If I had to pick a food item to live off of for the rest of my life, without a single doubt in my mind it would be a potato. There’s so much you can do with a potato! You can wrap it up in foil and bake it whole; you can slice it into pieces and bake them, the result of which will be completely different. You can fry those pieces too! Again doing it in fryer will give a different result than doing it in a pan, both of which are naturally delicious. And let’s not forget about the boiling and the pureeing concept, which yet again provides a whole new outcome. The possibilities aren’t endless of course but there are so many that you never get the chance to get tired of the potato because you’re constantly switching it up.
While that may very well be the case, there’s one thing all those dishes have in common, and that is the undeniable taste of the product – potato. This brings me to my point. Sweet potato is not a potato! It’s an imposter.
How dare you come in here pretending to be something that I already know and love and have cherished all of my life. You taste different. Your texture is different. You kinda look the same at first, but then I cut into you and it’s like ‘Holy shit why the f**k are you orange? Did you just come from the jersey shore? You think just because you modified your name with the word “Sweet” next to it, it somehow made it okay for you to move in on the original product’s name? It doesn’t work that way! If I wanted my potatoes sweet, I would sprinkle some sugar on them or dip them in honey. Yes you’re from the same family, but you’re not the same! Carrot too is a root vegetable, but at least it’s not pretending to be something it isn’t. So stop trying to fit in, you will never be loved in a way a true potato is loved. I mean just stick to ‘Yam’ or ‘Oriental Sweet’ or whatever’.
Having said that, I must admit the following… While it took me a very long time to warm up to this red headed step cousin of a vegetable, I can now consume it almost without cringing. I still very much have a problem with the fact that it refers to itself as a variation of a Potato – that, I will never understand nor accept. I no longer let the ‘root of all evil’ affect the possibility of enjoying the product. After all, if it’s cooked properly it can be pretty yummy.
