We investigate whether these bizarre, rock-like tubers are yuck or yay.
One of the most intriguing parts of traveling to a new place is exploring the strange and wonderful local products, especially produce, that differ from your markets back home. Sometimes, however, you can also discover those strange things right at home. Case in point: We recently stumbled upon some alien-like potatoes at a direct-from-the-farm vegetable market in Nara Prefecture, inconspicuously displayed alongside “regular” vegetables like cabbage and shiitake mushrooms.
Their appearance was startling enough, let alone the name on the sticker.
▼ Yes, it actually reads “outer space potatoes.”
Outer space potatoes?? What the heck does that mean? And isn’t 300 yen (US$1.96) for two of them a little on the steep side?!
There was no way we couldn’t purchase them at this point, though, so we took them home and released the alien tubers from their package. They truly didn’t look like any kind of regular potato or sweet potato that we’d ever seen before. From a certain angle, they gave the appearance of two very crooked hearts.
After doing some research, we learned that they’re often cultivated in Southeast Asia and are related to Japanese yams. They’re supposedly delicious when fried and eaten with salt.
It was honestly hard to think of them as food, however, since from the other side, they looked flattened and one-dimensional, almost like jagged rocks–or perhaps meteorites, to keep with the cosmic theme.
Their dark brown and beige-speckled appearance only strengthened that comparison.
Since it was our first time seeing such a vegetable, we also had no idea how to prepare them–but boiling seemed like a safe option.
After 20 minutes, the water had darkened considerably.
This had happened despite us washing the potatoes very well prior to throwing them in the pot. Did that indicate that they would have a very bitter taste…?
In any case, the potatoes felt like they were cooked and were steaming nicely, so we prepared to cut them.
Phew–we don’t know what we were expecting exactly (maybe neon?), but they looked pretty much like regular potatoes inside with a lovely golden hue.
There were also lighter-colored fibers spun throughout.
We decided “simple is best” for taste-testing so we began by sprinkling a little salt on one of the pieces. Itadakimasu!
The taste and texture were much different from what we expected. First, the chunk wasn’t as soft as a regular potato, and was also tart, bitter, and a bit grassy. Maybe it was just our imaginations, but those sensations also lingered in the aftertaste. The best phrase to describe it would be “a feral taro.” Sadly, it just wasn’t particularly tasty in our opinion.
But perhaps that conclusion was partly due to our style of preparing it. Since the similarity to taro was definitely there, we decided to try simmering the rest of the pieces with soy sauce and sugar–like how we would typically prepare the latter–to bring out its true flavor.
This style was definitely tastier than simply boiling it and adding salt. The bitterness was replaced by sweetness and the moisture content seemed to have increased. If we were served this style without knowing what it was, we probably would have eaten it till it was gone with no questions asked. However, the one thing that didn’t seem to change was the bitter aftertaste.
The bottom line: Since the tuber called taro already exists, we don’t think you necessarily need to go out of your way to choose the alien potatoes. They might make for a fun prank, though, if you were to leave a couple of them in your friend’s pantry along with some regular potatoes.
For another unusual fruit resembling something from the cosmos, check out our thoughts on the alien-like purple fruit called akebi in Japanese.
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