Roots and Tubers

This complex group of vegetables includes underground parts of plants. A botanist would make a distinction between taproots (such as carrots), root tubers (such as sweet potatoes), stem tubers (such as potatoes), bulbs (such as onions), corms (such as water chestnut), and rhizomes (such as ginger). For the cook, however, these distinctions are not always easy to make, and in the kitchen the similarities between the groups are more important than the differences. In all cases, these are underground portions of the plant that swell into storage organs. Some root vegetables, such as potatoes and sweet potatoes, are high in starch, while others, such as carrots, are low in starch.