Japanese sweet potato
Ipomoea batatas · Root vegetable
Top 10 pairings
The Japanese sweet potato — satsumaimo, sold under cultivar names such as Beniharuka, Beniazuma and the US market type Murasaki — is the dense, dry, chestnut-sweet one. A deep reddish-purple skin wraps pale cream-yellow flesh that, unlike the soft orange American type, roasts down to a firm, fluffy, almost confection-like richness. It is the potato of the autumn yaki-imo street cart, baked slow over hot stones until its starch turns to caramel-sweet sugar.
Picking a good onedrag
Freshly dugSprouting
CuredBuy itTight skin, hard right through — roasts sweet and keeps for months in a cool, dark cupboard
SkinTight, smooth, evenly coloured
FleshHard end to end
EndsDry, clean, pale scars
SproutsNone
SmellClean earth, almost nothing
These cues are Sweet Potato's, and hold across its varieties; where this one differs, its own page says so.
What you get from one
72%
Edible part
130 g · peel and ends off
181 g
Weight each
each one
Keeping ittap a temperature
Never chill it raw: below 12.5 °C the core turns woody. Cooked, it keeps 3-4 days chilled.
85–90%
Humidity
Ventilated
Airflow