Monday, July 4, 2011

Liver and meatballs separated by a wall of sweet potatoes

A commenter wrote here some time ago that she liked to eat rice because rice can be easily used to separate food items on a plate. One can just as easily use sweet potatoes to do that; preparing the sweet potatoes in much less time than the rice. This post explains how, with a simple recipe.

- Cut up half of a sweet potato as shown on the first photo below, adding coconut oil or butter to prevent the pieces from sticking to a microwave-safe saucepan.
- Microwave the sweet potato pieces in high heat for about 5 minutes.
- Use the sweet potatoes to separate food items as in the second photo below, showing beef liver and meatballs with their respective sauces.
- Cover the dish with a wet paper towel to prevent spilling, and microwave it for as long as needed to heat up the meats. In this case, 2 minutes in high heat was enough. That will further cook the sweet potato, but not to the point of burning it.




The above assumes that the beef liver and meatballs are leftovers that had been cooked before. In this example, we have about ½ lb of meat and ½ of a sweet potato. As far as plant foods are concerned, sweet potatoes are at the very high end of the nutrition density scale. This is a very nutritious and satiating meal (for me) with over 55 g of protein, as well as a great mix of macro- and micro-nutrients.

10 comments:

  1. Hi Ned, appart from the nutritional benefits of sweet potatoes is there another reason to prefered them over rice?, In my experience rice have been kind of a life saver, sweet taters just make my stomach grumble for hours but rice just digest perfect..maybe my japanese ancestry is responsible. Could it be that sometimes the nutritional content of some foods are secondary to things like the actual digestion of them?
    I think is quite unfair to banned rice just because is "nutritionally empty".

    Love your work!
    Best
    Jaime

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  2. @jaime--Rice certainly IS easy to digest!

    Coupled with the fact that rice contains 66% more starch and sugar than a sweet potato, that's one of the reasons I avoid it. If you can eat rice without adverse consequences, more power to you.

    (To tell the truth, I don't eat sweet potatoes much, either. I'm more of a cruciferous veggies guy, as they give me the most nutritional bang for the carbohydrate load.)

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  3. "...This is a very nutritious and satiating meal (for me)..."

    So, is it boring, too? ;)

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  4. Generally speaking, I think one is better off going for foods that pack the most nutrition per gram. Having said that, the evidence is generally in favor of rice as a component of a healthy diet.

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  5. Btw, I think white rice is generally better than the non-polished varieties. The latter may have more nutrients, but are also likely to have more toxins as well.

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  6. Ned, can you post your meatball recipe?

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  7. Hi Jason, it is here:

    http://bit.ly/hRSIO7

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  8. "Btw, I think white rice is generally better than the non-polished varieties. The latter may have more nutrients, but are also likely to have more toxins as well."

    Unless those toxins are in fact hormetic, of course...

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  9. Rinse the rice. Put it with water in a rice cooker. There is nothing, NOTHING, easier than that. (The rice cooker will keep the rice warm and tasty after it has cooked, and still not overcook it...)

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