Healthy Indian Sweet Potato Recipe (With Video)

This transcription will have some mistakes because it is partially automated.

Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we’re going to make a dish with Indian seasonings and its going to have yellow split peas and sweet potatoes.

I’ve started by cooking the split peas over here on the back and what I’ve done is to infused those peas with flavor, I have added some cardamom pods and some coriander seeds and what will happen is as the water absorbs into the peas its going to be leaching out of those spices so that the peas will actually have some flavors infused right in them.

So that’s gonna be lovely and all you do is just put these with some water, make sure there are enough water to cover the peas because they’re going to expand as they absorbed the water and do not add any salt yet.

Bring them to a boil and let them simmer, they’ll take about 30 minutes. While that’s going on you can start with your sweet potatoes. Now sweet potatoes in the store are often called yams or sweet potatoes.

Either one will work. They are both varieties of sweet potatoes, despite the fact that they are labelled yam sometimes. Usually they labelled the orange ones yams and those are the ones that I usually used because they taste nice.

And I know they have a lot of Vitamin A because they’re orange. The white flesh ones have their own nutrients and they’re fantastic to use as well. I just prefer the orange ones.

So what we’re gonna do is peel these guys just like you would peel a normal potato and then your going to cube it so to cube something just cut it in slices and then cut those slice into cubes.

It’s like dicing just cubing means they’re gonna be bigger. Now the bigger the chunk of sweet potatoes that you do the longer it’s going to take to cook so I’m gonna do some pretty small pieces on this so that it doesn’t take quite as long.

Alright! So I’ve cut up my sweet potatoes, I’ve also cut up the onion that I’m going to use and I like to use purple onion for Indian flavor dishes I just find the flavors go nice together.

I’m also heating up a large pot and the peas are done cooking so I’m gonna turn them off. I’ve got this heating up to medium and what I’m gonna do is just add a spoonful of coconut oil.

Now coconut oil is solid at room temperature so it’s a saturated fat meaning that it is chemically stable at high heat. So it’s a nice one to use for cooking and it also has a really nice flavor so I like it especially in these Indian dishes the coconut flavor goes nicely.

So you just let it soften up a little bit on the bottom of the pot and then add the onion. Ok? you don’t want to leave your oil sitting around in the pan because its just going to cook itself and we want the oil on the heat as little s possible.

Even though we’re using coconut oil, the less you heat it, the less chance there is for it to form any things unhealthy. So just give these onions a little bit time on the heat to soften up.

Once your onions have soften up then you can add your ginger. I’m using fresh ginger that I just minced. If you don’t like ginger too much, you can use ground ginger or you can grate this ginger instead of mincing it.

You wanna toss it around, if you’re using minced you want it get a little bit of heat before the rest of the ingredient go in so that it will soften the flavor just a bit.

Now I’ve also thrown in here some fresh turmeric which I’ve never seen before but there it is. It was in the store and looks like a carrot inside but outside it looks like just some orange ginger. So I’m really excited to try this and let’s see how it turn out.

I always like to make sure that I can smell an ingredient before moving on to the next so I’m waiting till I can smell the ginger coming up from the pan and then I’m going to add all of these delicious sweet potatoes.

Now sweet potatoes are gonna take a while to cook so putting it in first and then later I’m gonna add some zucchini and some spinach for some greens but what you wanna do is stir these sweet potatoes so that it gets coated with the oil that’s to protect and preserve the flavor of the sweet potatoes.

Once it gotten some color on it you can turn this down a little bit and just leave it for a few minutes to let the sweet potatoes start to soften just slightly on the outside of the cube.

So it is time to add the next vegetable which is zucchini and I’ve cut them in slices and then half them but do whatever you like. So get those in the pan, toss them around.

So the first thing I’m gonna put in here is the cayenne and I am very cautious with the cayenne because I’m not big on spicy food. Ok! Turmeric ground is yellow, very yellow. Now as I’ve showed you I put in some fresh turmeric so I’m just putting in a touch here just for some nice color.

