What is the difference between a sweet potato and yams?

Although some folks use the term "sweet potato" and "yam" interchangeably, they are NOT the same thing at all.

No you do not use sweet potatoes to make yams, you use sweet potatoes to make sweet potatoes.

this link has some good information concerning the differences.

http://homecooking.about.com/od/howtocookvegetable...

The orange-colored things you probably buy are sweet potatoes... yams are technically different (though there's many varieties of each). In the US, sweet potatoes are often called yams and labeled as such; this is usually the source of confusion. Check out the wikipedia articles on sweet potatoes and yams to read more about the differences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)

Yams are seldom seen in the US.They are in a completely different family from sweet potatoes. If you live anywhere in the US you have probably never seen a yam, although some commercial canners list both names on the cans.I wouldn't buy any product from a company that doesn't even know what they put in their cans.

Yams are grown in Africa and are HUGE. What you have is probably just a different variety of sweet potato, which were mistakenly named "yams" by slaves who found them to be similar to the vegetable of their home countries.

they are two different potatoes, the orange sweet potato has a peel and orange flesh, while the yam has a darker peel and a purple or reddish flesh is usually sweeter than the sweet potato.