Sweet potato tasting

  We tasted and scored 24 different sweet potato varieties last week.  For individual photos of each variety, click here.

  The highest average scores went to two varieties that haven't been at the top before, one that's been good but not at the very top before, Kyushu 100, and another that we had just grown for the first time, Sunshine.  Kyushu also received the most 1st place votes. 

Other 1st place votes this year went to Faux Beau, Red Japanese, and Kotobuki.  Tennessee Red had the third highest average score after Kyushu and Sunshine.  As usual, Covington and the purple fleshed varieties scored at the bottom of our taste test.  Covington is the most common variety sold in supermarkets, and although there's nothing wrong with the taste, there are definitely better tasting varieties, and we really don't like the baby food texture of Covington as a baked potato.  We do like Covington for other uses, however, like deep frying for potato chips, but we only compared baked potatoes for our taste test.  The purple fleshed varieties might also be pretty good in other uses.  They're not especialy sweet, and maybe there's some bitterness to them, which at first we find off-putting, especially in a blind taste test where we're expecting an average sweet potato, but that slight bitterness or whatever that flavor is might actually be good in some things.  We're thinking it might be good in the sorts of savory dishes that sometimes include unsweetened cocoa, for example, like chile.  In any case, they add striking color.  Nancy Hall, which has been our overall favorite more years than any other variety, was good this year but not as outstanding as it usually is.

  Having done these annual sweet potato tests for about 15 years now, it's remarkable how much variation there can be from year to year.  Besides the varieties already mentioned, other varieties that scored well in this year's taste test included Gem, Kotobuki, Suwan, Porto Rico, White Bunch, Scott Orange, White Triumph, and Murasaki.  PI 267946, which was among our overall favorites last year, is a variety we've definitely been enjoying this winter, but for some reason it didn't score very high in this taste test.  And although Woksaken didn't score high, that may have more to do with it being unexpectedly different rather than it not being as good.  It has a very dry, almost flaky texture, rather like a baked russet Irish potato.