Then I’ve got some ground coriander and I’m just putting coriander in this time, cumin is always a nice pair with it in the Indian dishes but what I’m wanted to put in here today is some cardamom to go with the cardamom pods that I’ve put into peas. That just gonna up the cardamom flavor a little bit.

And then I’ve got to finish it up some black pepper. I like that. Ok! Stir this around so that the vegetables get coated in the spices and like I said the nice thing about making your own is that you can put as much or as little of those spices as you like.

Ground clove is a really nice addition as well if you like cloves. Cloves is very strong, they have a peppery flavor so be careful with that. Ok! The last thing we’re gonna add here is some salt and what the salt is going to do is draw the moisture out of the vegetables so that they cook.

So we’re not actually adding any water here so for those of you who are worried about losing nutrients in the water that’s not gonna happen. For those of you that are concerned about fat wherever you cook on the stove you need to use a little bit of oil.

Fat is an essential part of your diet and I used really really minimal oil for this dish so you don’t have to use a lot just a little and then what that means is we don’t need any water so that the water soluble vitamins and minerals stay in the vegetable in this dish.

So once you get the salt stirred in there, you want to put a lid on top of your pot because what will happen is the salt is gonna draw that moisture out and if you leave the lid off the moisture will all gonna evaporate in the air.

And what you wanna is have that moisture come out of those vegetables so that they’ll cook and then get reabsorb with all that flavors stays in there. So you’re gonna leave this on medium low. I’ve got mine at 4 out of 9.

Your gonna leave this, it will probably take 20 maybe 30 minutes if you don’t use enough salt it will take quite a while for these things to cook so don’t be afraid with the salt. You don’t want to use too too much especially if you’re on a low sodium diet but if you’re using sea salt its natural, its help these things to cook and if you’re not eating any process foods you’re not probably getting too much sodium in your diet anyway.

So leave that at is for about 20 to 30 minutes until the sweet potatoes are soft and then we will carry on by adding those peas.

This transcription will have some mistakes because it is partially automated.

If you’re using cast iron like I am you just need to be careful about the handles because they get very hot. What I use is just my tea towel.

Ok! This has had about 20 minutes on here and be careful when you take the lid off because its gonna be steamy. Yup! That’s hot!

Ok, but it’s looking nice, everything is really soft in here. Be careful when you stir because the sweet potatoes can fall apart so easily.

Ok, so we can turn this down to low now, what you’re gonna do is get your split peas. If there’s any water just drain it off, there’s none left here. Throw them in and I actually have a mix of yellow and green because I ran out of yellow. Thought I had more that I did.

Ok, then we need to do because we cook this beans with no salt, you need to add salt to them for the flavor to enter so a little bit more than we had before I’m gonna add a bit more pepper to flavor up those peas and then stir it through get them nicely mix with the vegetables.

And you need to give these peas some time for the flavor to enter into them because they don’t taste very much and any type of legume or beans is gonna need 10 minutes for the flavor to get in there.

So once you get it stirred around and hopefully you don’t spill too much on your stove like I do. You can add a bit more flavoring if you like to flavor up those peas and then what you do is cover this back up for the moisture to not evaporate.

Give it another 5 to 10 minutes while that’s going what you can do is chop up your spinach that will be added last. Once you’ve given those peas some time to absorb all of the flavor of the spices and from the vegetables then what you’ll do is toss in your spinach.

Any type of green will work here but all you’re looking for is to toss it in and get it just slightly wilted so that’s why we’re adding this at the end otherwise you’re cook your spinach too much and that’s not terribly fun.

Ok, now there was no water left in my peas and things are looking kinda dry here so what I’m gonna do is add just a little bit of water, it will help steam the spinach and just bring some moisture into my peas.

And after some few minutes your spinach is going to wilt just like this, that’s how I like it. You can let it go a little bit longer if you like but your gonna lose more and more nutrients from your spinach as it goes.

So serve it up, it can be on top of some more greens, some fresh ones or a green if you like. I’m just gonna have it as it, topped with some sesame seeds that I’ve toasted with the spices and have a salad on the side can be lovely.

You can find the recipe for this at HealthyVeganRecipes.net. I’m Heather and this is Freshly Served.