Japanese Sweet Potato Salad
I love this recipe. Mostly because these Japanese Sweet Potatoes are so great to work with. But also because if you can cool them down after boiling, you can increase the amount of resistant starch in these gems.
Regular sweet potatoes are rich in fibre, vitamins B6 and some C, potassium, and beta-carotene. But these Japanese cousins have just 100 calories in one medium potato, offer up ample fibre, and some protein that wouldn’t normally expect.
Resistant starch is a prebiotic fibre, meaning it feeds the bacteria in your gut, producing short-chain fatty acids as a by-product. It helps with your digestive health, and may even prevent some cancers and chronic diseases.
Resistant starch may also help with weight loss and lowering blood pressure, improve blood sugar management, insulin sensitivity and your heart’s health.
White flesh sweet potatoes have more resistant starch than the regular orange flesh variety. But here’s the kicker: Cooling your starchy potato or rice may actually increase the resistant starch in your food.
Starch retrogradation is what this process is known as. It’s the cooling process that improves the resistant starch content in starchy foods after cooking. Now, before you go boiling up a bag of Cheetos, your starting point must already contain resistant starch.
The longer and colder you perform the “cooling” process with your “leftover” rice, pasta, potatoes, or buckwheat, the better the retrogradation. So yesterday’s rice might actually be better for your belly in the long run. This is the best reason you’ll need to batch cook and meal plan - it may just help you prevent heart disease, or lose a pound or two.
While the cooking, cooling method works to enhance resistant starch (and you can re-heat as needed), ensure you are attaining enough quality fibre in your diet. If you have questions on this and what’s right for you, reach out.
Aside from the sweet potatoes in this salad recipe, other foods rich in resistant starch include potatoes, green bananas, legumes, grains (such as rice).
Ingredients & Directions
Estimated time: 45 minutes
(add time for more resistant starch by pre-cooking and cooling the sweet potatoes)
Effort/Skill: Medium
Servings: 4
Salad
2 Japanese sweet potatoes - cubed, boiled & cooled
2 cups kale - chopped, washed & massaged
2 carrots - cubed
2 celery stalks - diced
1 english cucumber - diced
1 red pepper - sliced into slivers
1 floret of broccoli - diced
1 red onion - sliced into slivers
1/2 cup cilantro - chopped
Dressing
1/4 cup vegan mayonnaise
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp maple syrup
dash of salt & pepper
3 crushed garlic cloves
Optional
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp pumpkin seeds - raw
roasted chickpeas
Directions
In a large saucepan, boil water and add cubed Japanese sweet potatoes. Boil until well cooked and flesh of potatoes is soft. Once the potatoes are cooked, drain and soak in cool water while you make your salad. You can pre-cook the potatoes and cool overnight in the fridge for even more resistant starch.
Chop, dice salad ingredients. Top with cilantro and onion.
In a small jar, mix all dressing ingredients together and shake well. Add in olive oil or lime juice if you wish.
Add the cooled sweet potatoes to the salad and drizzle the dressing over top.
Top the salad with other toppings like raw pumpkin seeds.
Toss and enjoy! Serve
Nutritional information
Sources:
Birt, D. F., Boylston, T., Hendrich, S., Jane, J.-L., Hollis, J., Li, L., McClelland, J., Moore, S., Phillips, G. J., Rowling, M., Schalinske, K., Scott, M. P., & Whitley, E. M. (2013). Resistant starch: Promise for improving human health. Advances in Nutrition (Bethesda, Md.), 4(6), 587–601. https://doi.org/10.3945/an.113.004325
Van Hung, P., Vien, N. L., & Lan Phi, N. T. (2016). Resistant starch improvement of rice starches under a combination of acid and heat-moisture treatments. Food Chemistry, 191, 67–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2015.02.002
