So, what's the difference between a sweet potato and a yam? At most grocery stores, absolutely nothing. It's all a facade! The skin of a yam left looks kind of like tree bark, while a sweet potato right is more reddish-brown. Real yams are entirely different root vegetables that are more like yucca in texture and flavor. They have bumpy, tough brown skin that looks almost tree trunk-like with starchy, not sweet flesh. Yams are more easily compared to the texture and flavor of white russet potatoes with more fiber and complex carbs and are best boiled and served alongside hearty braised meats.
The neutrally-flavored yams are often used in Caribbean or West African cooking, and are difficult to find in the U. To make life even more complicated, there are a handful of varieties of sweet potatoes: orange, white, and purple. For this reason, throughout the American South, the term is commonly applied to sweet potatoes.
Interestingly, the confusion is not limited to the Americas. The famed "purple yam" of Okinawa is also a sweet potato and not a true yam. In Malaysia and Singapore, "yam" refers to taro. And in New Zealand, the oca is called a yam. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.
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Their skins tend to be thick, and are either smooth, striated, or tufted with hairs. With some exceptions, yams are always cooked before consuming, as they may contain toxins that are only destroyed by heat; cooking makes their texture anything soft, crumbly, fibrous, or waxy, depending on their variety, but their flavor is always mild, tending towards slightly sweet, nutty, or even meaty. The common English name—yam—is thought to be derived from a Guinean word meaning "something to eat," transliterated by Portuguese slave traders to inhame , to igname in French, and to yam in English.
In most stores in the United States, we are likely to encounter only handful of different true yams. White yam Dioscorea alata is what you'd be most likely to find at an American supermarket that does not specialize in diverse produce. It has many English common names and more in other languages , including Greater Asiatic yam, water yam, winged yam alata means winged ; it has been cultivated for so long that its roots have become obscured, but the white yam's place of origin is thought to be Southeast Asia.
Its skin is brown and rough, its shape is very variable, and its flesh is pale. Confusingly, purple yam the ube of the Philippines is the same species, but with vividly violet flesh. Increasingly and incorrectly , purple sweet potatoes are referred to as ube.
The real deal is this true yam. African yam, Guinea yam, or Ghana yam is a botanical mouthful: Dioscorea cayenensis subsp.
It has a reputation for deliciousness and is the yam of choice when making West and Central African fufu, glutinously good balls destined for dipping into the luscious gravy of stews. Fufu is also made with cassava or green plantain. These white-to-yellow fleshed yams are hefty and log-like, with rough, pale brown skins. Cushcush yam Dioscorea trifida , also sold Stateside as mapuey , is native to Central and South America and widely cultivated in the Caribbean.
The tubers grow in clusters, and each is elongated—sometimes tapered at the ends, sometimes rounded—with vertically striated, rough brown skin.
The texture of cooked cushcush is lighter than other yams, which tend to turn very solid as they cool. Two exceptions to the cook-your-yams rule belong to two East Asian yams. The relatively thin-skinned Chinese and Japanese yams, Dioscorea polystachya and D. Chinese yams have a golden-brown skin, while Japanese yams also called mountain yam are brown-skinned.
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