Orange Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Late October. The first frost came Thursday — light, not killing, but enough to glaze the porch railing at sunrise and to send the last of the squash leaves to mush. I picked the green tomatoes off the vines that morning. About a peck. They went into the kitchen window to ripen slowly and into a few jars of green tomato pickles for chili relish in February. Hannah took the tomato cages down. The garden is in its bones now — kale and collards and turnips and the rye cover, and that's most of what's green out there.

Saturday opened deer season for the special tribal hunt. I got out at five-thirty to my stand on the south ridge — the same stand I built in 2038, weather-grayed cedar, just enough room for me and a thermos. Sat for two hours. Saw four does and a small buck that I wasn't going to take. At eight a six-point came up the draw quartering away, and I took him with one shot at sixty yards. Clean kill. I dragged him back to the workshop with the ATV, processed in the afternoon. Hannah came home from a workshop and helped me bag and freeze. We don't talk much during processing. The work is the conversation.

The freezer is stocked through winter now. Backstraps, tenderloin, shoulders, ribs, ground, stew meat. About forty pounds of meat from one deer. We'll be eating off this through April, and then I'll take a doe in the late season for the spring meat. The cycle hasn't changed in twenty-something years. I learned it from Danny. Danny learned it from his uncle. The uncle learned it from his father. Each generation thinks they're individual and each one is doing the same thing the last one did, only with better lights.

The smoker had a long burn this week. I smoked the ribs from the deer on Sunday — sumac rub, hickory smoke, four hours at 250. Eight ribs. We ate four for Sunday dinner with bean bread and the last of the green beans from the garden. The other four went in the freezer for a Sunday in January when the kitchen needs a long, slow afternoon and we need the smell of summer in November.

Tuesday I drove the truck up to Tahlequah for a parts run and stopped by Lily's office to drop off five pounds of acorn flour she'd asked for. She was on a call. I waited in her doorway. The office has changed — it's bigger now, three rooms, two assistants, and walls covered with curriculum samples and language posters and a child's drawing of a bear with the Cherokee word for bear underneath. The drawing is by Tommy. Lily sent it to him for his fourth birthday and he sent her the thank-you back. The thank-you is on her wall. I stood there waiting for her to finish her call and looking at my four-year-old grandson's drawing on my fifty-six-year-old sister's office wall, and I thought: the language is alive. It is. Both of them are alive. Both of them are mine.

We ate the ribs with what the garden and the season gave us — bean bread, green beans, and whatever else Hannah thought to pull together. But there’s a dish that keeps finding its way back to our Sunday table in late October and November, especially after a long day of outdoor work when the kitchen needs to smell like something slow and warm: orange glazed sweet potatoes. Simple, rooted, a little sweet against the smokiness of everything else on the plate. Danny used to make something close to these. I don’t think about that every time, but I don’t not think about it either.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr | Servings: 6

Ingredients

3 pounds sweet potatoes (about 4 medium), peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1/3 cup fresh orange juice
1 tablespoon orange zest
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pinch of black pepper
Fresh thyme or parsley for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat your oven to 400°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish or large rimmed sheet pan.
Arrange the potatoes. Spread the sweet potato chunks in an even layer in the prepared dish, leaving a little space so they roast rather than steam.
Mix the glaze. In a small bowl, whisk together the orange juice, orange zest, melted butter, brown sugar, honey, cinnamon, ginger, salt, and pepper until the sugar is mostly dissolved.
Coat and roast. Pour the glaze evenly over the sweet potatoes and toss to coat. Roast uncovered for 25 minutes, then remove from the oven and gently stir or turn the pieces so they pick up more glaze from the bottom of the pan.
Finish and caramelize. Return to the oven for another 15–20 minutes, until the potatoes are fork-tender and the glaze has thickened and begun to caramelize around the edges. Watch the last few minutes — the sugars move fast once the moisture cooks off.
Rest and serve. Let the dish rest for 5 minutes out of the oven. Garnish with fresh thyme if you have it. Serve warm alongside smoked or braised meat.

Nutrition (per serving)

Orange Glazed Sweet Potatoes — The Sunday Table After the Hunt