What is this vegetable called in the United States?
loveisapineapple
Posts: 38 Member
In NZ, this is a yam, but when I search for yam recipes I get a lot of responses from American sites for what I would call a kumara (or sweet potato). So can anyone please tell me what this is known as where you're from?
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I haven’t seen anything like this in either the southeastern US or California. Google tells me it is an “oca” or New Zealand yam, which I have never heard of until now.8
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It kinda does look like a sweet potato or of that family anyway.0
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I think it's a yam; same color of cooked yam I've seen usually as part of holiday meals. Sweet potatoes in US I am familiar with though having same color as yams when cooked look more like regular potatos in shape and skin type. Hope this helps. There are places that serve sweet potato fries. I like those. There is one place that serves them with honey to dip them in; really good.0
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I'm in Connecticut USA and I've never seen that particular vegetable. It looks like a yam or sweet potato but with a whole lot more wrinkles.
I think it's a cross between a yam, a carrot and a sharp pei. 😞21 -
What color are they on the inside?
In the U.S. a sweet potato is white on the inside, like a regular potato.
A Yam is orange on the inside.1 -
It's very unusual to see actual yams in the US. Sweet potatoes often get called yams (I think it's more of a regional Southern thing), but we don't have a different name for yams, we just don't really have yams.
https://ncsweetpotatoes.com/sweet-potatoes-101/difference-between-yam-and-sweet-potato/7 -
It has those little root buds that are not at all like a potato. Wiki says it's a tuber, though. On wiki there is a nutrient breakdown (calories etc.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalis_tuberosa
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cmriverside wrote: »What color are they on the inside?
In the U.S. a sweet potato is white on the inside, like a regular potato.
A Yam is orange on the inside.
Hmmm....while I did have a white sweet potato once in Idaho, all of the sweet potatoes at my local (U.S.) grocery store are orange on the inside.17 -
I'm in Idaho and my sweet potatoes are orange on the inside.
I've never seen the OP veggie.4 -
SuzySunshine99 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »What color are they on the inside?
In the U.S. a sweet potato is white on the inside, like a regular potato.
A Yam is orange on the inside.
Hmmm....while I did have a white sweet potato once in Idaho, all of the sweet potatoes at my local (U.S.) grocery store are orange on the inside.
I've never had white on the inside of a sweet potato. Even the spiralized or french fry cut sweet potatoes are orange.7 -
I agree with @lemurcat2, we don’t really have yams in the USA. We have sweet potatoes. Some people call them yams, but they are not. Ours are usually more brownish orange, with a brownish orange fleshinside, although they do come in different colors. I have never seen anything quite like your picture.5
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SuzySunshine99 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »What color are they on the inside?
In the U.S. a sweet potato is white on the inside, like a regular potato.
A Yam is orange on the inside.
Hmmm....while I did have a white sweet potato once in Idaho, all of the sweet potatoes at my local (U.S.) grocery store are orange on the inside.
I've never had white on the inside of a sweet potato. Even the spiralized or french fry cut sweet potatoes are orange.
I was in a restaurant in Idaho, and ordered a sweet potato as a side dish. They brought me a white potato, and I thought they brought me the wrong thing until I tasted it. Definitely a sweet potato! The waitress said they get that variety occasionally. But, I've never seen them in my neck of the woods.7 -
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Oh, Come On. You're disagreeing that I buy white sweet potatoes and that they're different????????
Look up "white sweet potatoes." They're very sweet. I buy them every week.
https://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/1103597/sweet-potato-vs-yam/
and even though there are white and orange, apparently according to this article they're BOTH sweet potatoes. I guess I've never seen a yam, then.
The more you know.
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OP, I think what we're trying to say is that we don't have that exact vegetable in the U.S.
If the taste is similar to a sweet potato, you can try substituting your NZ yam into the recipies and see how it goes.2 -
The manager of the produce department at my store is gonna get an *kitten* whoopin'.
He advertises both yams and sweet potatoes right next to each other and there's literally no difference. 😬7 -
cmriverside wrote: »Oh, Come On. You're disagreeing that I buy sweet potatoes and yams and that they're different????????
Look up "white sweet potatoes." They're very sweet. I buy them every week.
Yams are orange inside. Some people may call them sweet potatoes.
https://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/1103597/sweet-potato-vs-yam/
Those are both sweet potatoes to me, just orange and white ones, I'm also familiar with red and purple sweet potatoes. The yams I originally posted are totally different, when I get home I'll cut one up and put up a picture.
But I think the person who said Oca might be what I'm after so I'll try looking those up. Thank you!5 -
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They are oca! Thank you all, I now know they aren't a common vege so recipe searches unlikely to give results.1
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The manager of the produce department at my store is gonna get an *kitten* whoopin'.
He advertises both yams and sweet potatoes right next to each other and there's literally no difference. 😬
It's actually difficult to find a true yam in the U.S. Most are just different varieties of sweet potato. I had my first true yam when i was in the Caribbean.4 -
My understanding is an American yam has rough skin like tree bark, isn't particularly sweet and is very starchy, and looks something like this:
The story I was told is that African slaves who were accustomed to eating a lot of (actual) yams, used sweet potatoes instead out of necessity here and just ended up calling them yams, and that's how it slipped into usage. Whether or not that's true, I have no idea!5 -
Kumara is a Garnet yam in the US. The US variety is also two to three times longer and wider.1
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That vegetable is an oca,, oxalis tuberosa1
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My understanding is an American yam has rough skin like tree bark, isn't particularly sweet and is very starchy, and looks something like this:
The story I was told is that African slaves who were accustomed to eating a lot of (actual) yams, used sweet potatoes instead out of necessity here and just ended up calling them yams, and that's how it slipped into usage. Whether or not that's true, I have no idea!
That looks like the only yam I have ever eaten. In old Mexico. Cut and baked like scalloped potatoes, but with a pineapple sauce, served as a vegetable. The yam wasn’t very sweet, but the pineapple made the dish naturally sweet. Tasted like no sugar added. The yams were still very individual, it didn’t get mushy like a potato or sweet potato would have.
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loveisapineapple wrote: »In NZ, this is a yam, but when I search for yam recipes I get a lot of responses from American sites for what I would call a kumara (or sweet potato). So can anyone please tell me what this is known as where you're from?
I'm not in the US, but in the UK. We call them Peruvian Potato or Oca, although there aren't very popular here.1 -
edited when i realized what I said had already been said.0
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cmriverside wrote: »It has those little root buds that are not at all like a potato. Wiki says it's a tuber, though. On wiki there is a nutrient breakdown (calories etc.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalis_tuberosa
My Oxalis triangularis tubers look like that, only much much smaller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalis_triangularis
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cmriverside wrote: »Oh, Come On. You're disagreeing that I buy white sweet potatoes and that they're different????????
Look up "white sweet potatoes." They're very sweet. I buy them every week.
https://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/1103597/sweet-potato-vs-yam/ and even though there are white and orange, apparently according to this article they're BOTH sweet potatoes. I guess I've never seen a yam, then.
The more you know.
The one time I cooked with sweet potato, I thought I had screwed up my purchase. When I started cutting them (very hard to do raw) I saw they were white instead of orange as I expected, but tasted just like sweet potato when cooked, which I found out took a very long time to do.1 -
I am in Alabama. Most of our sweet potatoes are a deep orange. I have not seen a real yam which I knew was one that was whitish yellow since I was a little girl in Ohio. From my region, that is how we know them. Different areas are different. But after 29 years in the Deep South we take our sweet taters serious! LOL! Especially in pie!!
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