Healthy Sweet Potato recipes are the latest trend to lead to weight loss. Studies show that their high fiber content, along with their low-glycemic properties, gives you a feeling of fullness and prevents blood sugar spikes which contribute to weight gain. Most of all, these delicious, slow burning carbs keep your energy levels up throughout the day!
Sweet Potato Recipes for Weight Loss
For only 162 calories per spud, sweet potatoes are a perfect weight-loss food. Learn what you can create with them.
Sweet potatoes aren’t just a must-have dish for gathering the family around the holiday table—they’re incredibly good for your health and can aid weight loss efforts, too. Just don’t ruin them with a bucket of brown sugar and marshmallows, Mom. Here’s why:
One large, flavor-packed sweet potato serves up 4 grams of satiety-boosting protein, 25 percent of the day’s belly-filling fiber and 11 times the recommended daily intake of vitamin A, a nutrient that aids immune function, vision, reproduction and cellular communication. The most impressive part is that you can reap all of these benefits for a mere 162 calories—it’s truly a nutritional champion!
But, beyond that, these sweet spuds are versatile and easy to cook with. They can be roasted, used to make burgers and quinoa cakes, added to mouthwatering salads and much, much more! To help you stay healthy while enjoying healthy, delicious dishes we found some of the very best sweet potato recipes from around the web. For even more weight loss inspiration, find out the ways to lose 10 pounds.
1
Sweet Potato Pancakes with Coconut Cream
Yields: 16 pancakes
Nutrition: (per pancake) 192 calories, 10.5 g fat, 8.4 g sat fat, 148 mg sodium, 21.3 g carbs, 1.2 g fiber, 3.4 g sugar, 3.7 g protein
If these fluffy, slightly sweet pancakes can’t convince your kids to eat their veggies, we’re not sure what will. They’re made with an entire cup of mashed sweet potatoes and topped with coconut cream and toasted coconut. Pretend that stream of syrup isn’t in the pic because you totally don’t need it!
2
Orange Sweet Potato Whole Grain Pancakes
Serves: 2
Nutrition: 249 calories, 2.5 g fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 388 mg sodium, 50.6 g carbs, 3.6 g fiber, 7.7. g sugars, 6.4 g protein
Made with whole-wheat flour, sweet potatoes, applesauce, orange juice and other wholesome ingredients, this sweet treat is a guilt-free breakfast. Give your short stack an extra helping of fat-fighting fruit for a breakfast worth waking up for.
3
Spicy Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Serves: 4
Nutrition: 130 calories, 6 g fat (4 g saturated), 360 mg sodium
Heat and sweet conspire here to make one of our favorite side dishes of all time, compliments of a classic Cook This, Not That! recipe. Serve these as a bed for yummy turkey meatloaf or any other grilled or roasted meat.
WHAT YOU’LL NEED
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 cup milk
2 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp minced chipotle pepper
Step 1
Place the sweet potatoes in a pot and fill with enough cold water to cover. Add 1 teaspoon salt and bring to a boil. Cook until the sweet potatoes are tender, but not mushy, about 15 minutes.
Step 2
Drain and return to the pot.
Step 3
Heat the milk and butter in a small saucepan.
Step 4
Slowly stir into the sweet potatoes, using a wooden spoon to vigorously incorporate the liquid (this will help create a smooth puree).
Step 5
Stir in the chipotle pepper and season with salt and pepper.
4
Grilled Sweet Potato Fries
Serves: 8
Nutrition: 255 calories, 6.6 g fat (1 g sat fat), 483 mg sodium, 7 g fiber, 0.8 g sugar, 2.6 g protein
Fries don’t have to be fried to be totally addictive. You can give sweet potato fries a tasty smoky flavor by grilling them; the twist on your tastebuds helps balance the spud’s natural sweetness.
Get the recipe from Gimme Some Oven.
5
Mason Jar Quinoa Salad With Sweet Potatoes and Thai-Style Dressing
Serves: 1
Nutrition: 505 calories, 22 g fat (10.4 g sat fat), 358.2 mg sodium, 10.6 g fiber, 14.37 g sugar, 12.6 g protein
This one’s more about quinoa and the brilliant mason jar salad, a genius way to get complex flavor on the go. But it’s sure to keep you full until dinnertime. Pack as much spinach as you can at the top and use a scant teaspoon of coconut oil to prepare the sweet potato.
6
Masala Khicdi
Serves: 8
Nutrition: 288 calories, 2 g fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 45 mg sodium, 58 g carbs, 12 g fiber, 9 g sugars, 12 g protein
If you love Indian food, this is a must-try sweet potato recipe. Indian food is often made with ghee (clarified butter), but this savory entree substitutes it with healthier vegetable oil. This one-pot dish also gets some freshly grated ginger, cayenne and turmeric spices, lentils, and veggies like eggplant, sweet potatoes, and green peas.
Health Benefits of Sweet Potatoes
1. Weight Loss
Not only are sweet potatoes low in calories and fat, they’re also known to reduce your appetite. They’re loaded with fibre, which makes you feel full for longer, and helps you steer clear of overeating and unnecessary snacking between meals. Sweet potatoes are considered a low-glycaemic food, which means they don’t cause an instant spike in blood sugar levels, helping maintain weight efficiently. Unstable glucose levels can cause conditions like obesity and diabetes.
2. Rich in Vitamin A
Vitamin A is important to your health for a number of reasons. It’s essential in helping the body fight off infections, and it’s important for vision, growth, cell division and reproduction. Sweet potatoes are rich in the vitamin and are an important source of vitamin A because they contain the antioxidant beta-carotene. It can protect the body from free radicals, slow down cognitive decline and keep your lungs healthy.
