Jennifer’s holiday yams

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Jennifer from Become’s PR department shares this easy recipe for holiday yams, which she cooked for her family this Thanksgiving. Sweet, savory, and just slightly spicy with the unique addition of cinnamon, her holiday yams are sure to please kids and adults alike!

Ingredients:

4 yams washed, peeled and sliced
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 green apple peeled and diced
2 tablespoons of melted butter
Cinnamon to sprinkle
Honey to drizzle

Interlude: The lowdown on yams vs. sweet potatoes

If you’re eating a “yam” and you’re in the United States, it’s likely that you’re actually eating a sweet potato, unless you bought your yam from an international produce store.

There are two main types of sweet potato that you can buy in a US grocery store – firm (dry-fleshed) sweet potatoes and soft (moist-fleshed) sweet potatoes. It’s the soft sweet potatoes that are most often labeled “yams” to differentiate them from their dry-fleshed counterparts.

Then where does the term “yam” come from? True yams are grown in West Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia. It’s likely that the term “yam” for soft sweet potatoes originated from the Southern United States, where the soft-fleshed hybrids were likened to the African “nyami” (yam). The term “yam” was a convenient term to commercially differentiate firm and soft sweet potatoes in the grocery store, too.

As for true yams, these starchy tubers aren’t biologically related to sweet potatoes. According to botanists, yams come from the Dioscoreaceae (Yam) family and are more closely related to lilies and grasses, whereas sweet potatoes come from the Convolvulacea or morning glory family.