Is It Up To The Hype?

Greetings, my beautiful lovelies. It's Emmy. How are you? It's great to see you and welcome back. Today's video is sponsored by Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, pastries, and fresh pasta. Wild Grain partners with small bakeries and pasta makers across the nation to support the tradition of artisanal food making. And Wild Grain focuses on simple ingredients and slow processes, including slow fermentation and sourdough. There are no preservatives and no shortcuts. And I love that. I love that I can bring freshly baked sourdough bread right to the table in 25 minutes or less. It's super simple to customize your own box. You can choose from a selection of breads, fresh pastas, pastries, and there are vegan and gluten-free options, and they have a new protein box as well. And Wild Grain is always adding new seasonal products as well, so there's always something exciting to choose from. As some of you may know, I bake a loaf of sourdough every week, but I love having the option of grabbing a loaf straight from the freezer and then popping it into the oven. And then I almost instantly have a loaf of piping hot bread and sourdough to boot. And with every box ordered, Wild Grain donates two meals to a food security nonprofit of your choice at no extra cost. So if Wild Grain sounds like something that you'd like to try, you can click the link down below and use my code and get $30 off your first Wild Grain box and get free croissants for life. What a deal. Big thanks to Wild Grain for sponsoring this video and for allowing me to make better videos for all of you. All right, my lovelies. Today, we are going to be tasting Courtney's sweet potato and cheese combination. If you don't know Courtney, she's on the Tiki Talks, and she is a lovely high school English teacher, and she often shares her lunch meals with viewers. She also does a fair bit of cooking, but usually with an English slant. Definitely an Anglophile, and shares lots of British-themed meals and condiments, including Branston pickle, pickle lily, all these kinds of very, very British things. But she's an English teacher, so it makes absolute sense. Incidentally, if you're curious about my thoughts on Branston pickle, HP sauce, and some of these very, very British items, you can watch a very old episode of Emmy Eats England or the UK, and I'll put a link to it down below when Harold sent me a huge selection of very British things, including Branston pickle and brown sauce, and some things that you just have never heard of as a person that just lives on this side of the pond. So, curious. Check out that video. So what I'm gonna be tasting today is a very simple combination of a sweet potato and cheese. Now, Courtney eats this in one of her meals. She eats it in a couple of her meals, actually, where she has a precooked sweet potato, and she jams a piece of very specific cheese called buttercase cheese inside and just yams on it. Yams, pun very much intended, and says it's absolutely delicious. Something about the simplicity, something about the non-pretentious nature of eating a sweet potato just with a knob of cheese in it just is so appealing, so appealing. So I was not able to find the buttercase cheese, which you can find at Aldi, apparently. Can't find it. Aldi knows about this because they've posted this on their TikToks as well. My two local Aldi's did not have it as well as the local Whole Foods stores did not have it as well. But I've got some other substitutes that people have said are good dupes for the buttercase cheese, which comes from Germany and literally translates to butter cheese. It's supposed to be very creamy in consistency, kind of similar to a Comte or a Fontina, and kind of light, dairied flavor, not a very old, agey kind of cheese flavor. I looked up the pronunciation. I believe it's buttercase. I'm sure I'm gonna say it wrong as we go along. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to demystify sweet potatoes and yams, right? Because I've read about it, but then I never remember what the difference is. Well, I shall show you. First of all, sweet potatoes and yams, true yams, are not synonymous. They are not the same. They come from different families. A sweet potato, this, this, and this are commonly found in U.S. grocery stores right here. Even though they all look different, these are all different varieties of sweet potato. They have a smoother skin. They do come in different colors. The interior of these have all kinds of different colors. Some are light yellow, some are creamy white, and some are like this garnet sweet potato, sometimes labeled as a garnet yam, even though it is not a yam. It's nice and orange inside. And these are actually in the morning glory family. And these are roots. Yams are native to Asia and Africa, and they look different. They're more rougher and scurfier on the surface, not as smooth. And these can grow huge, five pounds to up to 100 pounds. These are enormous. And these are tubers. Yams also tend to be starchier and less sweet than sweet potatoes, which are also starchy, but a little bit creamier and much sweeter. In the States, if you have candy yams during the holidays, those are actually sweet potatoes, not a true yam. So basically all the yams and sweet potatoes that you see in the supermarkets in the U.S. are actually sweet potatoes. You can find true yams, but usually we'll find them in Caribbean markets, Asian markets, African markets. You'll find these. This one is called a yam, and it comes from South America. And I'm gonna cook it up and see what it tastes like because I've never had one, but not in today's video. Today, we're focusing on the combination of sweet potato and cheese. Let's talk about how we are going to cook these. Now, I typically bake them, roast them, or boil them, but Courtney has very specific instructions on how she likes to cook them. She puts them in an air fryer at a relatively low temperature, 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and cooks them for an hour. When you pierce a knife in it, it should go in effortlessly. Then you're supposed to turn off the air fryer and let them sit in there for another hour. It's supposed to help develop the kind of syrupy flavor of them. So I was thinking, why does Aldi have such a specific type of cheese? But it makes sense because Aldi is a German-owned company and Butterkase