Tasty Sweet Orange Yams, I Don't Think So!!!

Sweet potatoes and Yams are getting a lot of headlines this time of year as they are a staple of the traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas Holiday meals. Here in my West Virginia town market, yams are advertised at the bargain basement price of 2 pounds for $1.00 just 5 days before the first big eating holiday. The ones I picked were huge and we decided to microwave a few and smother them in butter a few days prior to the holiday. When we sliced open the first of these great smelling tubers I remarked, "this is one big sweet potato." And that is exactly what I had in front of me, a bright orange sweet tasting pile of sweet potato meat. It was no yam. My well traveled and culinary trained wife explained to me that I was the victim of southern influence. In the south, derived from black African roots, was where the yam - sweet potato mix up grew from. Yams were first introduced in that region of the country and true to tradition; southern cooking turned the potato-like yam into a sweet potato competitor. The end result on the table looked and tasted the same so why mince words. Yams and sweet potatoes became synonymous since the proof is in the eatin' and they both get eatin' pretty well.

Yams are a more closely related to the traditional potato and sweet potatoes are only a far distant cousin to an actual potato. Wow, this was turning into a thesis quickly, and my counterfeit yam was starting to cool. The true YAM actually ranges in color from white or yellow to purple or pink in ripe yams. So to see a yam in the familiar sweet potato orange should be your first clue. So in reality a fresh yam should more closely resemble a traditional potato when cut open raw. The skins vary in color from dark brown to light pink so therein lay the first deception. Raw, uncooked with the skin on, they might as well be close relatives but there not. What further confuses the issue and where the southern bent comes along was the practice of taking yams and producing candied yams. A candied yam not only tasted sweet like the celebrated sweet potato but the candying process tending to brighten and change the color. So when both of these starchy tubers hit the table and tasted, smelled and looked the same, the intermingling of the terms was only natural.

A real yam, originally from African and even worshiped in Nigeria, in their un-candied and baked form are more at home with sour cream and chives than marshmallows and sweet butter. In the South Pacific, yams have uses such as a medicine, and most of the recipes use yams mixed with rice, lamb vinegar and other flavor enhancing items. Only in the Philippines are yams eaten as a sweetened dessert called Halaya. Someday I will buy a REAL yam and treat it in its intended way, sliced, deep fried and smothered in ketchup. You'll please excuse me now as I re-heat and dig into my sweet tasty buttery yam - not!