Recipe | Sweet Potato Boats

I adore sweet potato.. so much so that I could happily eat it with every meal without complaint. Boiled and mashed, cut and baked in to fries, grated and fried in to rosti; sweet potato is one of my favourite foods. So much so that I could happily eat it with almost every main meal. I've recently started making sweet potato 'boats' which are so tasty and simple, I couldn't not share it with you.

The filling for these can be substituted for any foods you like which can be chopped finely, for these I used red onion, peppers and parsnips.

Ingredients:

1 Small Bag of Sweet Potatoes

1-2 Parsnips

1-2 Peppers

1 red onion

Handful of Grated Cheese (optional)

1 Teaspoon of Coconut Oil for Frying

Method:

- Wash the potatoes, then bake them at 180 degrees for 30-40 minutes or until soft.

- Grate the parsnips and bake at the same time as the potatoes until crispy.

- Finely chop the red onion and peppers, lightly fry in teaspoon of coconut oil.

- Remove from potatoes and parsnips from the oven and cut each potato in half length-ways.

- Using a tablespoon, remove the middle of the potato and place in a bowl, be careful to leave some potato around the edges of the skin else your 'boat' will fall apart.

- Add the grated parsnips, fried red onion and pepper the to sweet potato and mash/mix well.

- Spoon the mixture back in to the potato boats and finish with a sprinkling of cheese before placing back in to the oven for a further 10 minutes.

Many of us do our best to eat healthily most of the time, avoiding foods packed full of artificial sugars and preservatives can do wonders for your body. Around 18 months ago I finally decided to learn more about what I was eating and in turn what it was doing to my body. The results were quite alarming.. if you ever need an incentive not to eat something which you know contains refined sugar and preservatives just google some of the ingredients you don't understand. I promise you it will make you think twice no matter how good it tastes!

One of the things I found hard to restrict in my diet was potatoes. Potatoes contain a fair amount starch which when broken down by your body are converted to sugars, this can then raises your insulin levels. Insulin kicks in to action when your body has elevated sugar levels, it will then take that sugar and store it as fat. Bad news for all the potato lovers out there! Alas, there is a great alternative for getting your carb fix without risking elevation of your sugar levels as much. Sweet potatoes have a considerably lower amount of starch than usual potatoes, when both raw and cooked, meaning if you're going to have a carb-rich meal then these are recommended as the better option over regular potatoes.

Let me know what you think of this particular recipe and if there's any other recipes you would recommend!