White sweet potato, white skin and white flesh, 1 kg

White sweet potato has pale skin and creamy white flesh. Less sweet and more floury than orange sweet potato, it holds its shape well during cooking: it is the one used for boiling, frying or roasting in African and Caribbean kitchens. Sold by the kilo.

What is white sweet potato?

It is the same species as orange sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, but a different variety. Its flesh stays pale when cooked, its taste recalls chestnut, and its texture is drier. It is often called African potato; in the Caribbean, sweet potato is called patate péyi. 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: its dry flesh makes fries that hold together well.
• 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. In a mash, allow a little more milk or butter than with an orange sweet potato, as it is less moist.

What to pair it with?

We also have purple sweet potato, with purple 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: 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.