If a yam isn't a sweet potato, then what exactly is it?
Knobbly and brown, with little, wispy, hair-like roots shooting off at random, yams aren't the stateliest of foods. But if you get past their slightly odd appearance, you may very well fall in love. That is, if you even cross paths with ayam. Chances are, unless you’re doing most of your grocery shopping at African, Caribbean, or Asian markets, or grew up eating and cooking these tubers, what you imagine when I say “yam” is actually just an orange sweet potato.
Calling sweet potatoes yams in America wasn’t just a money-making ploy. For the first enslaved West Africans forcibly brought to America, sweet potatoes offered as close to a taste of home as they were going to get. Though sweeter and more watery when cooked, these orange sweet potatoes resembled the yams of Africa both in texture and appearance.
. “But once ashore in more temperate America, the slaves found that the African tuber was unavailable, and thus substituted it with the sweet potato—leading to centuries of botanical and gastronomic confusion.”family of flowering plants, and grow in temperate and tropical climates, including in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. A yam is the extremely starchy tuber at the base of winding, bright-green herbaceous vines.
Some of the most common yam varieties you’ll come across include the popular white and yellow yams native to Africa, which resemble large potatoes in shape. In Asian markets you’ll find Chinese and Japanese yams, which have lighter-brown skin, and are cylindrical. Because yams are grown and eaten in different parts of the world, methods for cooking vary enormously from one kitchen to the next.Yams are very resilient, and they travel well.
In Nigeria, where so many of the world’s yams are grown and the tuber is central to everyday life, they’re cooked into porridges, and cubed and stewed slowly with tomatoes, peanuts, greens, and spices. They’re also boiled then pounded into a version of, one of West Africa’s most iconic dishes. The doughy, starchy mixture is perfect for absorbing sauce, and is eaten alongside more or less everything.
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