If you don't know what to have for dinner tonight ...

This full flavored sweet potato dish is quick and easy to prepare for an interesting, and healthy way to serve potatoes that are traditionally full of calories. In fact one serving of this recipe contains only 98 calories but provides 249% of your daily value (DV) for vitamin A! You will find the flavors of the spice mixture and orange juice a wonderful complement to the flavor of the potatoes. Enjoy!

Prep and Cook Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 medium sized sweet potatoes or yams, sliced thin for quick cooking
• 2 TBS fresh orange juice
• ½ tsp garam masala
• 1 TBS extra virgin olive oil
• salt and white pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Bring lightly salted water to a boil in a steamer with a tight fitting lid.
2. Peel, slice and steam sweet potatoes in steamer basket, covered, for about 10 minutes, or until tender
3. When tender, mash with potato masher, adding rest of ingredients.
   Serves 4

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In-Depth Nutritional Profile for Healthy Mashed Sweet Potatoes - no dairy

Daily Food Tip

Should spices such as turmeric, coriander (or others) be included while cooking or added afterwards? How does heat affect the nutritional quality of spices?

In many traditional Indian and Asian cuisines, spices found in the form of a seed (for example, coriander seed, mustard seed, peppercorn, or cumin seed) are often added to cooking oils at the start of the heating process and allowed to "pop" in the oil. Powdered spices are added at different points in the cooking process, but never before the dish has been completely cooked.

I have only been able to find one research article (not published in MEDLINE) that measured nutritional changes in cooked versus uncooked turmeric. Although it shows improved antioxidant ability from cooking, I would not expect this finding to be typical. I've seen research, for example, on turmerin, one of the water-soluble peptides in turmeric, which has demonstrated antioxidant ability. I would assume that a certain percentage of turmerin could be lost in the same way as other water-soluble nutrients.