Ok. so I must admit, I thought I had a handle on the sweet potato vs yam debate. Those huge hulking orange colored vegetables that go on sale right around November and are beat, whipped, and pureed into souffles and pies are actually sweet potatoes? So why are they labeled as yams in my grocery store? As it turns out, yams and sweet potatoes are not even in the same family.
Yams are native to Africa and Asia, and the term actually means to eat, they are important to the culture of that region as they keep well in the rainy season and their tough exterior holds up well under the most extreme weather. Our grocery stores label the orange colored sweet potato as a yam to distinguish it from the pale fleshed variety. To get even more scientific for you, yams are monocot, having one embryonic seed leaf and sweet potatoes are dicot, with two embryonic seed leaves.
So, after perusing the web for these ever vital facts, I think I am now more confused than when I started. My point is, I love sweet potatoes, yams, or whatever they are called. They are chock full of essential nutrients making them healthier than just a plain baked potato and the possibilities on what you can do with them are endless.
I recently made a delicious Roasted Sweet Potato Bisque. It was creamy and delicious. Whether you call them sweet potatoes or yams, I call them delicious.
Find out more information here on the Huffington Post. It was nice to see that I was not the only confused soul as they wrote a whole article on the subject.