What is the difference between sweet potatoes and candied yams

And they grow in different parts of the world: yams in Africa, where they originated, and also Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Central America. Sweet potatoes are grown in the United States, with North Carolina leading the way in production. So at a typical supermarket, what you're buying is an American-grown sweet potato. True yams are imported and a rare find outside of specialty grocery stores.

A sweet potato has tapered ends and thin, smooth skin and flesh that can range from light beige to burnished orange to purplish, even. A yam is cylindrical, typically white-fleshed—there is a purple variety, too—and has rough, dark, almost hairy skin. They taste very different, too.

Yams are starchy and dry. Sweet potatoes are, well, sweet and moist, some more than others. The prevailing theory seems to date to the slave-era South, where sweet potatoes were established as a crop and dubbed yams, a shortened form of the African word nyami, which means "to eat," McIver said. When it is pureed it can be used in soups as well as baked goods and desserts, including, of course, sweet potato pie. It has also become a staple on the Thanksgiving table, most often as sweet potato casserole with marshmallows.

The true yam is the tuber of a tropical vine Dioscorea batatas and is not even distantly related to the sweet potato. It's a popular vegetable in Latin American and Caribbean markets, with over varieties available worldwide, and slowly becoming more common in the United States.

The yam tuber has brown or black scaly 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 and the Caribbean, as well as Africa, where they originated. Generally sweeter than the sweet potato, this tuber can grow over seven feet in length and top pounds. A staple in African cuisine , yams are most often boiled, roasted or fried.

Their long shelf life of 6 months allows them to be a dependable food source during times of poor farming—the yam is a much more difficult crop to harvest than the sweet potato. Purple yams are found in Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines and are often used in desserts. In parts of the United States where yams are not popular, most major supermarkets don't carry them—to find yams you'd have to go to specialty markets selling Caribbean , Asian or African foods.

From the African words njam, nyami or djambi, meaning "to eat," comes the English word "yam. For this reason, throughout the American South, the term is commonly applied to sweet potatoes. Interestingly, the confusion is not limited to the Americas. The famed "purple yam" of Okinawa is also a sweet potato and not a true yam. In Malaysia and Singapore, "yam" refers to taro. And in New Zealand, the oca is called a yam. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.

That sweet, orange-colored root vegetable that you love so dearly is actually a sweetpotato. Most people think that long, red-skinned sweetpotatoes are yams, but they really are just one of many varieties of sweetpotatoes.

So where did all of the confusion come from? A true yam is a starchy edible root of the Dioscorea genus, and is generally imported to America from the Caribbean. It is rough and scaly and very low in beta carotene. Depending on the variety, sweetpotato flesh can vary from white to orange and even purple. The orange-fleshed variety was introduced to the United States several decades ago. Today the U.