Introducing Yummy Yammy! Mexican Sweet Potato Salsa Recommended by the Peachy's Pantry Panel of Whom You Know.
Think you know salsa? Think again! Thanks to Yummy Yammy, the world of salsa has just gotten a lot more exciting (and a lot healthier!). Made with 100% pure, flame-roasted sweet potato, instead of the typical tomato base, this salsa will absolutely knock your socks off. The Mexican Sweet Potato Salsa, which contains black beans, corn, and chipotle, along with other natural flavors, is fantastic. It has a definite kick, but is not overwhelming. It's a perfect topping for tortilla chips, tacos, salads, burgers, and more, and can easily be incorporated into countless recipes to add a little excitement to them. Two thumbs up!
Yummy Yammy’s Mexican Sweet Potato Salsa is both delicious and versatile. As the name suggests, it’s a salsa and therefore it’s great on its own as a dip. However, with a bean and sweet potato base, it can be used in tacos, burritos or anything else in place of regular black or refried beans. I made a beef burrito and used this in place of salsa and beans. It had the flavor and texture of refried beans, but with the added zing of a great salsa! It was delicious, and I can’t wait to try it with other things as well.
This is a guilt-free way to make nachos! Yummy Yammy has turned a great idea into the newest trend for foodies: a salsa made with sweet potatoes. The Mexican flavor (one of three new products) has corn, black bean and chipotle in it for a zing of a taste, with no tomato. Use a jar over your favorite nacho chips, some grated cheese, and make a snack for the whole family. This is a great movie food, so start experimenting with new flavors, and plan a movie night with your friends at home. The wholesome toothiness of this salsa lets you use it as a side dish, with chicken breast, for instance. Add some rice, and you've got a meal in a jar.
The fall is here and football season has begun. Everyone knows that means get togethers and lots of food. Why not try something new instead of the same old salsa? Yummy Yammy's Mexican Sweet Potato Salsa is great. The corn, black bean and chipotle flavor give this sweet potato salsa a delicious kick. Not only does it taste great but also it's good for you too with only 250 calories in the entire jar.
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Yummy Yammy had its inception in 2009 in the Norwich, Vermont kitchen of Lisa Johnson, a mother of two working for a nonprofit. Johnson was looking for a quick and easy way to add more sweet potatoes into her family’s busy schedule. Why sweet potatoes? Not only are sweet potatoes an excellent source of Vitamin A (the natural form of beta carotene, a highly touted antioxidant), they also provide Vitamin C, fiber, magnesium, potassium, calcium, iron, B6, niacin, thiamine, riboflavin, Vitamin E & Vitamin K, have no fat at all, are naturally low calorie and low sodium. A 200g sweet potato even has 8g protein (yes, veggies have protein). This impressive resume supports calling sweet potatoes a "superfood.”
In addition to being packed with nutrition, sweet potatoes are delicious—if done right. “You can microwave a sweet potato, but it cooks so unevenly. And if you boil them, they can turn into flavorless mush. That’s no way to turn a kid on to sweet potatoes,” explains Johnson. She wanted her kids to be able to eat sweet potatoes frequently, but was having trouble making time for 30-40 minutes of oven roasting for every sweet potato meal.
"One day I just stamped my foot at myself and said, 'Lisa, you're an intelligent woman. Figure it out!' And suddenly it occurred to me to make a bunch at once, keep them in the fridge, and throw them - already cooked - into the dinner at the last minute."
She soon realized that if she was having that problem, she couldn’t be the only one. With increasing rates of obesity intersecting with increasing hours of work, it’s not hard to see consequences from people not having time to eat well. "At first I made this food because I needed something that was delicious, quick to put together, had great all-around nutrition, didn't have any junk in it, and that we could eat on the run,” she says. “Turns out, a lot of other busy people need that, too.”
She started selling Tex-Mex Dip—a tasty concoction of sweet potato purée, black beans, corn, and hot peppers—at Dan & Whit’s, a general store in Norwich. It was refrigerated, and made in small batches in Johnson’s kitchen. It was a big hit, and expanded to other local stores as well as the Norwich Farmer’s Market in short order.
Greater demand inspired greater production, until Johnson found herself in her kitchen, surrounded by nine crock-pots, waiting for a circuit breaker to blow in her 1870 kitchen. Her daughters had long since come home from school, but were barred from the kitchen for food safety purposes. “Normally they’d come home and I’d give them a hug and a snack,” Johnson remembers. “But when I wasn’t finished cooking by then, I had to say ‘Don’t come across this line, -- it’s sanitized. Don’t touch me, see you in a few hours.’ What kind of way is that to welcome your kids home?” It was when she still wasn’t finished hours later when her husband came home from work that she realized that something had to change.
That epiphany sent Johnson to the Vermont Food Venture Center in Hardwick, VT, as one of its first businesses in July 2011. The VFVC is an expansive, modern food processing facility, including an incubator kitchen for new Vermont businesses. It also allowed the now-renamed Fiesta Dip to be shelf-stable rather than refrigerated for the first time. Its new place outside of the dairy case brought Yummy Yammy to more and more stores throughout New England, including the Boston area, where it was a big hit at the Boston Food and Wine Expo of February 2013.
Soon, the operation was beginning to outgrow its original branding, and even the VFVC. In a huge overhaul, Johnson renamed the product “Sweet Potato Salsa,” and added two completely new flavors: Tuscan Sweet Potato Salsa, with roasted red pepper, white bean, and basil, and Moroccan Sweet Potato Salsa, with lentil, curry, and kale in addition to Mexican Sweet Potato Salsa, formerly known as Fiesta Dip. She also bid a sad farewell to the VFVC to contract with Sauces ‘n’ Love, a co-packer in the Boston area, allowing for even greater volume—and just in the nick of time! Yummy Yammy was a smash hit at the New York Fancy Food Show of summer 2013, inspiring new orders further afield, including Québec, New York, and Georgia.
Throughout this phenomenal growth, Yummy Yammy has striven to uphold its original principles: that all the ingredients of food should really be food, and that nutritious food can and should taste wonderful. Johnson has worked tirelessly to ensure the highest quality and taste in her naturally nutritious products. That means no preservatives, no colors, no fats, and no sweeteners: everything in the jar is working together to make a food so delicious you want to eat the whole jar, and so nutritious you can.
