Epic battle: M vs. the sweet potatoes

This afternoon featured a momentous battle. I went up against 5 pounds of sweet potatoes, and I'm pretty sure I lost.

But I put up a good fight.

I was steaming the cubed sweet potatoes in cream and butter (a delicious start) while poaching some pears. This attempt at multitasking did no good for either vegetable or fruit.

The timer went off for the sweet potatoes, so I turned it off and promptly forgot about them as I continued my pear activity. Many minutes later, I remembered the sweet potatoes, so I grabbed the masher, removed the lid, and began the battle.

The potato masher is plastic and was in no uncertain terms an underperformer. Its design is impractical and not good enough. I mashed and mashed for a long time and was able to mush some of the sweet potatoes, but most remained solid. I did, however, hurt my shoulder.

I was tempted to throw the masher away, but instead, I put it in the dishwasher and turned to plan B.

Out came the food mill. I've used the food mill for mashing regular potatoes, so I figured sweet potatoes were easily mashable, too.

Except the sweet potatoes broke the food mill.

Stupid food mill.

It went in the trash.

I began to wonder if the problem was perhaps not my kitchen tools. Perhaps instead I had not cooked the sweet potatoes long enough?

A fork proved that my concern was real. However, my sweet potatoes were in an awkward half-mashed, half-not-cooked-enough state. I wasn't sure if putting them back on heat would help to soften them further.

At this point, I had two options--carry on or cry.

I paused and waited for the tears to come, but they didn't. I sighed and decided that carrying on was my only option.

Years of cooking had prepared me for this moment. I looked around the kitchen to figure out which tool to use next.

The molcajete (like a mortar and pestle) was in front of me, so I grabbed the pestle part (hand-held part), put it in a plastic freezer bag (to keep it from getting gross), and started smushing.

It should be noted that by now small mounds of mashed sweet potatoes were scattered around the kitchen.

The molcajete effort was a failure. The hot sweet potatoes and hot dutch oven nearly burned my hand. The molcajete went into the cabinet.

My last and final hope was my immersion blender. When in doubt, find a tool that plugs in.

My blender was significantly awesomer than the other tools that I had tried to use. It didn't get rid of all of the lumps, and it didn't solve the problem of the potatoes being just slightly undercooked, but... it hid most of the problems...after about 20 minutes of blending.

Thank you, technology.