Gut Healthy Sweet Mashed Potatoes
Have you ever heard of resistant starch? Well, if you have or if you haven't, you better stay tuned because we're going to talk about it with our sweet potatoes.
Hi, I'm Jessie Gutsue. I'm a functional medicine dietitian with Oswald Digestive Clinic, and today we're going to talk about gut healthy, mashed sweet potatoes.
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Alright, let's get started on our recipe.
[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]
So first we're going to start with
Why Healthy Sweet Mashed Potatoes?
My question is why not? Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite foods and no joke, I like them more than any of your other sweet potatoes, but there's a variety of sweet potatoes in and of themselves.
So these actually came from my garden. As you can see, there's quite a range in size and you'll find that at the store too.
So pro tip for you, if you are cooking sweet potatoes in one whole piece, look for them in uniform size. In this case it doesn't matter because we're going to chunk them up into bite-sized pieces.
Sweet Potatoes Benefits
Alright, so sweet potatoes in and of themselves come with four grams of fiber per cup. They're loaded with vitamin A, vitamin C, potassium magnes, the list goes on, and obviously with their color they bring a whole host of other phytonutrients. So all of these nutrients help with reducing inflammation, with providing the fiber and regularity and blood sugar.
There's a whole host of benefits that come with sweet potatoes and it doesn't take much to make them into a gut healthy mashed sweet potato dish. Maybe for your Thanksgiving dinner, let's talk about resistant starch. I alluded to the fact that we are going to create some resistant starch with our mashed sweet potatoes today. Sweet.
What is resistant starch?
It is a type of fiber that's resistant to digestion until reached to the colon and that's when our bacteria act upon them and ferment these fibers so they do not digest like typical in the small intestine and get absorbed there, but they pass through. And this happens by cooking and cooling our starches and then eating them as is, or you can even reheat them gently too.
Should You Keep The Skin On?
Alright, let's get on to whether to keep the skin on. Well, I said these came from my garden and even with a little washing and scrubbing, you can see how some of the skin already has come off. So there's a very delicate fine skin on this. If you choose a store-bought skin, you might find that the skin is a little thicker and you may want to skin or peel your potatoes depending on what kind of texture you want.
Now, I love red skin potatoes with the skin on and mash altogether because I love that texture. But in this case, I really do prefer a nice creamy sweet potato, but my skins are so tender that I'm going to leave 'em on. All I'm going to do here is remove some of the area of skin that you really can tell just I could not quite get clean.
Now if you buy your sweet potatoes from the store, then by all means rest assured that it is okay to purchase conventional or organic because sweet potatoes tend to be a lower pesticide food. And of course if you leave the skin on, you do get a little bit more nutrition and plus it removes some of your work. I'm just going to slice some of the skin off that was really unsightly, and as I do this, I'm going to chunk 'em into roughly bite-sized pieces. A couple inches this size should be uniform, but doesn't necessarily matter. What will happen is it'll take longer to cook larger pieces, and you really want to create resistant starch by cooking 'em gently but thoroughly.
So I'm dropping my sweet potatoes chopped up into a steamer basket, which will then go into my stock pot behind me that is already boiling. Depending on the size of your potatoes, this can take, this steaming can take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes.
Steaming or Boiling
So let's talk about the type of cooking that can create resistant starch. So heat is the way that you create resistant starch, or I should say the cooling process or the cooling of the heated starch is really how you get the resistant star. So I will agree that roasted sweet potatoes are one of my favorite, but not the ideal way to create resistant starch actually. And though it does create the sweetest flavor when roasting the best bet to create resistant star is actually through boiling or steaming. And steaming is just a gentler method. And the benefit of steaming is that you don't lose those water soluble vitamins.
Look at how mammoth that is. That's so big. So I'm just going to tuck my fingers and gently cut this so as not to have an accident. When working with really big root vegetables like this or squashes, I always create a flat base to cook on or to cut from so that you don't have your food rolling around, which really is a safety method.
So like I said, we are going to steam these because not only will it create the most resistant starch, but it will also retain our water soluble. And those water soluble nutrients are things like vitamin C and some B vitamins which are lost or reduced significantly when coming in contact with water because they're soluble to water. So they're pulled out of the potato into the water. So if you do opt for boiling, then I suggest you keep that water.
This might sound crazy, but if you are a smoothie person, keep that water for the next day and maybe make a smoothie that's like pumpkin or of color is what I always think. And then you'll be getting a little dose of vitamin C and a little bit of sweetness and starch in your smoothie as well. You always have to have a liquid with your smoothies.
All right, we have three or four cups of potatoes here, and this recipe is really simple and also very versatile, so you're welcome to adjust it any way you see fit. I'll cut this final bit of sweet potato. Now, like I mentioned before, there are a variety of different sweet potatoes and some I find are a little bit drier than the traditional sweet potato. So just whatever you're working with adjusted accordingly as you're cooking, maybe you have to add a little bit more. In our case, we're going to use yogurt, but a little bit more liquid. So I'm going to drop our steamer basket into our boiling water.
How To Create Resistant Starch?
So I mentioned how to create resistant starch, and this is a really interesting concept. So first, there are four main types of resistant starch. Potatoes tend to contain the most of resistant star type two in the resistant starch type three, and they're all abbreviated if you've ever seen it written as RS one through four accordingly.
And so resistant starch type two and type three are starches that either are in completely gelatinized or starches that are cooked as we're doing here with boiling or steaming over the stove and then cooled. And these starches are either long, more linear starch forms, so like branches or sorry, I should say this, long linear starches or more branch.
