Yams vs. sweet potatoes: What's the difference?

As you prep for Thanksgiving dinner, The Kitchn is answering the age-old question: What’s the difference between yams and sweet potatoes?

Grocery stores often get it wrong, labelling sweet potatoes as yams. So, what’s the difference?

Or is there one?

Yams and sweet potatoes are not related. Yams are related to lilies, can be as small as a white potato or as long as 5 feet. They have rough, bark-like skin and white, purple or reddish flesh. They’re starchier and drier than sweet potatoes, have more of a cylindrical shape, and are more difficult to find at grocery stores.

If you need yams and can’t find them, try an international food market that carries Caribbean or African foods, suggests The Globe and Mail's Leslie Beck.

Sweet potatoes, on the other hand, have either an elongated shape with tapered ends or a traditional potato shape and come from the morning glory family. Sweet potatoes have white, yellow, red, purple or brown skins and have white, yellow, orange, or orange-red flesh. They come in two types: firm sweet potatoes and soft sweet potatoes.

(When cooked, the “firm” variety remain firm and a little waxy, while the “soft” variety become fluffy and moist.)

Nutritionally, while both are good sources of fibre and potassium, sweet potatoes are lower in calories and carbohydrates and higher in vitamin C and beta-carotene than yams.

Here’s an infographic to help you determine whether you’re buying yams or sweet potatoes.

According to The Kitchn, a common U.S. grocery store labelling strategy is to call soft sweet potatoes “yams” and firm sweet potatoes “sweet potatoes” to help differentiate between the two.

“Ironically, when you want a classic baked sweet potato, with a crisp skin and fluffy orange flesh, or sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole, what you should buy will be probably labeled yam. Even though it’s not a yam. It’s a sweet potato. The soft kind,” writes The Kitchn’s Kelli Dunn.

Here are some sweet potato recipes to try this Thanksgiving:

Breakfast

Start the day right with these five-star Sweet Potato-Pecan Pancakes from CookingLight.

Or whip up a batch of Joy the Baker’s Vanilla Bean Sweet Potato Waffles.

Appetizers

Nibbling before dinner? Pass around the Spiced Sweet Potato Hummus from Vegetarian Ventures.

Get dinner started with a bowl of soup. We’d be happy if our Thanksgiving meal began with one of these: Wonderful Curried Sweet Potato Soup or Gingered Sweet Potato and Carrot Soup.

Consider adding sweet potatoes to your salad, as Queen Hostess Martha Stewart did with her Watercress Salad with Roasted Sweet Potatoes.

Love her or hate her, you have to admit Paula Deen knows her comfort food. Fluffy Sweet-Potato Biscuits? Yes, please.

Side Dishes

Pass the potatoes! Roasted, mashed or baked, Thanksgiving isn’t complete without one of the following:

Jamie Oliver’s Smoky Mixed-Potato Wedges.

Bon Appétit’s Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Potatoes and Sage.

Food52’s Mashed Maple Chipotle Sweet Potatoes.

Food and Wine’s Sweet Potato Casserole.

SkinnyTaste’s Loaded Baked Sweet Potato.

Dessert

We’re eager to try this five-star Sweet Potato Pie recipe from AllRecipes.com. (It has more than 1,500 reviews. That many home cooks can’t be wrong.)

And if you believe marshmallow-topped potatoes are too sweet for dinner — we’d agree — save them for dessert with Smitten Kitchen’s Sweet Potato Cake with Marshmallow Frosting. Because calories don’t count on holidays.

How do you prepare sweet potatoes during the holidays?