is a German cheese. Duh. I didn't realize Aldi had such a great cheese selection. So I got a bunch of cheeses. I also happen to have some homemade macaroni salad, which Courtney also has on her sweet potato. So here are my sweet potatoes. Look at that. It's actually oozing sweet syrupy stuff. This is the garnet sweet potato, also called a garnet yam. It is not a yam. This is the murasaki. This is a Japanese purple sweet potato. This one they call the sweet beauty. This is the Japanese sweet potato. So this might be similar, very similar to the murasaki. Very curious to see how these sweet potatoes cooked up. They feel very tender and the skins have shriveled up a bit. So the air fried version of this. Look at that. That's gorgeous. Beautiful. Ooh, it's got a slight yellow color to it. Oh, that was bright yellow. That's beautiful. So I think one of the things that's so appealing about Courtney is that she's so very unpretentious when it comes to her eating and sharing of her food. She often cuts her cheese with a spoon, which I find very endearing. This is Comte, which I really love. Very generous stick. Itadakimasu. Mm, it's like a Swiss cheese. It has a very nutty flavor, similar to like a Jarlsberg cheese, a little firmer in texture, delicious. More similar to an Emmentaler. And this. Oh, very nicely cooked. Look at that. It just plunged in perfectly. Itadakimasu. That is good. I have to say, sweet potatoes are pretty underrated. Here in Rhode Island, you can get sweet potato fries at a lot of places. I feel like it's a very, very Rhode Island thing. And I actually don't love them, but I do love this combination. And I feel like it really allows the sweet potato to shine because there are very few things going on here. We've got cheese and sweet potato. The sweet potato is a little bit nutty, toasted. Tastes a little bit caramelized. Pleasantly sweet. Not overpoweringly sweet, just pleasantly so. And it's a really great combination with the cheese, which gives it some added richness, some saltiness to balance out the sweet. You don't need any extra flavorings in this at all, in my opinion. The sweet potato really is the star here. And I'm eating with a peel too. I made sure to scrub the potatoes before I air fried them. And it's delicious. If you don't like sweet potatoes, try this. I think you might actually change your mind. Air frying technique that Courtney suggested was great. The potato is perfectly cooked. It's just a little warmer than room temperature and super tender and delicious. Right in there. Boom. Now let's try the Japanese sweet potato, which has a yellow interior. Here we go. Itadakimasu. Mm. Mm-hmm. That's really good as well. The Japanese sweet potato has a really lovely texture. It's more buttery and creamy in texture. A little bit more like a Yukon Gold potato. A little more waxy, but creamy and soft. While the garnet sweet potato is a little more watery. In terms of sweetness, they're both equally sweet. Delicious. I think I like the texture of the Japanese sweet potato a little bit more. Very similar nutty flavor. I think the garnet sweet potato has more of a kind of caramel-y flavor than the Japanese potato. Let's take a bite of the Murasaki potato just by itself. Mm. That's very similar to the Japanese one. This one might be a little less nutty and a little sweeter, but similar kind of creamy texture. Not at all watery. Very soft. Delicious. I think this is my favorite way to eat a sweet potato. And perhaps this is the best way to cook it because I used to roast them in the oven and they would get a little bit dry. This is a slice of Havarti. This is a Danish cheese. Mm. The Comte is a little more nutty than the Havarti. The Havarti is a little bit more dairy. But, mm. It too is delightful with the sweet potato. It's that combination of salty and sweet. It's so complimentary. One I'm very curious about is American cheese. Courtney says her Butterkäse is similar to American cheese. Here we go. It still works. The cheese kind of sticks to the roof of your mouth and you don't really like that experience, but this is definitely more creamy than the other two cheeses so the mouthfeel really works with the kind of creamy texture of the sweet potato. It still works. You have that salty, sweet thing going on. I had a roommate in college who lived in the Netherlands, actually in The Hague, who corrected my pronunciation of Gouda, as I call it, and she's like, Emmy, it's Gouda. Shout out, Sharon Rose, wherever you are. Let's taste that. Mm. This is gonna work great. This has a creamier consistency, a more richer kind of butterier flavor than the other two cheeses. A little less nutty. Mm. Mm-hmm. Okay. That one's my favorite. Very complimentary in both level of salt to level of sweetness, creaminess, and flavor. This one's my favorite, Gouda. Mm. It reminds me a little bit of the Butterbell cheeses, the ones that are encased in wax, which I actually don't love. I love the wax more than the cheese. I am cheesed out, so I've confirmed that all of these cheeses work with sweet potato. Delicious. But almost forgot the Mac salad. Courtney just puts this on. I don't have any brandy pea, but we're gonna try that. Mm-hmm. It works really well, again, with the sweet potato because it's got that nice inherent saltiness and goes really well with this really nicely textured sweet potato that's smooth, creamy, sweet, a little bit nutty. Great. All right, lovelies, it's been confirmed. Sweet potato, any variety, at least the common varieties you can find at the supermarkets here in the States, with a nutty cheese, creamy cheese, is delicious. Absolutely delicious. Very, very simple, easy, unpretentious. Delicious. Mm-hmm. Someday, I'll get my mitts on the Butter Queso cheese, but until then, I will grab some jowda or some conté and have it with my sweet potato. And I'm also converted in the cooking methodology as well. Works famously. Thanks so much for watching and big thanks to Wild Grain for sponsoring this video. If you'd like to try Wild Grain for yourself, you can click the link down below and use my code to get $30 off your first box and free croissants for life. Please share this video with your friends. Follow me on social media. Like this video, subscribe, and I shall see you in the next one. Toodaloo, take care. Bye! I can't believe I've been sleeping on sweet potatoes all this time. Thank you, Courtney.