Purple sweet potato, purple skin and white flesh, 1 kg

Purple sweet potato has purple skin and white flesh. Like other white-fleshed sweet potatoes, it is less sweet and more floury than orange sweet potato, with a taste recalling chestnut. It is boiled, fried or roasted, as in African and Caribbean kitchens. Sold by the kilo.

What is purple-skinned, white-fleshed sweet potato?

It is the same species as other sweet potatoes, Ipomoea batatas. Depending on the variety, the skin ranges from white to purple; it is the colour of the flesh that signals the taste: white or pale yellow flesh is less sweet and more floury than orange flesh. It should not be confused with purple-fleshed sweet potato, which is a different variety. It has nothing to do with yam or cassava, two other tubers that are nonetheless cooked in the same way.

How to cook it?

• Boiled, in large chunks, to go with a sauce, a stew or a mafé.
• Fried, in sticks or rounds.
• In fritters: a mash of sweet potato, a little flour, spices, then a bath of frying oil.
• As a dessert: it is the base of Haitian pain patate, with ripe banana, coconut milk, cinnamon and nutmeg, and of Caribbean gâteau patate.

It is always eaten cooked. Peel it, cut it into even pieces and cook it until the tip of a knife slides in without resistance.

What to pair it with?

We also have white sweet potato, with white skin and white flesh. For a mafé, add DAKATINE peanut paste. For a pain patate, SAMIA ground cinnamon and BONNET ROUGE unsweetened condensed milk. The sweet potato fritters recipe is on the blog. The whole range: African tubers.

Product information

• Product: purple-skinned, white-fleshed sweet potato, whole, unprocessed
• Weight: 1 kg
• Allergens: none of the 14 regulated allergens, by nature
• Storage: in a cool, dry and dark place, never in the fridge

Precautions

Do not store raw sweet potatoes in the fridge: the cold hardens their flesh and alters their taste. Keep them in the open air, away from light, and cook them within two weeks.