Are Sweet Potatoes A Southern Thing?

Sweet potatoes are still an important part of Southern cuisine, and they are gaining popularity in the broader U.S. as well.

Why are sweet potatoes popular in the South?

The southern migration of the plant was much more successful than the northern, again, because of the plant’s need for warm temperatures. Native Americans were known to have grown sweet potato extensively by the 1700s and soon thereafter it became a popular staple of the South.

What culture eats sweet potatoes?

Sweet potato leaves and young shoots are also eaten as part of the cuisines of a number of cultures, including Chinese, Polynesian and Filipino.

Is yams a southern thing?

Yams are grown almost exclusively in West Africa. What does that mean to you? That those cans of “candied yams” you’ve bought at the grocery store are, in fact, made from sweet potatoes.

Why do black people like sweet potato?

The sweet potato first found success in Europe and later in America due to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which forced the migration of countless human-beings and relocated them primarily in the South. The popularity that sweet potatoes ultimately found within the black community was due to convenience.

Did slaves eat sweet potatoes?

The sweet potato, which is native to the Americas, was likely used by African slaves as an alternative to the yam found in their homeland.

Where is sweet potato originally from?

The earliest cultivation records of the sweet potato date to 750 BCE in Peru, although archeological evidence shows cultivation of the sweet potato might have begun around 2500-1850 BCE.

Are sweet potatoes good for black people?

The sweet potato evokes surprisingly strong feelings — and not just from the pro- and anti-marshmallow lobbies. It is a staple of the African diet. And Africans feel passionately about it. It kindles warm memories.

Do black people put marshmallows on sweet potatoes?

What are Black folks’ Southern candied yams? Candied yams are an old-fashioned African-American recipe. A sweet potato side dish cooked to perfection in a brown sugar-glaze syrup. Candied yams are often topped with marshmallows after a mix of seasonings and spices brings this soul food dish to perfection!

Is sweet potato pie a black thing?

It became an African cuisine tradition brought to the United States by slaves, who made it using sweet potatoes and yams, a plant native to Africa, instead of pumpkin. Ever since, sweet potato pie has been a must-have dish at many African-American family gatherings, especially Thanksgiving.

What’s the difference between sweet potato and yams?

Yams are starchy and have a rough, brown exterior. They can grow up to 45 feet long and are eaten in parts of Latin America, West Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia. Sweet potatoes are a New World root vegetable, have a softer, reddish skin, a creamier interior, and often, a darker interior.

Is there a difference between yams and sweet potato?

The skin of a yam (left) looks kind of like tree bark, while a sweet potato (right) is more reddish-brown. Real yams are entirely different root vegetables that are more like yucca in texture and flavor. They have bumpy, tough brown skin (that looks almost tree trunk-like) with starchy, not sweet flesh.

What’s better sweet potatoes or yams?

Sweet potatoes and yams are completely different vegetables. However, they’re both nutritious, tasty and versatile additions to the diet. Sweet potatoes tend to be more readily available and are nutritionally superior to yams — albeit only slightly.

What do black people call pumpkin pie?

As much as sweet potato pie is beloved within the black community and in the South, it doesn’t seem to get much love elsewhere. Our national pie divide is deepest when people choose between pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie on Thanksgiving Day.

What did George Washington Carver do with sweet potatoes?

Products he invented using sweet potatoes include: wood fillers, more than 73 dyes, rope, breakfast cereal, synthetic silk, shoe polish and molasses. He wrote several brochures on the nutritional value of sweet potatoes and the protein found in peanuts, including recipes he invented for use of his favorite plants.

Why are yams called sweet potatoes?

In the United States, firm varieties of sweet potatoes were produced before soft varieties. When soft varieties were first grown commercially, there was a need to differentiate between the two. African slaves had already been calling the ‘soft’ sweet potatoes ‘yams’ because they resembled the yams in Africa.

What foods do slaves eat?

Weekly food rations — usually corn meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour — were distributed every Saturday. Vegetable patches or gardens, if permitted by the owner, supplied fresh produce to add to the rations. Morning meals were prepared and consumed at daybreak in the slaves’ cabins.

What did slaves eat for Thanksgiving?

There is a very good chance that the first African American Thanksgiving dinner was cooked in an outside kitchen and the diet consisted of corn meal, salt pork, and home-grown vegetables if, slave masters allowed it.

What was the African diet before slavery?

Before slavery, in West Africa, our diet consisted heavily of plant-based foods such as ground provisions, fruits and greens. Meat was either not on the menu or eaten occasionally in smaller portions as a stew. They also consumed no dairy products.

Who brought sweet potatoes to America?

History Origin – Sweet Potatoes
It is one of the oldest vegetables known to mankind. Scientists believe that sweet potato was domesticated thousands of years ago in Central America. After his first voyage to the Americas in 1492, Christopher Columbus took sweet potatoes back home to Europe.

Who first grew sweet potatoes?

The origin and domestication of sweet potato occurred in either Central or South America. In Central America, domesticated sweet potatoes were present at least 5,000 years ago, with the origin of I. batatas possibly between the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico and the mouth of the Orinoco River in Venezuela.