Spicy Beans on Baked Sweet Potato: Frugal & Filling

A sweet potato is a nourishing gift from the ground. Baked until soft and steaming, they melt in your mouth like candy floss. Except they are far more nutritious than candy. Low on the glycemic index (17), it ranks as a healthy, high-fibre carbohydrate exceptionally high in Vitamin A and offer 65% of the daily requirement of Vitamin C.

Where a sweet potato can lead you astray is how you cook and dress it. Load up on butter or fry it in oil to make fries and you start to defile the tuber’s virtues.

Spicy Beans on Baked Sweet Potato

I found this recipe for Spicy Beans on Baked Sweet Potato in the Murdock Books Australia cookbook Homestyle: Low-Fat. It is essentially a vegetarian chilli dish served atop half a large baked sweet potato and garnished with a dollop of sour cream and a light grating of cheddar cheese.

Here I’ve scaled the recipe to half the original 6 servings. I baked one large sweet potato to use for 2 servings as prescribed. The third I’ll have as a lunch meal or as filling in a Quesadilla with grated cheddar. I only halved the quantities of red kidney beans and the corn kernels, to up my consumption of vegetables. I was still left with a very chunky and filling topping.

The longest part of preparing this recipe is the hour needed to bake the sweet potato. Some folks are fine ‘baking’ their sweet potatoes in the microwave, so if you’re one of them you can cut down your cooking time going that route. The bean mixture would cook and thicken faster in a large open skillet, rather than in the saucepan called for in the original recipe.

Assemble ingredients. Note: I pulled my jar of ginger in error for this photo. Use garlic!

Spicy Beans on Baked Sweet Potato                                 Makes: 3 servings

• 1                               Large orange sweet potato, about 165 g
• 1 Tbsp                     Olive oil
• 1 medium               Onion, chopped
• 3 cloves                   Garlic, crushed
• 2 tsp                         ground Cumin
• 1 tsp                         ground Coriander
• 1/2 tsp                     Chilli powder
• 1 -15 oz                    can diced tomatoes
• 1 cup/250 mL        Vegetable stock
• 1 med-large             Zucchini, cubed
• 1                                Green sweet pepper, chopped
• 1/2 – 11 oz                can of Corn kernels, drained (or about 1/2 cup frozen)
• 1 – 15 oz                    can of Red Kidney beans, rinsed and drained
• 3 Tbsp                      fresh chopped cilantro leaves (or 1 tsp/serv of tube cilantro)
• Garnish                    (light) sour cream &/or grated (low-fat) cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. Scrub the sweet potato skin, pierce in several places with sharp knife, wrap in foil and bake in toaster oven for 1 hour at 350 F.

Cook onion for 5 minutes, then add garlic and spices. Stir & cook for 1 minute.

2. Heat oil in a large, wide skillet over medium heat. Cook the onions, stirring occasionally, until soft (about 5 minutes).

3. Add the garlic and the spices and cook, stirring for about 1 minute.

Bring broth, tomatoes and vegetables to a boil.

4. Add the stock and the tomatoes to the pan. Stir well to combine with onion and spices.

Simmer on med-low, partially covered, for 10 minutes.

5. Add the other vegetables and the beans. Bring the pan to a boil. Then reduce the burner heat so the mixture calms to a slow simmer. Cover partially and simmer for about 10 minutes. Stir occasionally to avoid burning.

Then simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes until thick and chunky.

6. Uncover the skillet, and continue to cook for another 10 minutes until the liquid has reduced and the bean mixture has thickened. You may need to increase the heat a bit. But keep an eye on your pan to burning.

7. Carefully slice the baked sweet potato in half lengthwise (to avoid burning yourself on the steaming potato). Spoon the spicy bean-vegetable mixture overtop. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro leaves or a squirt of cilantro from a tube.

8. To keep the low-fat feature of this fibre-rich vegetarian meal, dress each serving with moderate measures of (low-fat) sour cream and shredded cheddar cheese.

As you can see from my photo, I enjoyed this dish with half a chopped avocado (containing ‘good’ fat) and a crisp romaine salad drizzled with a bit of balsamic vinegar and a glass of Creemore Springs’ Ur Bock Dark Beer.

Serve with a boutique dark beer and crisp romaine salad