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This candied yams recipe might just be the BEST and easiest you'll ever try, hands down! No complicated techniques, no weird ingredients—just tender, caramelized yams with a perfectly balanced sweetness that your guests will flip the heck out about every time.
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Whether you’re bringing them to the holiday table or making them just because (🙋♂️ I’m 100% on team-just-because), this recipe is going to hit all the right notes and then some!
So many candied yam recipes load them up with an ungodly amount of sugar and syrup. Fear not. My recipe nails the flavor with just the right amount of sweetness, spices, and a simple, no-fuss process. It's as essential a side on my Thanksgiving table every year as my super fluffy dairy-free mashed potatoes dripping with vegan brown gravy, and the bourbon cranberry sauce my whole family loves (or the Turkish cranberry relish my mom and I both prefer)
This recipe is the real deal and SO much easier to make than anything else you’ve tried before. Let’s get cooking!
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🥰Why this is the best candied yams recipe
✊Vegan AF: Like all of my vegan Thanksgiving recipes, this is a cruelty-free dish that contains no cholesterol at all!
🙅♀️🌾Gluten-Free: Not a speck of wheat up in this bad boy. So, you can safely serve it to your food allergy-laden guest, and it might just be one of their fave gluten-free vegan recipes you have ever dished out!
🔪No Weird Gear: All you need to flawlessly pull this recipe off is a peeler, saucepan, whisk, baking pan, and some foil. No blender, food processor, or costly kitchen tools required.
✅Tested and Approved Worldwide: Like all my vegan recipes, I fine-tuned this candied yams recipe with the help of a huge team of recipe testers across the globe. Everyone got delicious, consistent results—and you will too!
🍠 Ingredients for Candied Yams
Yams (or Sweet Potatoes)
Though often used interchangeably, true yams (Dioscorea) are starchy tubers native to Africa, while sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) are commonly found in North America. Whatever 🤷♀️. They will both work perfectly in this recipe, as will just about any variety of Japanese sweet potato, etc.
My personal choice to use in this recipe is garnet yams, which is my go-to for other sweet potato recipes like Indian shakarkandi chaat, Malaysian mee rebus, Vietnamese ca ri chay, and my bangin’, super-popular vegan sweet potato muffins.
👎 What I wouldn't suggest is using canned sweet potatoes. They only save you the peeling, which takes maybe a minute longer than opening a can anyway.
The Fat
The candy part of this recipe needs fat to achieve the right rich caramelization. I like making this recipe with vegan butter the most. For brands, my top recommendations are Earth Balance buttery sticks (which are conveniently pre-measured), Melt, and the vegan butter from Trader Joe’s, which is nice tasting and cheap. You can also use the butter I teach in my vegan dairy crash course here.
Not into vegan butter? You really can rock this out with any other plant-based oil, but I’d recommend either olive oil or refined coconut oil for this recipe.
Brown Sugar
Dark brown sugar contains molasses, which adds a deep, caramel-like flavor and moisture to baked goods like my vegan pumpkin muffins and dairy-free apple muffins. If you are looking for an even less processed sweetener, you can use coconut sugar or palm sugar (my fave for Southeast Asian recipes like Filipino tupig, Malaysian bubur sumsum, and Indonesian klepon).
Optional: Marshmallows
Being best friends with Sara Sohn, who used to run Sweet and Sara marshmallow company, my kids grew up visiting her factory like it was Willy Wonka’s place. She would give them a big bag and encourage them to fill it with all of the vegan s’mores, rice crispy treats, and other goodies they could get their hands on. Those visits were some of my daughters’ fave childhood memories.
While Sweet and Sara is no longer around, completely vegetarian marshmallows that don’t contain gelatin in them are now a lot more common. A lot of grocery stores now carry Dandies, and grocery store chains like Trader Joe’s have even made their store brand completely vegan by default. It’s such an exciting time to be alive!
I recommend using miniature marshmallows for easy, even distribution, but large ones work fine too.
*See the recipe card at the bottom of the page for exact quantities, nutritional info, and detailed cooking directions.
🤯Variations
Bourbon Candied Yams and Root Veggies
Don't just use straight-up yams! A mix of different root vegetables, like parsnips, multi-colored carrots, and celery root can make this side dish even more special and pretty looking. Add a generous splash of bourbon to the syrup mixture. The alcohol will cook off, leaving behind a robust, caramel complexity.
