Red Garnett, Yam or Sweet Potato

My mother called them "camotes." She would bake them until soft, scoop the orange meat out, sprinkle sugar, cinnamon, and a small amount of milk and we had a dessert. 

As I grew older, I learned that covering the cooked mashed sweet potato with small marshmallows made for a tasty dish. The dish would be baked until the marshmallows browned. Later, for Thanksgiving dinner, I learned to prepare a sweet potato pie with mashed yams, brown sugar, egg, honey, cinnamon, butter and pecans.

Imagine my surprise when I happened to see three different types of "sweet potatoes" at the grocery store. There was the yam, the sweet potato, and the red garnett.  In looking on the Internet I found out that for convenience sake, we in the United States call all the sweet potatoes, yams.  The light ecru colored sweet potato has a white or light yellow meat and almost looks like a regular potato yet, has a subtle sweet taste.

I decided to find out which I liked best so I baked all three types. In about an hour my kitchen had a toasty sugary smell that almost smelled like burned sugar. I then tasted the yam and found that its orange meat looked like pumpkin but has a faint taste of sweet. The Red Garnett is a darker orange and other than the color the texture and taste is very similar to the yam though it might be a tad stringier. Probably because they are both considered to be in the yam family.

The sweet potato is yellow and sometimes will have pale to a darker yellow meat. It has a sweet taste. If I had to pick a favorite I like the sweet potato the best because it can be eaten without adding sugar.  The other two need to have some sugar added to them to sweeten them. Though in the past, I have purchased some yams that were sweet enough to eat alone without adding anything to them.

On the Internet I found out that the yam is not related to the sweet potato and there are over 150 yam varieties in the world. The sweet potato is low in calories, has no fat, is rich in beta carotene, vitamin A and potassium. The yam contains more natural sugar than the sweet potato but I disagree that the yam is sweeter than the sweet potato.  In the three I tasted I found the sweet potato to be the sweetest. Of course, there is the possibility that in one of those 150 varieties some yams may be sweeter!  In Mexico a delicious candy is prepared from yams.

I now know more about sweet potatoes and yams.  I enjoy both whether it is a sweet potato or a yam and the taste brings back memories of when I was growing up and my Mother would prepare "camotes" for dessert.