So the branch of a tree or really long tree versus a really long limb. And so there's two different types of starches here. And so when these starches cook and then cool, they rearrange in a way where we don't digest them as well, and therefore they're called a resistant starch.
And resistant starch can be categorized as a prebiotic for this reason because they cannot be digested by our small intestine. Instead, they pass through our small intestine and into our colon where our bacteria finally ferment them and then benefits all from that are included.
So there's benefit there in the fact that it's a prebiotic, but also because it's a fiber, you get the benefit of bowel regularity and the fact that it's a prebiotic or a resistant starch. In this case, there's actually blood sugar benefits. So if a starch is resistant to digestion, that means that your blood sugar won't rise like it would if it were fully digestible because you literally don't digest and absorb that amount of starch. Does that make sense?
Satiety
So there's benefit in blood sugar control, which leads me to my next benefit, which is satiety. If we have a more stable blood sugar throughout the day and we're eating more fiber, then naturally you feel more full, you have greater satiety, less swings, your mood is improved.
There's lots of different benefits that go come from fiber and this type of resistant search. So let's move on to our other ingredients. So I have here a pot that is warming a cast iron that is warming, and I'm going to put a little bit of olive oil on here and I'm going to cut up a small onion.
Onions
And these onions will help balance out that sweetness a little bit. And we're just going to cut these up into, chop these up into smaller bite-sized pieces so that you're not biting into one giant onion. Onions are a type of allium which has the benefit of being a sulfuric vegetable has many of its own benefits. All right, my oil is warm, and so now I'm going to add on the onion.
Garlic
All right, and now I'm going to add a minced garlic. Now garlic also contains sulfur, which has detoxification benefits, lots of different benefits of allium vegetables like this, and they create such a nice taste profile balancing out again that sweetness of the sweet potato. So I add these a little bit later than the onion just so they don't burn because they're so much smaller, and we will just saute these for a little bit just so they get soft.
Herbs and Spices
And finally, I'm going to add my herbs. Now I'm choosing to use thyme here. You're welcome to use whatever herb you have.
I think fresh herbs are best in this application, but by all means, dried will work as well. And I am just scraping against the grain here to pull off these seeds or off the leaves. And herbs and spices are such a great way to add variety and diversity into your diet because they are literally such a potent form of nutrition, and so you don't need much to get lots of bang for your buck.
Now, this time here is going to add again with the onions and the garlic a little bit more of a earthy, savory flavor to these naturally sweet, sweet potatoes, which is a really nice balance.
And here what I'm doing with the time is blooming the herbs. And this is a great way the fat incorporated in with herbs, really helps it travel through the food better than if you were to add the herb at the very end.
So we are going to bloom this in with the fat. It really helps it integrate it. It really helps to pull out those fat soluble nutrients and volatile chemicals that are found in our herbs. So I talked about creating resistant starch, and this is done by cooking and cooling starches such as rice or pasta or potatoes.
And many research studies will show that cooking cooling and then gently reheating those starches doesn't result in a total loss of resistant starch. Now, if you were to really ramp up and cook it reco it hard, you would lose more of that resistant starch.
So do be careful if you choose to eat this fully cooled, then you won't lose any resistant starch if you cook it, just be mindful to very gently cook it, don't overcook it. That also is a point when steaming or boiling your potatoes initially because you really want the potatoes to be fully cooked, fork tender, but not disintegrated. That's a really important point. So I'm going to go check out our potatoes really quick. I'm going to see if they're ready for us and look at that. They are. They're ready to go. So that only took about 10 minutes, and again, depends on the size, but these are one inch chunks or so.
I am going to dump my potatoes into a bowl. And now you're welcome to mash these any way you choose. If you want to stand, mix them. If you have a hand mixer or just a regular potato masher, whichever you want, I am choosing just a potato. Now, I'm going to go through this and mash it first, and then I'll add our herbs and our yogurt to make it a little bit creamier.
Now, of course, a stand mixer will whip these really smooth. A hand mixer will be a little bit more rustic of a flavor, so totally depends on your preference.
How Do We Add In More Sweet Mashed Potatoes Into Our Day?
So you can see how easy it is to incorporate resistant starches into your day. It just takes a little bit of careful thought and knowledge, how to create the resistant starch and how to preserve it when cooking, honestly, it really lends itself well to food preparation because you can cook in batches and then have it be ready and you have minimal reheating, and then you have resistant starch ready to rock.
So there's lots of ways to make this really accessible. You could also add cooked and cooled potatoes to a potato salad or a smoothie, of course, as I always liked various casserole.
But it's a really easy way to add in nutrients to really help with your gut health. And really, it all goes back to that because when we have regularity, bowel regularity and gut health, then there are a lot of host of other benefits that come with it.
So we talked about the benefits that come with resistant starch, including things like blood sugar control being a prebiotic, it helps to create short chain fatty acids like butyrate to help strengthen your gut lining. It helps obviously with weight management being that it helps with blood sugar and also helping with bowel regularity. And we know that bowel regularity is really a vital sign of our health.
It should be right up there with blood pressure, in my opinion. So now let's add our yogurt, and I am using organic Greek yogurt. It's a really nice flavor texture, really creamy if you would like. You can also use something like half and half or heavy whipping cream. If you're dairy free. You can also use canned coconut milk. Of course, you'll get a little bit sweeter of a flavor and maybe you can amp up the more savory herbs with it to balance out, oh, this is going to be so good. Let's add in these herbs.
I hope you enjoyed this. If you're interested in a 30 minute cooking demo or just to learn about various recipes or topics you can choose from,
Email us at cookingdemos@oswalddigestiveclinic.com.
I really enjoyed this. I hope you did too. And I hope to see you next week.
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