3. Gut Health
The fibre and antioxidants present in sweet potatoes are beneficial for your gut. They contain both soluble and insoluble fibre and since your body can’t digest either type, it stays within your digestive tract and provides a variety of gut-related health benefits. Some types of soluble fibre absorb water and soften your stool, while certain types of insoluble fibre don’t absorb water and add bulk. The antioxidants in purple sweet potatoes also stimulate the growth of healthy gut bacteria.
4. Help Manage Stress
Sweet potatoes are a significant source of magnesium, which is known to have calming effects on the brain. It helps reduce stress and anxiety and can improve sleep. It plays an important role in your nervous system, benefitting your neurological health. Magnesium deficiency has been linked to depression, mood disturbances and headaches, so if you have high stress and anxiety, magnesium is essential.
Hearty and Healthy Sweet Potato Recipes
We’ve got you covered from breakfast to dessert.
There is a lot to love about sweet potatoes, including the bevy of yummy and healthy sweet potato recipes they inspire.
What makes sweet potatoes so healthy? For starters, the bright orange tubers are a great source of energizing carbohydrates—fuel for your brain and body. They’ve also got a good amount of filling fiber (about 5 grams per medium sweet potato, skin not eaten) which can be beneficial for digestion, LDL cholesterol regulation, and blood sugar stabilization, as SELF has previously reported. Sweet potatoes are also rich in a variety of micronutrients your body needs, including vitamins A, C, and B6, as well as minerals like potassium and manganese.
Basically, cooking with sweet potatoes is a pretty great way to get some more nutritional goodness into your diet. Not to mention, a whole lot of deliciousness. True to their name, mellow-tasting sweet potatoes add naturally occurring sugars to whatever you’re making, savory or sweet. They’re also texture chameleons: They can be crispy when thinly sliced and roasted, fluffy when baked and mashed, and creamy when cooked and puréed.
We’ve got 34 yummy healthy sweet potato recipes for you that take full advantage of the veggie’s versatility—think silky soups, hearty skillets and stir-fries, delectable pastas, sweet treats, and more.
Harissa Sweet Potato Bacon Breakfast Bowl
Enjoy this satisfying and protein-packed breakfast bowl after a morning workout. The sauce is a smoky mix of spicy harissa and delicious bacon fat.
Sweet Potato Soup
This simple soup comes together pretty quickly with the help of canned chickpeas and vegetable or chicken stock. Top with crispy bacon or parsley and goat cheese.
Vegan Sweet Potato Pasta With Kale and Spinach
This recipe is all about the amazing sauce—a flavorful purée of roasted sweet potatoes, sautéed onions and garlic, cashews, nutritional yeast, smoked paprika, and lemon juice.
Sweet Potato Fried Rice
from The Hungry HutchThe key to this simple stir-fry is to use leftover rice, per the recipe notes. While long-grain white rice is a common choice, you can swap in brown or wild rice too.
Roasted Hasselback Sweet Potatoes
It’s more often regular potatoes that get the hasselback treatment, but the technique of fanning out super-thin slices is a great way to switch up your sweet potato game. Here, they get topped with a roasted red pepper sauce
Easy Chickpea Sweet Potato Sliders
You’ll need to use a food processor to make these veggie patties. You can serve them on any kind of bun, but we’re partial to the pretzel buns used here. Top with plenty of garlic aioli (included in the recipe).
Spicy Sweet Potato Peanut Soup
This dish is inspired by an African peanut stew that recipe author Moore loves. The combination of sweet potatoes and peanut butter is both delightful and craveable.
Apple Sweet Potato Toast
Baked slices of sweet potato don’t taste a thing like toast, but they’re an equally great vehicle for yummy toppings—like sliced apples and a maple-tahini drizzle, for instance.
Chorizo and Sweet Potato Enchilada
Diced sweet potatoes and Mexican chorizo are the perfect pair for a sweet and spicy enchilada filling. Recipe author LaKita recommends topping any extra filling with a fried egg for an easy breakfast.
Sweet Potato Berry Breakfast Boats
You can make a batch of roasted sweet potatoes on the weekend to enjoy for breakfast all week. The recipe recommends topping with blueberries, blackberries, granola, peanut butter, and Greek yogurt, but you can certainly make substitutions as needed..
Sweet Potato Miso Soup
A dollop of umami-rich miso makes pretty much everything taste better, including this simple and creamy sweet potato soup. Go for mellow white (shiro) miso here.
Tips for Cooking Sweet Potatoes
1. Cook with Thinner Sweet Potatoes
When you’re at the grocery store, do you naturally try to find the biggest, fattest sweet potatoes? Although this may seem like the way to go, using thinner sweet potatoes offers a much better cook. While baking, the heat will uniformly cook even the very centre of the thinner potatoes, whereas with fatter potatoes the outside will be done before the centres have a chance to cook.
2. Poke Holes
Be sure to poke holes into your sweet potatoes when baking them. This allows steam to escape, otherwise the sweet potato could explode. Sweet potatoes are full of water and the skin acts like a pressure vessel. If you don’t let the steam escape, it builds up pressure and can pop the skin.
3. When Roasting, Cut Into Chunks
Roasted sweet potatoes are the perfect addition to a salad, or to be used as a side to a main. Cut them into large chunks- around 1-inch, and make sure not to crowd the pan. Roast at 425 degrees Fahrenheit. This is hot enough to crisp the outsides and allows the flavours to caramelize and concentrate. Cutting them roughly around the same size will ensure all the pieces cook evenly.