Mashed Sweet Potato

Mashed sweet potatoes are the ultimate alternative to traditional mashed potatoes, and definitely the most popular root vegetable in the Paleo template.  Apart from being a great source of starchy carbs and fiber, sweet potatoes provide a wealth of micronutrients! Per 100g, sweet potatoes contain almost all of your recommended daily value of vitamin A (from carotenoids); good amounts of vitamins B5 and B6 as well as manganese; and some amount of all the other dietary vitamins and minerals! Their sweetness pairs well with virtually any protein, and adding a little salt and pepper helps to balance out their flavor.

This is one of the recipes I developed for the Paleo Bites TV pilot. I didn’t show how to make mashed sweet potato in the pilot episode but served the finished dish with mashed sweet potatoes to round out the meal and the nutrition. In the pilot episode, I served these mashed sweet potatoes with Pecan-Crusted Chicken Breast with Cauliflower Gravy and Bacon-Braised Kale.

You can watch the entire pilot episode here:

This is a great recipe with which to experiment with the many varieties of sweet potatoes easily found in grocery stores these days (my Whole Foods and Sprouts both tend to have at least four varieties at any given time and my local Farmer’s Market easily provides double that throughout the season).  Purple and Japanese sweet potatoes tend to be less sweet whereas orange sweet potato varieties range from delightfully to overpoweringly sweet.  Orange sweet potatoes also tend to have much higher water content than purple or Japanese varieties (why they tend not to make the best sweet potato fries), which is the main reason for baking these sweet potatoes before mashing rather than boiling (baking also concentrates rather than dilutes the flavor).  Yes, these do take a little longer to make compared to boiling, but the hands-on time is decidedly less without all that peeling and chopping!

To make this recipe AIP-compliant, simply omit the pepper and use a non-dairy fat.

Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Serves: 4-6

Ingredients:

• 4 medium sweet potatoes (about 3 pounds)
• 1/4 cup butter, ghee, lard, duck fat or coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon sea salt, to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Clean sweet potatoes with water and a vegetable brush.
2. Place whole unpeeled sweet potatoes on a baking sheet, and bake at 375F for 60-70 minutes, until soft when pierced with a knife.
3. Allow sweet potatoes to cool enough to handle. Gently peel of the skin (it should come off very easily) and discard. Place peeled baked sweet potatoes in casserole dish and mash using a wire potato masher. Stir in butter, salt and pepper.
4. Place mashed sweet potato back in the oven for 10-15 minutes to heat back up. Serve!