Whether you call it a sweet potato or a yam, it is packed with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants and is super easy to enjoy.
When low-carb diets came into fashion, white potatoes fell out of favor and sweet potatoes found themselves on center stage. They have a long history on American tables, adorned with marshmallows (whoever thought of that?), disguised as “candied yams,” or boiled, with roast pork and onions.
Sweet Potato or Yam?
In North America canned sweet potatoes are often labeled as yams, but this is a misnomer. Yams are grown in the tropics and rarely find their way to this part of the world. If you examine the label closely, you’ll find sweet potatoes listed as the contents of the can, as required by the US Department of Agriculture. When sweet potatoes were first introduced in the US, shippers and producers wanted to distinguish them from white, or Irish, potatoes, and began using the name yam.
Sweet potatoes are harvested in late summer and left to cure. Curing allows the skins to toughen so they’ll keep longer and the starches to convert to sugars so they’re sweeter. They are an excellent source of iron, potassium, niacin and vitamins C and B6. They have a higher beta-carotene content than any other vegetable. The carotene increases the longer the potato is stored and requires the presence of bile salts before the body can convert it to Vitamin A. Bile secretion is stimulated by fats, which means you should accompany sweet potato consumption with butter, egg yolks or cream–a reason to add these to your meal without guilt.
Easy to Prepare
Sweet potatoes are easy to cook and can be used interchangeably in many recipes that call for pureed pumpkin or other winter squash. Bake or boil the sweet potatoes until soft and puree them in a food processor. Remember to reduce the amount of sweetener in the recipe since sweet potatoes are naturally sweeter than most squash.
Whole sweet potatoes can be peeled, sliced and gently sauted in a little olive oil until tender. They can be baked or mashed like Irish potatoes, or grated and fried or made into sweet potato pancakes.
The following recipe uses fall fruits and vegetables, but since all three store well, it can be made well into the late winter.
Simple Sweet Potato, Apple, Onion Saute Recipe
- Pare and thinly slice a sweet potato.
- Core and slice an apple.
- Thinly slice an onion.
- Saute all in a small skillet in one tablespoon of melted butter until tender. Add potatoes, apples and onions depending on the number of people you are serving, and on your own personal preference.
And when you're tired of eating them...
Sweet potatoes make great houseplants! Fill a quart mason jar with water and put a sweet potato in so the end with the eyes is sticking out of the jar. You may need to put two or three toothpicks in the potato and balance them on the rim of the jar to keep it from falling completely into the water. It will root and grow long trailing leaves with minimal care. If yours doesn’t grow, it’s possible that it has been chemically treated to prolong storage (often done to sweet potatoes bound for grocery stores).
