The stark white flesh of jicama is cool and crunchy, absolute best imaginable for eating out of hand after peeling. Jicama can also be diced and added to fruit or green salads or speared and featured on dessert trays next to cantaloupe and pears and cheese cubes.
Jicama can also be combined with other vegetables in stir-fries or added to savory soups or stewed with meat and poultry. You are able to mash jicama like a potato.
Jicama is a squat, knobby, earth-colored root vegetable that resembles a turnip with an apple-like, nutty style.Â
The peak season for jicama is autumn via past due spring.
How you’ll Make a selection Jicama
- Select well-formed, small- to medium-size jicamas with simple unblemished skins.
- Jicama pores and pores and skin must be thin and easily scratched along with your thumbnail to show the creamy white flesh.
- Avoid thick-skinned jicamas or those that are cracked or bruised or shriveled.
- Huge jicamas can also be thick-skinned, fibrous, and dry.
How you’ll Store Jicama
- Jicamas, like potatoes, will keep in a groovy, dry place uncovered for up to 3 weeks.
- Avoid exposure to moisture which is in a position to purpose mould.
- Once cut back or sliced jicama must be wrapped in plastic and can also be stored throughout the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator for up to 1 week.
How you’ll Get in a position Jicama
- The outside of the jicama is not fit to be eaten. Scrub well eliminating any filth and peel with a paring knife previous to the use of.
- Grate or cut back into cubes, julienne strips, or slices.
- To keep away from discoloring after decreasing, submerge jicama slices in a bowl of acidulated water previous to cooking.
- Allow about ¼ pound in line with specific particular person when used for appetizers and salads.
Jicama Serving Pointers
- Jicamas can also be served raw or cooked.
- Decrease into spears and use for dipping and appetizers.
- Decrease into squares and add to fruit salad.
- Serve mashed or baked like a potato.
- Add diced to seafood, poultry, blended green or orange, and onion salads.
- Julienne-cut and stir-fry with other vegetables
- Add to soups, vegetables, rice, quiches, meat, poultry, and seafood.
- Sauté with carrots or green beans.
- Stir-fry with rooster or shrimp.
- Simmer in savory stews like a potato.
- Serve cut back sticks with a squeeze of lime and chili powder.
- Drizzle lime juice over thin jicama slices and sprinkle with chili-seasoned salt.
Jicama Cooking Pointers
- Jicama cooks like a potato and can also be boiled, baked, steamed, and fried. If cooked briefly it is going to retain its starchy alternatively apple-like texture.
- Jicamas are used as an alternative to water chestnuts in Asian cooking. They have the identical refreshingly crisp texture.
How you’ll Steam Jicama
- Peel and clean the jicama and cut back them into cubes or rounds.
- Put them a steamer basket set in a medium pot over 1 or 2Â inches of frivolously salted boiling water.
- Get ready dinner until they are merely soft when pierced with the top of a small knife.
- Serve with a pinch of marjoram and a tablespoon of chopped parsley.
How you’ll Bake Jicama
- Preheat the oven to 450 ranges F.
- Rub the jicama with olive or vegetable oil; sprinkle it with salt. Prick the jicama with the tines of a fork.
- Place the jicama on a baking sheet or lay it immediately on the oven rack,
- Bake for 45 to 60 minutes (depending on period); turn the jicama once at halfway.
- Bake until the outside is golden and crispy; the jicama can also be baked when a knife inserted throughout the flesh meets no resistance. The interior temperature must be about 210 ranges F.
How you’ll Sauté Jicama
- Clean the jicama and cut back them into slices or thin rounds.
- Put them in a saucepan with one teaspoon of salt, 1/2 stick butter, and 1/4 cup of water and cook dinner dinner over medium heat. Shake each so regularly to verify they do not brown or cook dinner dinner too rapid.
- Get ready dinner until they are merely soft when pierced with the top of a small knife.
- Add a large pinch of marjoram and a tablespoon of chopped parsley.
How you’ll Pan-Fry Jicama
- For pan-fried jicama, use par-cooked (partly boiled) jicama, peeled or unpeeled.
- Decrease into slices between ¼ and ½-inch thick.
- Heat 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a big skillet over medium heat.Â
- Add jicama. Get ready dinner jicama in batches.
- Keep watch over the heat so that the jicama pieces sizzle alternatively do not smoke.
- Add flavorings very similar to salt and pepper or paprika or minced onions.
- Turn with a spatula until browned and soft.
How you’ll Boil Jicama
- Boil jicama with the outside intact if the jicama is the size of a {golfing} ball or smaller. Peel and quarter higher jicama.
- Boil in well-salted water until soft, that is until a sharp knife can pierce the jicama with little resistance.
- Drain the water and set the jicamas in a colander to dry. Jicamas will continue to cook dinner dinner for moderately after they are out of the boiling water.
- Serve scorching with melted butter and minced herbs, or drizzled with olive oil and lemon zest.
- Boiled jicama can sit down down at room temperature for almost an hour previous to the flavor and texture start to become worse.
Jicama Style Partners
- Jicamas have a style affinity for chili powder, cilantro, ginger, grilled fish, lemon, lime, oranges, red onion, salsa, sesame oil, soy sauce.
Jicama Nutrition
- Jicama is fundamental in potassium and an excellent provide of vitamin C.
- One cup of shredded jicama accommodates about 50 power.
Get to Know Jicama
- Jicama (pronounce HEE-cah-mah) is native to Mexico and Central The us. Jicama is the tuber of a twining herbaceous plant that grows as a perennial throughout the tropics and as an annual in temperate spaces. The jicama typically produces one or two dust-brown tubers.
- There are two sorts of jicama. The principle, Pachyrhizus erosus, is smaller than the second and freshest in Mexico and Central The us. This jicama grows 6 to 8 inches long and is somewhat flattened at the ends. This jicama can also be eaten raw or cooked. It is crisp, juicy, and sweet.
- The second variety, Pachyrhizus tuberosus, is the larger of the two and grows in every tropical and temperate zones. It can be came upon throughout the Andes space of Ecuador, throughout the Caribbean, and in China. This jicama grows from 8 to 12 inches long and is harvested when about 1 inch in diameter. It is juicy and just about at all times eaten raw.
- Jicamas range in weight from a few oz.. (100 g) to 6 pounds (2.7 kg); most weigh about section a pound (220 g).
- Jicamas that increase in Central The us and Mexico are regularly known as ‘yam beans’.
The botanical identify of jicama is Pachyrhizus erosus.