Candied Yams with Pecans and Dried Cranberries
Just as is the case with my vegan cornbread stuffing recipe, mixing in chopped pecans and dried cranberries that have soaked for 20 minutes in orange juice makes almost everything on earth better! Stir a half cup of each in at the time you remove the foil when the candied yams are
Purple Candied Yams (Ube)
I’m all about that purp. My blog is teeming with recipes for bubur cha cha, ube-glazed Filipino donuts, and sago’t gulaman, which all use purple yam in them. Anyway, if you want, you can swap out regular yams for purple ones in this recipe. It’s not gonna really taste noticeably different to all but the most discerning palates, but it will sure be pretty if purple is your thing.
📖How to cook candied yams
Nail this classic Thanksgiving side dish on your first shot by following these step-by-step photos with helpful tips. Or scroll down to the bottom of this page for the easy-to-print recipe card.
Step One
Off the Preheaten Path:
Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish to ensure the sweet potatoes don’t stick during baking.
Step Two
Mish-Yam Impossible:
Peel the sweet potatoes and slice them into ½-inch (1.25 cm) rounds. Place the slightly larger than bite-sized sweet potatoes in the prepared dish.
✅Ideally, lay the raw sweet potatoes down in a single layer, but a little overlapping is ok if they don't all fit laying down flat.
Step Three
C.R.E.A.M. Rules Everything Around Me:
In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the vegan butter. Stir in the milk and continue heating until the mixture is warmed through.
Step Four
Spice, Spice Baby:
Whisk the sugar, cinnamon, ground nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, and salt into the warm butter mixture just until the sugar dissolves completely, yielding a dark buttery syrup.
Step Five
Pour-ky’s Revenge:
Evenly pour the spiced sugar mixture over the sweet potatoes, ensuring each slice is fully coated.
Step Six
Bake it Like Beckham:
Cover the dish tightly with foil to lock in moisture. Place the covered dish in the oven and bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).
After 30 minutes, remove the foil, gently stir the sweet potatoes, and continue baking uncovered for an additional 25-30 minutes, or until tender.
Step Seven
The Final Toastdown:
If using marshmallows, sprinkle them over the top and place the dish under the broiler for about 1 minute until lightly browned.
✅ If your oven doesn't have a broiler, add marshmallows 15 minutes after removing the foil, allowing them to melt and brown for 15 minutes before removing from the oven.
💡Vegan Thanksgiving Dinner Ideas
Start your holiday meal with a bowl of chestnut and chili oil-topped roasted carrot lentil soup, with a slice of grilled vegan cornbread to go with it.
I wouldn’t even dream of serving my stuffed vegan turkey roast, vegan ham, or a slightly terrifying human-baby-shaped tofu turkey without some of this gooey sweet potato goodness on the side!
The obvious sides? Classic vegan stuffing, Southern collard greens, and fluffy-as-heck dairy-free mashed potatoes with either vegan brown gravy, mushroom gravy, or vegan sausage gravy all over ‘em. Vegan green bean casserole is probably a must on your holiday table, but these easy Turkish green beans could be nice instead, if you want something a little more high-brow.
And Thanksgiving without dessert? That’s downright stupid, and I want my money back! A warm slice of vegan apple pie, some heavenly pumpkin flan, or some freshly made apple cider donuts or vegan apple fritters will do just the trick.
👉Top tips
- Uniform Slices for Even Cooking: Cut the sweet potatoes as evenly as possible. Uneven slices can result in some of the candied sweet potatoes being mushy while others remain undercooked, especially when baking in layers. Even thinner sweet potatoes may fall apart entirely.
- Monitor Marshmallows Closely: If you're broiling the marshmallow topping, make sure to keep a close eye on it. Marshmallows (especially mini marshmallows) brown and melt quite quickly, and the heat from a broiler can be super uneven. Usually, a minute or so under the broiler is all it takes. You may want to spin the pan around after 30 seconds if your burner heat is wildly uneven.
- Don’t Despair Without a Broiler: If you don’t have a broiler, adding them 15 minutes before the end of the baking time will still give you a golden finish without burning.
🤷♀️ Recipe FAQs
Absolutely! This recipe is delicious on its own, focusing on the natural sweetness of the yams and the rich syrup, making marshmallows optional. I mean, if you aren’t into fun stuff, that is...
Yes, you can substitute brown sugar for coconut sugar or palm sugar. Otherwise, if you cut back slightly on the plant-based milk in the recipe, you can swap it out for maple syrup, which is super delicious, albeit kinda expensive.
