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All About Sweet Potatoes

Depending on your desired dish, one of these popular supermarket sweet potatoes is likely right for the job.

Depending on your desired dish, one of these popular supermarket sweet potatoes is likely right for the job.

Many grocery stores carry three varieties of sweet potatoes: Beauregards, Jewels, and Red Garnets. To see if we could detect any differences among the three, we tasted them in a simple mash as well as in our recipe for Sweet Potato Biscuits. Beauregards, the most common variety, made great biscuits—buttery-sweet and fluffy—and were tasty, albeit one-dimensionally sweet, as a plain mash. The flesh of the Jewels was less sweet than the Beauregards but with an equally firm texture. Red Garnets, decidedly more savory than the others, had an earthiness that tasters appreciated in the mash. Their loose, watery texture, however, made the biscuits slightly gummy.

BEAUREGARD

BEAUREGARD: Best for biscuits.

JEWEL

JEWEL: Less sweet, but fine for all applications.

RED GARNET

RED GARNET: Great on their own, but make for gummy biscuits.

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