This month New-Start Cooking Club featured a tasty buffet called “Simply Southern: Totally Delicious.” One of the stars of the night was our Georgia Sweet Potato Stew. I don’t hail from the South and sweet potatoes only found their way to my family’s table at Thanksgiving time, usually in the form of candied yams. It turns out this is a traditional Southern food along with sweet potato pie.
Where Do Sweet Potatoes Come From? It goes back to the days of slavery. West African slaves came from a culture where yams were daily fare. There were no tropical yams in the New World, but there were sweet potatoes. The slaves would often roast them in a fire, mash their insides and enjoy them that way. It wasn’t until they had access to ovens that they added pie shells and filled them with sweet potato.
But sweet potatoes have branched out these days. You’ll find them in every kind of dish–roasted, baked, mashed, stuffed–you name it. Their health benefits and delicious flavor has pushed them to the top of American vegetables, moving them out of the holiday-only category to every day eating.
How to Bake Sweet Potatoes. This stew has become one of our family’s favorite. It’s easy to cook up in a slow cooker or Instant Pot or even in a large pot on the stove. The recipe below is for crockpot cooking (though you could speed up the process by baking the sweet potatoes in an Instant Pot (cook for 15 minutes on manual pressure) or baking them in the oven the day before. In the crockpot, it will take anywhere from 3-5 hours, depending on how hard or dense your sweet potatoes are.
Loaded with Veggies Galore. I bake the sweet potatoes along with onion, green peppers, garlic and tomatoes until the sweet potatoes are tender. Then I will add some kidney and black beans, corn, and delicious seasonings. You can cook a little longer to heat up the added ingredients. It’s a hearty stew; some might even call it chili.
Why Sweet Potatoes? Traditional Papua New Guinea Highlanders have also been known to eat a lot of sweet potatoes. In fact, tubers like sweet potatoes and yams provide 90% of their calories! How has a sweet potato-based diet affected their health? A study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine in 1994 found that, when these native groups still followed this traditional way of eating, they enjoyed lower blood pressure and weight than Westerners. And they almost never experienced heart disease, strokes, or other modern chronic diseases.
One medium sweet potato has about 6 grams of fiber, helping to fill you up but not fill you out. This fiber can also help to lower blood cholesterol and lower your risk for heart disease. This same fiber is one reason why sweet potatoes are gentle on blood sugars, making it a healthy choice for preventing and even reversing type 2 diabetes. Because of their many antioxidants, sweet potatoes have also been linked to improved eye health, cancer protection, lower inflammation, and a stronger immune system.
Georgia Sweet Potato Stew
Equipment
- Slow cooker
Ingredients
- 1 medium onion chopped
- 1 green bell pepper cored and chopped
- 4 garlic cloves finely chopped
- 1 medium sweet potato peeled and chopped
- 1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
- 15 oz can black beans drained
- 15 oz can kidney beans drained
- 1 cup corn
- 1 tbsp paprika
- 1-2 tsp cumin
- 2 tsp carob powder
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp salt or salt substitute
- 1/2 tsp dried basil
Instructions
- In a slow cooker or crockpot, combine the onion, green pepper, garlic, sweet potato pieces, and tomatoes (including their liquid).
- Cover and cook on high for 3-5 hours until the sweet potato is tender. Time will vary, depending on the size of your sweet potato chunks and the density of the sweet potato.
- Add the corn, bean, and seasonings and cook until the entire mixture is hot. Mix well. Serve immediately.
Notes