This delicious recipe is the perfect make-ahead dish, leaving you with more time the day of special occasions to prep a complete Christmas dinner, or whatever.
❄️Refrigeration:
Let the leftover candied yams cool to room temperature, then transfer them to an airtight container or store them right in the pan, covered tightly with foil. They can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
🌡️Thawing:
To thaw frozen candied yams, move them to the refrigerator for overnight defrosting or place them in a bowl of cold water for a quicker thaw.
🔥Stovetop Reheating:
Place the yams in a skillet with a lid on it over low heat. Add a splash of water or maple syrup to prevent sticking, and heat for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally until warmed through.
🥵Oven Reheating:
Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Spread the yams in a baking dish and cover with foil. Bake for about twenty minutes, or until heated through, removing the foil for the last five minutes for a touch of crispness.
⚡️Microwave Reheating:
Transfer a portion of the yams to a microwave-safe dish. Cover with a damp paper towel and heat on high for one to two minutes, stirring halfway through, until warmed to your liking.
You bet! You can par cook and freeze the yams to finish on the day of a holiday. Here's how:
Remove the pan from the oven at the 30-minute mark when you would normally remove the foil. This leaves them par-cooked so that upon thawing and reheating they don’t become sad and mushy on you. Allow the yams to cool, then place them in a freezer-safe container. They can be frozen for up to three months.
Although you can call this dish a casserole, these names generally mean two pretty different things to different folks.
Whereas candied yams are made with sliced, or diced sweet potatoes in a sugary syrup, vegan sweet potato casserole is made with whipped or mashed sweet potatoes and is topped with a pecan crumble.
✌️Serve this stuff with your candied yams, OK?
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Get your hands on seriously crowd-pleasing vegan Thanksgiving menus, including detailed video guidance from Chef Adam Sobel.
Perfect Southern Candied Yams
Ingredients
- 3 pounds sweet potatoes
- ½ cup vegan butter
- ¼ cup unsweetened plant-based milk
- ½ cup brown sugar coconut sugar, or palm sugar
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- ¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
- ½ teaspoon salt or to taste
Optional Marshmallow Topping:
- 4 cups vegan marshmallows
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.
- Peel the sweet potatoes and slice them into ½-inch (1.25 cm) thick rounds.
- Arrange the slices evenly in the prepared baking dish.
- In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the vegan butter. Once melted, stir in the milk and heat until warmed through.
- Mix the sugar, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, and salt into the saucepan, and whisk together until the sugar dissolves.
- Pour the sweet syrup evenly over the sweet potatoes, ensuring the slices are well-coated. Cover the dish tightly with foil. Bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).
- After 30 minutes, remove the foil, gently stir the sweet potatoes. Continue baking, uncovered, for an additional 25-30 minutes, until the sweet potatoes are a little more than fork-tender.
- If you are using them, add marshmallows to the top and put the tray under the broiler for about a minute to lightly brown the marshmallows. If your oven doesn’t have a broiler, add them just 15 minutes after removing the foil, giving them 15 minutes to melt and brown before removing the pan from the oven.
Notes
Canned yams suck for this. They are already too soft, often contain some flavorless sweetener, sometimes some crap like artificial vanilla extract, and don't really save you much time anyway. Use real yams for this, ok? 🍠Wouldn't It Be Slice:
Cut your sweet potatoes into uniform ½-inch rounds for even baking. Uneven slices lead to a mix of mushy and undercooked pieces, which will make a grown man cry. 🔥The Broil Wedding:
Keep a close eye when broiling the marshmallow topping. Marshmallows brown fast, and a lot of broilers have pretty uneven heat, so spin the tray after 30 seconds and broil for just about 1 minute. ⏳No Broiler? No Problem!
Without a broiler? Add marshmallows 15 minutes before the end of baking. They’ll melt and brown nicely without burning.
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Ali says
Made these for Thanksgiving and they were amazing!
Vaishali says
Love all the detailed notes and the article is presented so beautifully. The recipe is top notch!
Adam Sobel says
Awww. Thanks Vaishali.❤️🙏
Jennifer Margopulos-Kelenske says
Amazing dish! I couldn't fit all of my sweet potatoes in two layers so I had a little less than the 3 lb stated in the final dish. I really enjoyed the flavor of the sauce and it was such an easy recipe! It was a big hit at Thanksgiving this year!
Thanks Adam!