Roasted Sweet Potato Salad

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

It’s a sheet pan salad with both roasted and fresh ingredients. That gives it a wonderful combination of smoky sweet potatoes and peppers along with beans, creamy avocado and red onions. It has such fantastic textures too.

Black beans add protein and make this vegan potato salad even more hearty and filling. They make so much sense with the blend of dried spices and other ingredients in the recipe.

Because this is a no-lettuce salad, there’s no risk of wilting, and it’s a great choice for meal prep. Roasted potatoes and black beans for a base give this salad staying power, no offense to lettuce, so you can also serve it at a potluck or another get-together.

The Ingredients

This is what you need: 

• Sweet potatoes: I use 3 medium sweet potatoes which is about 1-1/2 pounds or so. Peel them and then dice them. You can substitute with cubed butternut squash.
• Bell peppers: A red bell pepper and a green pepper are a good balance of a sweeter pepper and one that’s more bitter. It is up to you what color peppers that you use.
• Black beans: Canned beans are a convenient pantry ingredient. They are good in salads especially ones with Tex-Mex flavors and ingredients.
• Dried spices: The marinade has a blend of cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika, kosher salt and black pepper. You can use chili powder or cayenne pepper as a substitute for smoked paprika if you want more heat.
• Red onions: Instead of roasting them, I keep the chopped red onions fresh, so they give the salad a crisp and sharp bite.
• Avocado: For something creamy and rich, I dice a ripe avocado and toss that with the roasted vegetables and beans.
• Cilantro: For fresh herbs to finish the salad, I go with chopped cilantro.
• Jalapeño lime dressing: It’s made with chopped jalapeños, minced garlic, salt, pepper, lime juice and olive oil.

Serving

You can enjoy this sweet potato salad on its own for lunch or dinner. If you want, you can add chopped romaine or kale to it for greens. Serve it as a side dish with roasted cauliflower tacos, veggie fajitas or quinoa chili.

Storage & Leftovers

This roasted sweet potato salad is best eaten warm or at room temperature. You can keep leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge up to 3 days. Warm them in a 350-degree F oven. You can also eat them cold, but I like to let them sit at room temperature, so they lose some of the chill from the fridge.

If you do have leftovers, I recommend pouring any remaining dressing from the bottom of the mixing bowl into a jar and also storing that in the fridge. Then after you warm the roasted potatoes, black beans and peppers, you can give them a splash of dressing.