(Review to avoid confusion: At least for the purposes of this thread, sweet potatoes have orange flesh. Yams have white flesh. The ones I’ve got have white flesh and purple skin.)
After my previous successes roasting otherwise-uneatable (for me) veggies like beets, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts (not to mention the always-delicious sweet potato, carrot and garlic), I am disappointed that these do not roast well. They are dry and not terribly flavourful. There goes my standard recipe for vegetables. I must diversify.
Note that I don’t need to cook three pounds at the same time, but I need enough recipes to be able to get three pounds into an edible state. One really good recipe would do. Vegetarian, please.
That’s what the vendor yelled when I was a kid. We called him the ‘Ishiyakimo Man’. He pedalled a cart that contained roasted sweet potatoes. My sister and I would fight over who got to carry our ¥50 treasures, since it was cold in the Winter and the sweet potatoes were warm.
Yams, I say! YAMS! I guess that doesn’t fit in the song. lissener, I’m afraid I don’t know your reference.
Johnny L.A., were they orange or white?
how do they roast them?
were they kind of bread-y? That’s how they seemed when roasted, they needed a lot of sauce. I eat most sweet veggies with just butter, but these are kind of dry.
I’m hungry, and my yams are calling me, but I don’t know what to tell them.
It’s been a long time, but I’m pretty sure they were white. They were wrapped up in foil and cooked on coals inside of the cart. Nowadays I prefer the orange ones, but I’ll still eat the white ones with butter. Not as sweet though.
I have forwarded this to my mom, who was raised on a farm w/ a bunch of other kids and not so much in the way of food sometimes besides veggies. Personally, I’m wondering if you can cook them like the little yellow squash slices, breaded & fried tempura style? Or can they be shredded into a cole slaw kind of salad?
I know, that’s kind of what I was afraid of. In Brazil they ground it up into flour (by hand) and cooked it into pancakes, or else they boiled it into slimy bland things. Here I have the luxury of spices, seasonings, labour-saving devices, and sweet chili sauce.
I could probably get about fifteen different varieties of yam, just within a mile of my house. They appear to be a significant part of West Indian and Latin American diets. So there must be a good way to prepare them, because a whole lot of people are, and I sure like the rest of their food.
Yams cannot be shredded. You shouldn’t eat them raw; some of them have toxins that require cooking. Most do not; these probably do not. So that’s not really a problem. However, more importantly, raw yams are nasty.
I make a pretty good sweet-potato bread, if you’re interested in yeast and kneading. A variation on the classic potato bread. Only . . . sweeter.
I also LOVE sweet potato soup. Yams are great in thai-style food: coconut milk, mushrooms, onions, curry, and yams. Add some chicken if you want. Brilliant soup.
Nitpick: “Yam” is often used, in the U.S., as a synonym for “sweet potato” – but cowgirl appears to be talking about a different vegetable, unrelated to the sweet potato. (See Wikipedia link above.)
I like them sliced longways, tossed in oil and salt, then roasted in a 500-degree oven for like 10 minutes, just till you start to smell smoke. Or unsalted, and then dipped in tamari.