Anyone tried Yam?

[Swizzy89304]

I bought one earlier from the Afro-Caribbean store, and theyre bloody gorgeous. I boiled it, mashed it like potato, added milk, butter, onion, parsley, egg and covered them in breadcrumbs (I made little balls). Then I fried them and had them with some chicken and lemon. Its well nice.
Just wondering if anyone else here has tried Yam?

[rhino44]

i love them. otherwise known as sweet potatoes. i just bake them for an hour or until they're soft and cut them up and put butter on them.

[Swizzy89304]

Its a myth that theyre sweet potatoes - they had them at the A-C store, and they looked a helluva lot different than a Yam.
Sweet potatoes are the same size as regular potatoes.
Yams are these massive brown things that look like Bob Marleys willy.

[Swizzy89304]

Yam or sweet potato, what in the world is it? Many people use these terms interchangeably both in conversation and in cooking, but they are really two different vegetables. Learn the difference and try some new and interesting recipes.

The Sweet Potato
Sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) are the root of a vine in the morning glory family and native to the New World tropics. Its history dates back to 750 B.C. in Peruvian records. Columbus brought the sweet potato to the New World from the island of Saint Thomas. The Taino word for them was batatas which eventually became patata in Spanish, patae in French, and potato in English. At that time, potato referred to the sweet potato, and not the generic white potato as it does in English nowadays. In fact, the white potato did not arrive in the northern regions from South America until the late 17th century, more than a hundred years later, according to noted food historian, Waverly Root.

Popular in the American South, these yellow or orange tubers are elongated with ends that taper to a point and are of two dominant types. The paler-skinned sweet potato has a thin, light yellow skin with pale yellow flesh which is not sweet and has a dry, crumbly texture similar to a white baking potato. The darker-skinned variety (which is most often called "yam" in error) has a thicker, dark orange skin with a vivid orange, sweet flesh with a moist texture. Current popular varieties include Goldrush, Georgia Red, Centennial, Puerto Rico, New Jersey, and Velvet.

The Yam
The true yam is the tuber of a tropical vine (Dioscorea batatas) and is not even distantly related to the sweet potato. Rarely found in US markets, the yam is a popular vegetable in Latin American and Caribbean markets, with over 150 varieties available worldwide. Generally sweeter than than the sweet potato, this tuber can grow over seven feet in length. The word yam comes from African words njam, nyami, or djambi, meaning "to eat," and was first recorded in America in 1676.

The yam tuber has a brown or black skin which resembles the bark of a tree and off-white, purple or red flesh, depending on the variety. They are at home growing in tropical climates, primarily in South America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Yams contain more natural sugar than sweet potatoes and a higher moisture content. They are also marketed by their Spanish names, boniato and ñame.