Difference between yams and sweet potatoes?

Answer 1

In many American grocery stores, the vegetables labeled “yams” and “sweet potatoes” are just different varieties of sweet potatoes—when a softer, orange-fleshed variety of sweet potatoes hit the U.S. markets in the mid-20th century, they were labeled as yams to differentiate them from varieties Americans were already familiar with, and the name stuck.

True yams are somewhat rare in the United States. They’re starchier than sweet potatoes, they have a slightly different shape (sweet potatoes taper toward the ends; yams stay more cylindrical and can be up to five feet long), and their skin is rough and bumpy. They’re more comparable to a white russet potato than a sweet potato, and they’re commonly used in Caribbean and West African cooking.

Answer 2

They are not the same. Here's an answer from the Library of Congress:

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/sweetpotato.html

Answer 3

Difference betwenn YAM and SWEET POTATOE is:-

YAM=The skin of a true yam is tougher and bark like and the flesh is white, red or purplish in color. SWEET POTATOE=Sweet Potatoes are a member of the morning glory family. They have a firmer skin and can be an assortment of colors including copper, purple, white, orange or red.

Answer 4

Hhmm, I have found yams to be a bit more stringier than sweet potatoes and I have yet to see yam fries! However, there is much confusion in America where yellow flesh sweet potatoes are referred to as yams and the old variety of sweet potatoes with the white flesh are referred to as sweet potatoes.

Answer 5

Yams, and sweet potatoes are an intrchangeable word in the united states. But they are not exactly the same. sweet potatoes have tapered ends, and are smaller. Yams have rough skin and can grow much larger,sometimes to the size of a football or lager. Tastewise they are very similar and can be substituted for one another.

Answer 6

A sweet potato is a large, fleshy vegetable with thick roots grown in moist, warm, sandy soil, or sawdust in greenhouses. Yams, on the otherhand, are mostly grown in tropical countries and grown like vines. Many people in North America have eaten sweet potoes mistaken as yams.

Answer 7

Its all Marketing. According to Alton Brown from Food Network's Good Eats, the word Yam was a marketing ploy for a variety of sweet potato that was more orange fleshed than other sweet potatoes. But as you will see below according to about.com http://homecooking.about.com/od/howtocookvegetables/a/sweetpotatodiff.htm Yam or sweet potato, many people use these terms interchangeably both in conversation and in cooking, but they are really two different vegetables. 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 to reddish skin with a vivid orange, sweet flesh and a moist texture.

Current popular sweet potato varieties include Goldrush, Georgia Red, Centennial, Puerto Rico, New Jersey, and Velvet. The true yam is the tuber of a tropical vine (Dioscorea batatas) and is not even distantly related to the sweet potato.

Slowly becoming more common 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 have a higher moisture content. They are also marketed by their Spanish names, boniato and ñame.

Answer 8

actually they are the same.

There is no difference between yams and sweet potatoes

Answer 9

About .59 cents per pound, but they only seem to get away with it for a few weeks towards then end of November!

Answer 10

texture