Foodstuff: Jicama – Sybaritica

One might well take the object above as a potato at first glance but it is, in fact, a Jicama – a tuberous root native to Mexico. Although I have a number of cookbooks (chiefly Mexican) containing recipes for using this vegetable, this is the first time I have ever actually seen one and I am very pleased to finally be able to give it a try…

When I purchased the one you see in the picture, the store had about a dozen or so and this one was about the smallest, weighing in at just over a pound. Some I saw were about three times the size of this one and I gather that the heaviest on record reached an incredible 23 kilograms (or just over 50 pounds!).

Although native to Mexico, they are cultivated elsewhere and are popular in South-east Asia as well as the Philippines and Indonesia. It is a carbohydrate rich food but much of this is in the form of dietary fiber, particularly inulin, which makes the vegetable attractive not only to diabetics and ‘lo-carb’ers’, but also those who particularly enjoy the ‘musical’ side-effects of baked beans and such…

As you can see, the appearance, when cut, is also quite like a potato inside, although the flesh is little more fibrous and a paler white. The skin is quite potato-like as far as appearance and thickness goes but it is much tougher and, I daresay, completely inedible. It is fairly easy to peel with a common vegetable peeler, I found, but it is also possible to slip a knife beneath it and pull away strips without taking any of the flesh.

I didn’t notice any aroma in particular (although I was a little congested) but the taste was very nice. The texture was interesting – somewhere between a rather woody apple and a water chestnut – and there wasn’t really any of the starchy mouth-feel you rather expect given the potato-like appearance. When you first bite into it, the sweetness strikes you (although it is quite mild) and there is a very faint note of watermelon that lasts for a second or so. After that, the taste changes into something quite grassy and reminded me very much of chewing on a stalk of unripe grain. It was pleasant, overall, but not especially exciting.

Jicama is mostly eaten raw, especially mixed in salads, but it is also frequently served in wedges, either with just salt, and maybe some lime juice, or else along with some type of dip. Salsa is quite common in Mexico and my wife and I tried it this way, as you see pictured above. It was pleasant enough but I found that the salsa rather overwhelmed the delicate taste of the raw slices and I would try something else a bit milder and perhaps sweeter on another occasion.

There are also preparations that involve cooking the Jicama, of course, and I found an interesting one for a Jicama stir-fried with Shiitake and Scallops that I would like to try sometime. At the same site where I located that recipe there are also two others: one for ‘Grilled Jicama’ and another for a salad with Jicama, Beef and Snow Peas. It strikes me that it might be interesting to try something that combines the two…

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