Roasted sweet potato

Roasted sweet potato is a popular winter street food in East Asia and parts of Southeast Asia.^[1]

Roasted sweet potato

Alternative names	Gun-goguma, kǎo-báishǔ, haau-faansyu, yaki-imo
Place of origin	East Asia (China, Japan, Korea); Southeast Asia (Vietnam)
Main ingredients	Sweet potatoes
Similar dishes	Roasted chestnut
Media: Roasted sweet potato

Regional names
Chinese name (northern China)
Chinese	烤白薯
Literal meaning	"roasted sweet potato"
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin kǎo-báishǔ Wade–Giles k'ao3 pai2shu3
Alternative Chinese name
Chinese	烤地瓜
Literal meaning	"roasted sweet potato"
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin kǎo-dìguā Wade–Giles k'ao3 ti4kwa1
Cantonese name
Chinese	煨番薯
Transcriptions Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization haau-faan-syu
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese	khoai lang nướng
Japanese name
Kanji	焼き芋
Kana	やきいも
Transcriptions Revised Hepburn yaki-imo

Regions

China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

In China, yellow-fleshed sweet potatoes are roasted in a large iron drum and sold as street food during winter.^[2] They are called kǎo-báishǔ (烤白薯; "roasted sweet potato") in northern China, wui faan syu (煨番薯) in Cantonese-speaking regions, and kǎo-dìguā (烤地瓜) in Taiwan and Northeast China, as the name of sweet potatoes themselves varies across the sinophone world.

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  Roasted sweet potato from China
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  Roasted sweet potato hawker in Hong Kong

Korea

Sweet potatoes roasted in drum cans, called gun-goguma (군고구마), are popular in both North and South Korea.^[3][4] The food is sold from late autumn to winter by vendors wearing ushanka, which is sometimes referred to as "roasted sweet potato vendor hat" or "roasted chestnut vendor hat". Although any type of goguma (sweet potato) can be roasted, softer, moist varieties such as hobak-goguma (pumpkin sweet potato) are preferred over firmer, floury varieties such as bam-goguma ("chestnut sweet potato") for roasting.^[5]

In South Korea, roasted sweet potatoes are dried to make gun-goguma-mallaengi (군고구마 말랭이) and frozen to make ice-gun-goguma (아이스 군고구마).^[6] Although gun-goguma has traditionally been a winter food, gun-goguma ice cream and gun-goguma smoothies are nowadays enjoyed in summer.^[7]

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  Gun-goguma
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  Typical gun-goguma drum can in Korea
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  Roasting goguma in a drum can
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  Gun-goguma-mallaengi (half-dried roasted sweet potatoes) as a snack

Japan

In Japan, a similar street food is called ishi yaki-imo (石焼き芋; "roasted sweet potato in heat stones") and sold from trucks during the winter.^[8]

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  yaki-imo vendor in Nara, Japan
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  Stone-baked potato wrapped in newspaper is a common style in Japan.

Northern Vietnam

Roasted sweet potato (khoai lang nướng) is a popular winter street food in Hanoi and Northern Vietnam.^[9]

Emoji

In 2010, an emoji was approved for Unicode 6.0 U+1F360 🍠 ROASTED SWEET POTATO for "roasted sweet potato".^[10]

See also

• List of sweet potato dishes
• Roasted chestnut