Healthy Baked Sweet Potato Recipe

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Hey guys, this is Heather from healthyveganrecipes.net. Today I’m going to show my healthy baked sweet potato recipe - a meal that can be made in very simple way, because at my nutrition blog healthyeatingstartshere.com, I’ve be talking about detoxing for the last couple of weeks, cause this whole month is going to be about detoxes.

So in that mode of thinking, I’m going to show you a meal that can be made and eaten while you’re doing a very simple style of detox, if you want more information of that style of detoxing, head over to the blog, the nutrition blog.

So, what I’m going to start with is a sweet potato. And sweet potato are excellent thing to eat during cleanse because they’re a starch base vegetables, so they can use to get some calories but they’re fairly light on the digestive system if you compare them into grain, bean or a potato, they’re much lighter for you to process.

So, to cook this potato you can either boil it, but what I’m going to show you how I make my healthy sweet potato recipe. Now boiling takes a lot less time so if you crunch for time, go with boiling. If you have the time and really what happens is, you put it in the oven and then you forget about it, so it’s not so much time to spend in the kitchen, just a little bit advance planning.

So what you’re going to do to prep this sweet potato for baking is just poke some holes in it, and I like to use some knife because sweet potatoes are pretty dense and a fork doest quite cut when you hit sweet potatoes. So put that on your chopping board and put some hole in it.

Although it looks like a good way to vent frustration because you’re literally stabbing this sweet potato - I wouldn’t really recommend it because things can get a little bit out of hand, and you want to make sure that you don’t cut you’re self – that’s very important.

Now I find that if I go thoroughly deep into this sweet potato, its cooks faster because the heat can get in there, the steam can come out, just all around like it seem. And like I said if your press for time just peal the sweet potato, boil it, it will be a lot faster it will have more flavor if you baked it, that’s why I’m doing that.

Now, I’m going to put this on a tray to put it into my toaster oven because I love to use my toaster oven for smaller things. I only use the oven for things that are big. So put this in there you can do whatever temperature you like really. The temperature will just determine how fast this is going to cook.

Three hundred to three fifty should take about half an hour. And then I’m going to put some other vegetables in there with it. But, I’m not going to put the main quite yet because they are faster in cooking. So I’m going to do some carrot and I also going to do a zucchini, I’ve got an onion and I’ve even got some garlic.

So, even though I’m not cooking with any oil I can still use these things to make a really flavorful dish, but like I said, will pop that sweet potato in first and this will take more like twenty minutes to cook so I’ll prep this and put them in about ten.

So, my sweet potato is been in for about ten minutes and I took a peek its starting pack wrap a little bit around its stab wounds, and I can smell it in the air, so I usually go by those judgments to make sure that its well on its way in cooking before I add the rest of the vegetables.

The next thing we put in are the carrots and they also need to be just stab a little bit. I’m going to leave the end of my carrots on because it’s just one less surface that’s expose to the heat and I’ve cut off the ends when I tip them out of the oven.

I did scrubbed this carrot, they look a little bit rough still, because they just still have some wounded bits. But what I’m going to do is leave that on until I take them out after they cooked, because if I cook that out or I peal this carrots and it going totally exposed the air and then going to dry out.

But if you keep their skin intact by just washing them and just rubbing them a little bit with your hands a suppose to the actual scrub brush, they will stand that much better to the heat.

Next zucchini, same thing don’t cut the ends just give it some wounds for vegetables and then onions same thing just get right through the onion. The onions are ones, because they have so many layers its very difficult for the heat to get through them, so really give it a good stabbing – I feel so bad right now.

And then the garlic will be just fine, just leave it the paper thin skins so take off some of the skin of the outside but then leave that as is. Garlic will cook very quickly because it so small, so you can’t actually leave this out until this last take ten minutes, if you want to keep them hot when you serve.

If you don’t care about giving them hot, you can put them out with everything else and then just take them out a little bit earlier. So I am lucky because I have a large toaster oven that all of this can fit into. So I’m just going pull my sweet potato out, add these things and put it back in.

Put that back in for about twenty minutes. And the mean time you can just got ahead and hangout. So it’s been about twenty minutes over here and I added the garlic in, about ten minutes ago. Now things are - you can see the juices starting to run down here so things are definitely getting going.

The way to test if this sweet potato is done – and usually keep a little poke with my hand or a knife. If you push into it, I’m feeling a little bit of resistance, this is kind of a monster sweet potato so it’s taking a little bit of time.

The carrots you can cook as long as you want basically, if you liked it a little bit crunchier you don’t have to steam for so long. The onion should get nice and soft, it definitely need more time and the zucchini in the back here you can do longer, zucchini are also is not a too big deal how long it goes in there for.

So what I going to do is pop this back in, give it another, I think another twenty minutes and what you can do with this time is make a sauce. So sauce is always nice when you got some plain vegetables to dress them up and to make them more exciting.

And I’m going to show you the sauce that will be good for those of you who are doing a detox. So, it all whole foods and its pretty simple. If your not into detox you to make it more exciting that’s fun, but I think this is a pretty nice sauce and anyway.

So were going to start the base of tahini, which is sesame seed paste and that’s going to provide some fats for your diet and make a little lot more satisfying and just special. And then give it a little kick with some lemon juice – I got some lemon juice from concentrated that I watered down, but a fresh lemon is awesome.

You can also use some type of some apple cider vinegar, which isn’t to alkalizing for the body. I wouldn’t do any other type of vinegar on detox, because it will be a little bit too acidifying for the body, but apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, orange juice, grape fruit juice, any type of light citrus would be nice.

So stirring it all together and then what I’m I going to add to season is some ground ginger, fresh ginger are also excellent but ground ginger is just kind of fast sometimes – you know what I mean, right?

Some of that in there, I’m also going to put cinnamon to go with the sweetness of the sweet potatoes and a little pinch of cayenne – cayenne is very spicy, so if your like me you don’t like spice too much, go over easy on that one.

Now all three of those spices help to stimulate your digestive system, your metabolism and the cleansing of you’re body. They aren’t just for flavor, although they do add some lovely flavor and they will also help your body in its detox cleansing process.

So stir those in, the fat in the tahini will help carry them through the sauce and make a really wonderful flavor for your veggies. Once your veggies are baked, you just chopped, peal, dip them all or toast together in a bowl, keep them on your plate. You can either put the garlic into the sauce or chopped it up and put it in with the vegetables.

And then toss them with the sauce or you can just drizzled it over chopped. And there you go, you can enjoy your beautiful meal – healthy baked sweet potatoes recipe on a detox.

If you’re wondering how earth you can eat delicious baked potatoes on a detox head over to healthyeatingstartshere.com. I’m blogging this month all about detoxing and of course I will post this healthy baked sweet potatoes recipe over at healthyveganrecipes.net