Choice and storage

Jicamas may be out there year-round within the markets. Usually, they’re imported from Central American nations by means of land routes and flood the USA markets throughout spring and summer time.

Select well-formed, agency, spherical, medium-sized tubers. Keep away from gentle, shriveled, or tubers with floor cuts, cracks, and bruised pores and skin.

As soon as at house, jicamas may be saved very similar to potatoes. They’ve a very good shelf life and maintain nicely in a cool, dry, darkish place for about 2-4 weeks. Publicity to a temperature under 10 °C leads to chill-induced adjustments in
shade 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, nevertheless, 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 due to this fact, ought to be discarded. It then may be minimize into cubes, sliced, or chopped into effective 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 great greens in stir-fries.

Listed below are some serving ideas:

• Uncooked jicama has candy, succulent apple like fruity style. In lots of elements of Mexico, contemporary tubers are minimize 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 many others.
  It mixes nicely with different widespread greens and fruits like orange, pineapple, carrot, inexperienced beans in addition to with poultry, meat, and seafood.

• Exterior of the American continent, this tuber is among the many in style 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 many others, in rujak.

• In Indonesia, they served with very similar to Malayan salad however with added rujak sauce created from palm sugar, tamarind, shrimp paste, chili peppers, and sautéed peanut
  paste. Additionally, as a rujak tumbuk, all of the elements talked about above are floor in a picket mortar and served on a banana leaf.

• In Japanese 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.

• Other than salads, one other in style oriental dish that makes use of jicama and turnips is popiah, a Fujian/Chaozhou-style contemporary spring roll.

Security profile

Jicama plant comprises 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 protected for human consumption, together with in youngsters. Rotenone works on the mobile stage inhibiting a number of metabolic enzymes like NADH dehydrogenase within the mitochondria. Exterior, it’s used as an environmentally protected broad-spectrum insecticide, piscicide (to poison fish), and pesticide. (Medical disclaimer).

≻≻-Again to Greens from Jicama diet. Go to right here for a powerful checklist of greens with full illustrations of their diet details and
well being advantages.

≻≻-Again to Residence web page.

Additional Sources:

1. USDA Nationwide Nutrient Database.

2. Stanford College of Drugs Most cancers info Web page- Diet to Cut back Most cancers Threat.

3. Norton, L. B. 1943. Rotenone within the yam bean (Pachyrrhizus erosus).

4. Quantification of rotenone in seeds of various species of yam bean (Pachyrhizus sp.) by a SPE HPLC–UV technique. PDF.