet potatoes roasted in the oven, and I wouldn't do it for any less time than that.

That's it for prep! While the butter chills and sweet potatoes continue to roast in the oven, you can complete other components of your meal. You can also make the butter a week ahead of time to make it even easier.

COOK

Not much cooking that was done here. You pierce the sweet potatoes, place them on a foil lined baking sheet, and roast them for about an hour at 400. The prep of the butter is more of the "cooking."

REVIEW

As I mentioned under PREP, I would try to make this butter using a fork or spoon and bowl, while softening the butter a bit more so it easily mixes with the other ingredients. I think I would chill the butter for longer than 15 minutes, as the recipe calls for, to make sure it's nice and coagulated by the time you cut slices from the butter log for the sweet potatoes.

The recipe doesn't call for much salt, but I added Maldon Sea Salt on the top of the potatoes at the end, and they needed it. I would even salt the potatoes a bit more before even adding the butter next time.

The kids did not eat this, they had the sweet potatoes with regular butter. My husband and I really enjoyed it, even if it was slightly on the sweeter side than we normally prefer. Like I said before, I am thinking through what else we can use this butter on (there's more than half of it left sitting in my fridge!), and will certainly let you know.

4 out of 5 Lollipops.