One of my other recipe experiments for this past weekend was sweet potato croquettes. I had cooked a bunch of sweet potato earlier in the week and had some leftovers that I needed to use up. I’m not a big fan of pureed sweet potato so I wanted to try to make a recipe that used it which rebalanced the flavors by adding a savory element to the incredibly sugary overtones of the sweet potato.
My idea was croquettes. Croquettes are typically a breadcrumb coated fried roll, ball or patty. They can be made with ground meat, mashed potatoes, or vegetables. They often have a filling such as cheese or in the case of the potato ones, meat.
I decided for my croquettes I’d incorporate blue cheese and serrano ham. I hoped the blue cheese would counter the sugary sweet potato. I chose to bread mine in panko to give them a little more texture and to oven fry them because I don’t have a oil fryer.
I had to add some panko and egg to stiffen my mixture but once I did this I was able to easily make nice balls to roll in the panko coating. I sprayed with avocado oil and popped them in the over on convection bake for 25 minutes.
The final result had a terrific crispy exterior and the blue cheese and ham help balance the flavors better. I’m still not sure they were a complete success though because BOY sweet potato is sugary. My plan for next time is to use regular potato, do a meat filling and serve with a chimichurri dipping sauce.