Serve with salt, pepper, and butter. Yams can also be boiled, steamed, or fried. Yams must be cooked before being eaten. There are many varieties of yams, and many varieties of sweet potatoes, and certain types of yams may be quite similar to certain types of sweet potatoes. Some of the yams commonly cultivated in Africa are usually very large, sometimes measuring several feet in length and over a hundred pounds in weight.
Yams have a brown peel that looks like the bark of a tree.
The edible, inside portion ranges from light tan or pale yellow to red or purple. When large yams are sold in grocery stores they are usually cut into pieces weighting a few pounds each and wrapped in plastic. The principal festival in the year is the Yams Custom, which Europeans call native, or black Christmas. It is celebrated at the end of August or the beginning of September, and at the same time their New Year's Day occurs. This is called Yereyelo.