It is best to eat jicama within a week or so. Jicama is very sensitive to chill injury, so it is best to store it on your kitchen counter until you are ready to use it. Once you cut into it, store any cut jicama in the refrigerator and eat it within a few days. I would not recommend storing it in a plastic bag, but rather just as it is in the refrigerator.
Jicama is an odd-shaped vegetable with brown skin. It is also known as yam bean, Mexican yam or Mexican turnip and is native to Mexico. The name of this vegetable is pronounced HICK-uh-mah or HEE-kuh-mah. It is a tropical plant that resembles a bean plant with bean-like vines and seed pods. The jicama grows underground and is a tuber that can produce multiple tubers off the one main stem. On the outside jicama is not the most attractive or flashy vegetable. Peel away the brown, leathery skin and you’ll find a solid white flesh inside that is mild in flavor, crunchy with a slight sweetness and slightly starchy.
You can eat jicama both raw and cooked. One of the most basic ways to eat jicama is to slice it into sticks and give it a squeeze of lime juice and a light sprinkling of chili powder. This is a common street food in many parts of Mexico. Jicama pairs well with citrus fruit and is often used in raw salads and salsas prepared with limes and/or oranges. It also pairs well with avocado, peppers, cilantro, tomatoes, seafood, onions, and garlic to name just a few complementary ingredients. In Asian cuisine you may find jicama used in stir-fry type preparations. When stir-fried, jicama should be added towards the end of cooking to retain the crisp texture. If you let it get just slightly soft, it has almost a potato-like flavor and texture.
Growing Information: We grow jicama on plastic covered beds to trap additional heat and make the plants think they are in a warmer, tropical location. The plant forms blossoms that produce a pod containing seeds that can be planted to propagate the next year’s crop. While this is happening above ground, a tuber is swelling below ground. Sometimes a plant will produce a single tuber and sometimes a second one develops below the first.
Additional Fun Facts: We credit one of our crew members, Jose Antonio Cervantes Gutierrez (aka JAC), with introducing jicama to Wisconsin. One day we were working in the greenhouse and he presented me with a handful of seeds in a small packet. He asked if I thought we could grow it here. Well, I had no idea how to grow jicama and had only eaten it several times. We decided to give it a try and after several years of learning we are finally getting good results! I asked him why he brought those seeds with him when he came to work here that year. There is a large farm not far from where he lives that grows large amounts of jicama. He would pass by their fields, see the jicama and was intrigued by it. He said he brought them because he had tried planting them at home, but couldn’t ever watch them grow because he had to leave to come here to work! So, he brought the seeds with him so we could plant them here and he could watch them develop! JAC’s favorite way to eat jicama is to eat it raw with a squeeze of lime juice and salt or lime juice and a sprinkling of Tajin, a seasoning mix made from salt and a specific type of chile.
