This is something that comes up every time we serve sweet potatoes, or is it yams? What is the difference? I finally looked it up. Yams in the U.S. are actually sweet potatoes with relatively moist texture and orange flesh.
According to vegweb.com:
In the early 1900′s, sweet-potato promoters used the word “yam” to represent the deeper orange, moist-fleshed varieties. They used the words “sweet potato” to refer to the smaller, yellowish-orange, dry-fleshed varieties. To this day, most supermarkets still use both words to mean the same product. However, no matter which word is used, what they sell, no matter if it is fresh or canned, is not a true yam but in actuality is a sweet potato.
Mystery solved!
