Yummy Yammy Reinventing Salsa Market With Tomato-Free Sweet Potato Salsas

Vermont company Yummy Yammy proudly announces the world's first sweet potato salsa, disrupting the salsa category by replacing a typical tomato base with America's favorite superfood, flame-roasted sweet potatoes.

Founder and Owner, Lisa Johnson spent years perfecting the recipes for her line of 100% sweet potato based salsas after puzzling over ways to incorporate more sweet potatoes into her family's meal plans.

"I don't have anything against tomatoes," assures Johnson. "I didn't even set out to make salsa. I just wanted to make sweet potatoes easier to eat every day.

"U.S.-grown, flame-roasted sweet potato provides a naturally slightly-sweet, scrumptious, and super-nutritious base for my fun salsas," says Johnson. "Most important to me, customers constantly say the main thing is they taste amazing," shares Johnson, blushing slightly. "They love that they're natural powerhouse foods, but mostly it's that they're yummy. So I guess I picked the right company name."

Surprising Ingredient Quality

They're "yummy" not just because of using tubers instead of nightshades, but also because of the extraordinary quality invested in all the ingredients.

For example, flame-roasting enhances the natural slightly-sweet taste, the rich mouth feel, and the phenomenal nutrition of yams, making the new Yummy Yammy® brand salsas irresistible. 

"And most salsas use a cheaper white vinegar, or maybe cider vinegar to give them the necessary acidic type of taste," explains Johnson. "I use 100% pure lime juice, lemon juice, and balsamic vinegar. It's shocking how much difference that makes. Plus, our corn is non-GMO, of course, and every flavor has a great bean: Mexican has black turtles, white beans for Tuscan, and little French lentils in the Moroccan."

The company also adds kale to the Moroccan salsa, which has a fresh curry taste that is surprising on first try, but has quickly become Johnson's best seller. "They taste it the first time and go, 'Whoa'... and then they go back for a second taste... and a third...," Johnson smiles.

And who has ever heard of a Tuscan salsa? That one must have tomatoes in it, right?

"No," laughs Johnson, "Surprisingly enough, though, here, taste it, you'll be certain there is tomato... It's the balsamic vinegar and basil that suggests that to you ... but no, it's all sweeties. My customers tell me it tastes like lunch on the Italian countryside. That makes me so happy, because that is just the flavor I am after: Instant Italy"

Exceptional Flavor with Minimal Calories

With each jar loaded with crave-worthy, vibrant flavors and only 250 calories, these salsas have earned their frequent-flier miles for everyday eating. Destined for your chips, pretzels, celery sticks, wraps, burritos, sandwiches, burgers, eggs, nachos, are these three flavors:

• Mexican Sweet Potato Salsa (in Mild, Medium & Hot) with Black Beans, Corn & Chipotle

• Tuscan Sweet Potato Salsa with Roasted Red Pepper, White Bean & Basil

• Moroccan Sweet Potato Salsa with Curry, Lentil & Kale

All are available at Whole Foods from Providence to Boston to Portland Maine, independent natural/specialty foods from Colorado to Vermont, and on Amazon. Two northeast distributors carry the line. Wholesale accounts can taste every flavor at the upcoming Fancy Food Show in New York, June 28-30, 2015, at booth #5042 in the Vermont Pavillion. 

Yummy Yammy's Most Frequent Question: Why Sweet Potatoes?

Salsa hasn't changed much in 20 years, so why has Johnson decided to disrupt a familiar category with such a surprising choice as sweet potatoes?

Since childhood, Johnson had a positive association with yams, as her favorite uncle simply adored them. Years later, with her own toddlers grabbing every fresh tomato, peapod, and dirt-covered carrot possible from the garden, Johnson wanted to deepen and continue her children's love of veggies inside at the dinner table too. Sweet potatoes seemed the perfect food: delicious, colorful, a little bit sweet naturally, and loaded with natural nutrition; but they proved time-consuming to get to table in her Vermont, microwave-free kitchen -- time that Johnson and her husband didn't have with two full-time community jobs. Out of a desire to make sweet potatoes more convenient to eat on a daily basis, Johnson concocted her first salsas in her spare time.

Because US-grown, orange-fleshed sweet potatoes are amazing little nutritional powerhouses, Yummy Yammy's artisinally crafted Sweet Potato Salsas can lay claim to more lifestyle and health benefits than the company can possibly list on any label: naturally fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan, full of powerhouse antioxidants (each 2T serving has 50% RDA of Vitamin A), 250 calories or less in each jar, and those are just the highlights.

Add to that: studies have shown that sweet potatoes can contribute to stabilizing blood sugar over time; the many minerals and phytonutrients in sweet potatoes are effective in athletic recovery; and their rich mouthfeel gives a sense of fullness and satisfaction that never comes from a whole box of guilt-and-sugar-laden fat-free desserts.

Yummy Yammy has combined wholesome, surprising ingredients to create new, world-class salsa flavors for American customers.