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- If you're looking for a new healthy salad recipe this fall and winter, this sweet potato salad is a must make recipe. It's layered with flavor and texture with perfectly seasoned and roasted sweet potatoes, lentils, cranberries, red onion, and fresh herbs. But what makes this salad so deliciously good is my savory sweet maple mustard tahini dressing drizzled on top. This salad is loaded with nutrients, and while I've been enjoying it on the regular as a weeknight meal, I'm also pretty confident that when November rolls around, this is going to be a super popular Thanksgiving side dish recipe, so make sure to save it for later.
All right, let's dive right in. To get started, preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit and then peel two pounds of sweet potatoes, which is about two large potatoes this size, or three medium ones. Once they're peeled, slice the sweet potato into rounds, then stack a few rounds on top of each other and dice them into cubes about a half inch in size. Now, if you have another way of dicing up potatoes, that's totally fine, do what works for you. This is just how I've always done it. And once that's done, add the diced sweet potato to a mixing bowl. If you've made my roasted sweet potato recipe,
this part may look familiar because it's that recipe exactly. So to season the sweet potato, add two tablespoons of olive oil, half a teaspoon of ground cumin, half a teaspoon of garlic powder, half a teaspoon of paprika, and some salt and pepper to taste. Then, give that a stir to make sure that the seasoning is well mixed throughout the sweet potato. Pour the sweet potato out onto a baking sheet and spread it out to get all the little pieces in a single layer. Ideally, you'd have a bit more space in between the cubes so that they can get nicely roasted, but my sweet potatoes were a bit on the larger side today, so this pan is pretty crowded. Then, roast the sweet potato for 30 to 35 minutes,
stirring the potatoes halfway through to ensure they're fully cooked. (soft music) While the sweet potatoes are roasting, bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Add half a cup of rinsed green lentils, give them a stir. Reduce the heat to a very low simmer. Cover the pot with a lid and cook them for 15 to 20 minutes or until they're tender.
I personally like to under cook my lentils just a smidge so that they're not too mushy, but do also double check what your package instructions say as different varieties may have different cook times. And when they're cooked through, drain the lentils in a strainer. While the sweet potato finishes cooking, you can also quickly chop up a few other salad ingredients, and that includes a quarter cup of red onion. The red onion I just chopped is closer to about a half a cup, so I'll measure out a quarter cup for this sweet potato salad and then save the rest to toss in my scrambled eggs for breakfast.
Next, finely chop up a quarter cup each of fresh parsley and cilantro. I like both herbs in this recipe as it just adds a bit more flavor variety, but if you only have one or aren't a fan of cilantro because you think it tastes like soap, which I'm sorry for that by the way, you could just stick to parsley. At this point, my sweet potato is done, so I'll remove that and just set it aside for a minute while I make the dressing. And for the dressing, we'll quickly make my favorite maple mustard tahini dressing. You guys, this dressing is so good. Add a quarter cup of tahini to a small mixing bowl along with two tablespoons of Dijon mustard, one tablespoon of maple syrup, one tablespoon of lemon juice,
three to four tablespoons of water for a thinner consistency, one minced garlic clove, and a little salt and ground black pepper to taste. Now, when you start whisking it, it will seem really runny, but keep whisking it, and it'll turn into this deliciously creamy dressing. Again, you can make this dressing as thick or thin as you'd like by adding more or less water to it. Alright, let's now assemble this salad.
Add the roasted sweet potato to a serving bowl along with the cooked lentils, half a cup of dried unsweetened cranberries, the finely chopped parsley and cilantro, and the red onion. Give that a stir to mix the salad together, and then you can pour the maple mustard tahini dressing on top. You can add as much or as little of the dressing as you'd like, though a pro tip, if I'm serving this for guests, I'll usually add about a third of the dressing, then stir it together and serve the salad with the remaining dressing off to the side.
This allows the colors of the salad to stay nice and vibrant, and then guests can choose how creamy they'd like to make their portion. This soft, creamy, and naturally sweet salad is a personal favorite of mine, and I could easily eat this entire bowl all by myself over a couple of days. I have made this salad so many times since I first tested it, and I keep going back to it because it is just the perfect combination of flavors.
The roasted sweet potatoes and the lentils are nice and soft and cozy and comforting, and I really love that there's so many nutrients in this. I'm definitely a fiber forward person, it just makes me feel good, and this is a really easy, digestible salad that is loaded with a lot of color, nutrients, variety, vitamins, and of course a lot of fiber. But this maple mustard tahini, I have had this recipe on my website for a couple of years. I've used it on some other salads, and when I was testing this, I was trying to think of what salad dressing I wanted to drizzle on it, and this one came to mind.
It is just the perfect, savory sweet flavor. You can also thin it with a little bit more water if you want it more drizzly rather than a little thick like it is now. And if you are going to meal prep this salad, I highly recommend just leaving the dressing to the very end. So you can cook the lentils ahead of time, you can roast the sweet potato ahead of time, store 'em all individually, and just stir everything together before a holiday or a potluck and drizzle the dressing on at the very end. In terms of storage, after you've made this, it will last for about three to four days in the fridge and it will soften over time naturally.
Sweet potato has a lot of moisture in it, but I guarantee you that the flavor will still be just top notch and very delicious. When I've made this salad just for myself, I also have added some protein. I used my herb baked chicken recipe, which I know many of you guys know on the website, and just diced it up and added it in here as well, though you could do some shredded rotisserie chicken as well and get a little bit of that protein boost. In general, I just love sweet potato recipes, so I'm always looking for new and creative ways to incorporate sweet potatoes into my weekly meals. And I have a whole sweet potato roundup on the website that has some of my favorite recipes.
And then talking about Thanksgiving as we did earlier, this is a great Thanksgiving side dish as well. You could serve it as a salad, you could serve it as a side dish, and I have a whole slew of Thanksgiving side dish recipes and salads on my site, and I will leave a link to those as well. I hope you guys enjoyed today's video, and if you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up, that always helps to support my channel. Leave a comment with what other fall and winter salad recipes you guys are making, and with that, I will see you in the next video.
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