Perfect for hosting an outdoor get together or for any time you want a colorful salad. This sweet potato salad with spiced date dressing, pistachios, crunchy veggies, and mint will appeal to all types of eaters. It comes together in about 1 hour.
With this vegan sweet potato salad, I used mini sweet potatoes. I found that the skin on these was quite thin and fine to include in the final salad. If you’re using regular sweet potatoes, you may want to peel them! Another fun twist on this salad would be roasting the cubes in the oven with oil and some of the spices in the date dressing.
I was thinking about this flavors of morocco-inspired vegetable and chickpea stew when I was coming up with this salad. It incorporates a lot of the same ingredients! Tomatoes, onions, chickpeas, the sweet potatoes, and dried fruit in the dressing.
I have you soak the pitted dates first before blending them up with lemon juice, spices, fresh ginger, Dijon and olive oil. The end result is a little sweet, tangy, surprisingly creamy, and just full of flavor. A perfect partner to the sweet potatoes.
Sweet Potato Sunshine Salad
Ingredients
Date Vinaigrette
- 2 pitted Medjool dates, soaked in hot water for at least 5 minutes
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon dijon mustard
- ½ inch fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
- ½ teaspoon ground coriander
- ⅛ teaspoon chili flakes
- ⅛ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- sea salt and ground black pepper, to taste
- reserved date soaking water
Salad
- 1½ lbs mini sweet potatoes
- 2 medium carrots, peeled and diced (I used some heirloom purple ones for colour contrast)
- 2 bell peppers, seeded and diced into 3/4 inch pieces
- ½ cup cherry tomatoes, halved
- ½ small red onion, sliced thin
- ½-1 cup cooked chickpeas
- big handful of cilantro leaves, leaves chopped
- 1 hefty sprig of mint, leaves chopped
- ¼ cup shelled pistachios, chopped
- sea salt and ground black pepper, to taste
Equipment
- Blender
Notes
- You could add some cooked quinoa or millet to the mix–about a 1/2 cup of dry grain cooked.
- I’m guessing that mini sweet potatoes aren’t available everywhere. If I was doing this with regular sweet potatoes, I’d probably take 3 medium sized tubers and cut them down the middle lengthwise, and then just boil them like that and proceed with the recipe as written.
Instructions
- Make the dressing: combine the soaked dates (reserving the water), olive oil, lemon juice, dijon mustard, chopped ginger, ground coriander, chili flakes, cinnamon, salt, and pepper in an upright blender. Blend on high, stopping to scrape down the sides if necessary. Add a couple spoonfuls of the date soaking water to get the blade moving, if necessary. You want it totally pureed and almost creamy. I ended up using about 2 tablespoons of the water. Check the vinaigrette for seasoning, adjust, and set aside.
- Place the mini sweet potatoes in a large pot and cover them with cold water. Place the pot over medium heat and bring to a boil. Simmer the sweet potatoes until they’re nice and tender, about 20 minutes. Drain the sweet potatoes and place them in an ice bath to cool them down quickly.
- Once the sweet potatoes are cool enough to handle, cut them into 1 inch-ish pieces–kind of like how you would for a potato salad. Place cut sweet potatoes in a large bowl along with the diced carrots, bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, red onion slices, chickpeas, cilantro, and mint. Season all of the vegetables with lots of salt and pepper. Add the date vinaigrette to the bowl and toss the vegetables and chickpeas to coat. Sprinkle the chopped pistachios on top and serve.
Very very good. I am not vegetarian/vegan, so I had this as a side to well spiced chicken thigh meat. It was such a good combination, thank you for the recipe :)
absolutely loved this!
Highly recommend roasting the sweet potato ♥️
This salad is off the charts good and satisfying. Take advantage of the seasonal veggies and be wowed with the taste and texture combination
This dressing is out of this world!!! I have made the dressing recipe as is a few times as is, it’s perfect! I have also used it over rice and pork. Plan to try it with fish and broccoli salad next! I did however change up the salad with veggies more to my liking. I used sweet potatoes, black beans, jalapeño, craisins, pecans, green onions and toasted quinoa, love the cilantro and mint together! Thank you for sharing!
Just made this and it is SO DAMN GOOD. That dressing!
I’ve had this bookmarked forever and just wanted to drop in to say thank you for what will now be a forever-favorite for lunch meal prep. I doubled everything to get my husband and I through a week of lunches and I did roast all of the veg together (except the tomato), and I added a TON of mint. The dressing is amazing, it was so easy to throw together on Sunday, and we are loving it every day at lunch. This will be in my lunch rotation until the end of time.
This was a very good salad! I loved the spices and the sweet potato. Overall, a great recipe to expand your horizons from Italian and cowboy caviar.
Omg Ming, this salad is absolutely heaven! I also lightly sautéed some mushrooms in the leftover date water and added it to the salad- to finish off I added chunks of avocado in each serving to build on the creaminess- this salad is pure indulgence!
How do you think pomegranate molasses would work instead of dates?
I pinned this few year ago and finally made it. Delicious and beautiful! Y havent i tried this sooner! Gingery date dressing is unique too! I also added roasted beets + carrots pre-soaked in balsamic. Also threw kale and swiss chard. Beets match so well with sweet potatoes. It would be lovely to serve with floral ethiopian coffee. Thank u for posting this!!
Hi, this is an excellent recipe though I did some tinkering with it. The shop didn’t have any dates so I left them out, mushrooms were on special so I fried these till they were golden brown. I roasted the red onions and peppers till they were soft-ish. Also I added half a clove of garlic to the dressing and I also added cherry vinegar. When I come across vegan dishes like this that are good it makes me very happy indeed – we are trying to avoid eating meat.