Honey Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are vegetable to be marveled, and a superfood for sure. I'm not talking about the kind that come packed in syrup in the can, but rather, ones right out of the ground, whole and loaded with healthy vitamins. Sweet potatoes are high in dietary fiber. Dietary fiber includes all parts of plant foods that your body can't digest or absorb. Unlike other food components such as fats, proteins or carbohydrates—which your body breaks down and absorbs—fiber isn't digested by your body. Therefore, it passes relatively intact through your stomach, small intestine, colon and out of your body. Even more, when eaten with the skin, sweet potatoes have more fiber than oatmeal! Along the same thread, sweet potatoes offer a low glycemic index rating. That’s because the sweet potato digests slowly, causing a gradual rise in blood sugar so you feel satisfied longer.

Sweet potatoes are also high in beta-carotene, vitamin A, vitamin B6, vitamin C, thiamine, niacin, potassium and copper. They are a good source of protein, calcium and vitamin E. Beta carotene is the nutrient responsible for giving sweet potato’s flesh its orange pigment. Beta carotene is converted to vitamin A in the body. A meager 200 gram (less than a cup) serving of sweet potato yields 769%DV of your vitamin A! Vitamin A can help improve vision and decrease your risk of heart attack and lung cancer. When cooking sweet potatoes, make sure to do so with some sort of fat. By eating sweet potatoes with fats, your body will more readily absorb the available vitamin A.

Honey Roasted Sweet Potatoes
2 pounds red-skinned sweet potatoes (3-4 small-medium)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons honey, agave if you want to make it vegan
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
A few pinches of salt
1/4–1/2 tsp Cayenne Pepper, depending on spice tolerance
2 peeled and sliced shallots

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cut the sweet potatoes (skin on!) into 1-inch pieces and put in a baking dish or rimmed cookie sheet along with the sliced shallots. In a small bowl whisk together olive oil, honey, cayenne and lemon juice. Pour mixture over potatoes and toss to coat. Sprinkle with salt and bake, stirring half way through the cooking, for about 40 minutes until potatoes are tender.

Eat over rice or quinoa. I sometimes toss in whole, raw, peeled carrots with the potatoes and shallots. They take about the same amount of time to cook and provide a second heaping dose of beta carotene, which I need since my husband and I are blind as bats and our children are doomed to being those babies with the crazy strap on eye glasses right out of the womb.