Finding Flavor

One Potato, Two Potato, Sweet Potato

STORY AND PHOTOS BY ASHLEY DAVIS

Here in the south it’s hard to imagine southern food without thinking of sweet potatoes. They are a staple crop we can find year-round, and they show up in sweet and savory dishes alike. We see them on our tables during the holidays in the form of candied yams, sweet potato pies, sweet potato casseroles with ooey gooey marshmallows on top, and even just plain ol’ mashed sweet potatoes. To me they are a memory of my Nana and a sweet “southern” goodness that I personally can’t imagine living without.

Have you ever thought about what a sweet potato is or where it comes from? How does it grow, where does it grow?

And IS a sweet potato a yam? Is a yam a sweet potato? Or what? Let’s find out…

Sweet potatoes come in all different shapes, sizes, and colors. The orange sweet potato is the most common but there are also white and purple varieties. Did you know that, in fact, sweet potatoes aren’t even really potatoes at all? They are root vegetables that are related to the morning glory flower. Historically, sweet potatoes came to us from South and Central America. In North Carolina, we grow more sweet potatoes than any other state in the nation, and most of them are grown in Eastern North Carolina.

A few fun farming facts:

• Sweet potatoes are grown from cuttings called sprouts or slips which farmers will start in a greenhouse or in a field

•The sprouts are then transplanted to the field in May or June and it takes 90-120 days for a sweet potato to grow

•Farmers are harvesting sweet potatoes from August through November

•Once the potatoes are harvested, they are cured for 4-7 days at 80-85 degrees, which changes the starch to sugar

•They are then ready to be washed, sorted and sent to your favorite farmers market or grocery store

When you are shopping in the grocery store in America, orange-fleshed sweet potatoes will often be advertised as yams. The reason we tend to refer to them as yams is because in the 1930s, in the great state of Louisiana, farmers grew a new breed of deep orange flesh sweet potatoes and decided to market them as “yams,” and we have been calling them that ever since. As mentioned before, even sweet potatoes aren’t really a potato. Well, yams are no different. They are not a sweet potato, or a potato at all! Potatoes are a nightshade and are in the same family as peppers and tomatoes. Yams are in a different family — a plant family that includes grasses and lilies. Yams came from Africa and Asia, and are used primarily in Caribbean and West African cooking. They have a dark rough brownish grayish skin with a starchy white flesh that is not sweet at all. So the mystery is solved… yams are NOT sweet potatoes; but people will most certainly continue to call some sweet potatoes yams!

One of my fondest memories as a child was going to my Nana’s house. Upon arrival, the first thing I did — after I gave her a big hug and kiss of course — was to look on the table in her kitchen to see what kind of sweet baked good she had made that day or what she had stewing on her stove. One thing that stood out the most was her sweet potato pie. My Nana was a fan of the white sweet potato, potentially because it was less sweet and paired well with sugar and butter for her pie.

Until yesterday, I didn’t have any idea how she made the pie. I went to my mom for advice. She told me that my Nana made her crust from scratch with nutmeg, then pats of butter on the bottom (a very important step), mixed mashed white sweet potatoes with sugar, milk, more butter and then topped it with cinnamon before baking. It was a simple, not overly sweet dessert delicacy that everyone in our family always looked forward to. Even though my mom claims that my Nana was not a big dessert eater, I would catch her on occasion having some sweet potato pie for breakfast.

Personally, I am not a big dessert eater either; I prefer savory dishes with sweet potatoes the most. I am a huge fan of a little sweet and a little spicy. I think that sweet potatoes pair particularly well with pork, but I think they can be served on the side of almost any protein. They are also great in soups, breads, salads, used as thickening agents in sauces, and so on.

In a month that everyone is talking about corned beef and cabbage paired