cheryl
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For a ‘Proper Proper Proper’ Baked Sweet Potato, Freeze It First - Eater
Lucas Sin held a small purple sweet potato in each hand, his phone balanced on the kitchen counter recording. November in New York meant the chill was setting in, and Sin took to Instagram to share his memory of the winters he spent in China as a kid, along with a recipe for what he dubbed — in all caps — “proper proper proper sweet potatoes!!”
“It’s cold, it’s wintery,” he said, painting the picture for his 43,000 Instagram followers. “You’re walking down the street and you see a woman with a shovel and this gigantic wok filled with rocks or pebbles or coals, and she’s digging in there, just flipping potatoes and rotating, and you get this beautiful waft… it’s the perfect snack.” Sin explained the unique conditions that make those wok-roasted sweet potatoes so magical: The freezing they go through when left outside in China’s coldest regions improves the texture of the potato’s flesh, while cooking at such a high heat results in smoky, caramelized outer edges.
As a kid in Hong Kong — where it never got quite cold enough for sweet potatoes to actually freeze — Sin still ate a version of this snack. He’d walk the streets with his nose up until he found a vendor engulfed in a cloud of sweet steam. A cook, standing at a small cart, would pass the warm potatoes over a low counter. “During a certain time of the year, all around Hong Kong, if you’re lucky, you’ll smell this a block or two away. The sweet potato is nice and charred outside, super, super fluffy inside,” says Sin, who now lives in New York. “They serve the sweet potato inside a brown paper bag, and you walk along the street eating it.”
Lucas Sin held a small purple sweet potato in each hand, his phone balanced on the kitchen counter recording. November in New York meant the chill was setting in, and Sin took to Instagram to share his memory of the winters he spent in China as a kid, along with a recipe for what he dubbed — in all caps — “proper proper proper sweet potatoes!!”
“It’s cold, it’s wintery,” he said, painting the picture for his 43,000 Instagram followers. “You’re walking down the street and you see a woman with a shovel and this gigantic wok filled with rocks or pebbles or coals, and she’s digging in there, just flipping potatoes and rotating, and you get this beautiful waft… it’s the perfect snack.” Sin explained the unique conditions that make those wok-roasted sweet potatoes so magical: The freezing they go through when left outside in China’s coldest regions improves the texture of the potato’s flesh, while cooking at such a high heat results in smoky, caramelized outer edges.
As a kid in Hong Kong — where it never got quite cold enough for sweet potatoes to actually freeze — Sin still ate a version of this snack. He’d walk the streets with his nose up until he found a vendor engulfed in a cloud of sweet steam. A cook, standing at a small cart, would pass the warm potatoes over a low counter. “During a certain time of the year, all around Hong Kong, if you’re lucky, you’ll smell this a block or two away. The sweet potato is nice and charred outside, super, super fluffy inside,” says Sin, who now lives in New York. “They serve the sweet potato inside a brown paper bag, and you walk along the street eating it.”