Choice and storage
Jicamas will be out there year-round within the markets. Typically, they’re imported from Central American nations by way of land routes and flood the USA markets throughout spring and summer time.
Select well-formed, agency, spherical, medium-sized tubers. Keep away from tender, shriveled, or tubers with floor cuts, cracks, and bruised pores and skin.
As soon as at residence, jicamas will be saved very similar to potatoes. They’ve shelf life and maintain effectively in a cool, dry, darkish place for about 2-4 weeks. Publicity to a temperature beneath 10 °C leads to chill-induced adjustments in
colour and texture. Additionally, extended storage converts its starch into sugar, which makes the roots much less sought-after in savory dishes.
Minimize sections, cubes, or slices, nonetheless, ought to be positioned contained in the fridge.
Preparation and serving strategies
Wash in cool operating water and dry mop identical to in different tubers. Peel off the thick fibrous pores and skin utilizing a vegetable peeler or paring knife. Pores and skin and different plant elements carry rotenone, an natural poison, and subsequently, ought to be discarded. It then will be lower into cubes, sliced, or chopped into fantastic strips within the methods desired.
Recent jicama is used very similar to a vegetable and is a crucial starch supply in a lot of Central America. It stays crisp when cooked,
making it one of many fantastic greens in stir-fries.
Listed here are some serving ideas:
-
Uncooked jicama has candy, succulent apple like fruity style. In lots of elements of Mexico, contemporary tubers are lower into cubes/sticks and sprinkled with lime juice, salt, and dressed with olive oil and paprika or floor chili pepper and loved!
-
Jicama is a favourite root vegetable in Mexican cooking the place it’s utilized in salads, slaw, stews, stir-fries, soups, and so on.
It mixes effectively with different widespread greens and fruits like orange, pineapple, carrot, inexperienced beans in addition to with poultry, meat, and seafood. -
Outdoors of the American continent, this tuber is among the many well-liked starch roots in lots of south and southeast areas. In Malaysia, the place it is called bengkoang, contemporary younger tubers are sliced and eaten with different fruits like pineapple, apple,
uncooked mango, candy potato, and so on, in rujak. -
In Indonesia, they served with very similar to Malayan salad however with added rujak sauce constructed from palm sugar, tamarind, shrimp paste, chili peppers, and sautéed peanut
paste. Additionally, as a rujak tumbuk, all of the components talked about above are floor in a picket mortar and served on a banana leaf. -
In Jap India states of West Bengal, Odisha, and Bangladesh, shankaalu is eaten as mouth-watering road meals ‘chaat recipe’ paired with starfruit, chili and salt powder and lemon juice.
-
Aside from salads, one other well-liked oriental dish that makes use of jicama and turnips is popiah, a Fujian/Chaozhou-style contemporary spring roll.
Security profile
Jicama plant accommodates important ranges of fat-soluble natural toxin, rotenone. This toxin is concentrated particularly within the leaf tops, stems, and seed pods however at a lot decrease concentrations within the roots. A number of research discovered that it’s linked to the event of Parkinson’s illness.
Nevertheless, peeled roots are secure for human consumption, together with in kids. Rotenone works on the mobile degree inhibiting a number of metabolic enzymes like NADH dehydrogenase within the mitochondria. Outdoors, it’s used as an environmentally secure broad-spectrum insecticide, piscicide (to poison fish), and pesticide. (Medical disclaimer).
≻≻-Again to Greens from Jicama diet. Go to right here for a powerful record of greens with full illustrations of their diet information and
well being advantages.
≻≻-Again to Residence web page.
Additional Sources:
-
Stanford Faculty of Medication Most cancers data Web page- Vitamin to Scale back Most cancers Danger.
-
Norton, L. B. 1943. Rotenone within the yam bean (Pachyrrhizus erosus).
-
Quantification of rotenone in seeds of various species of yam bean (Pachyrhizus sp.) by a SPE HPLC–UV technique. PDF.
