Sweet Potato Salad

This salad is a surprising, healthy, and delicious twist on an old summertime favorite. The sweet potatoes add a hint of sweetness that goes very well with the savory ingredients of a traditional potato salad.





Ingredients:

2 medium sweet potatoes

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1/2 medium onion

1/2 bell pepper

1/4 cup flat leaf parsley

2 stalks cellery

4 hard boiled eggs

2 large dollops of reduced-fat mayonaise

salt

pepper

Instructions:

Peel sweet potatoes.

Cut in half, then cut into long "french fry" sticks

Then cut into cubes.

Placed diced sweet potatoes in a medium saucepan. Just cover with water. Bring to a boil, cover, and cook until fork tender, about 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop onion.

When sweet potatoes are tender, place in large bowl. While they are still hot, sprinkle with vinegar. Toss to coat all pieces. Stir in onion. Let this sit while you chop the remaining ingredients. (Adding the onion and vinegar to the potatoes while they are still hot infuses them with flavor. It will make the difference between an okay potato salad and a fabulous potato salad.)

Finely dice the bell pepper.

Chop the parsley.

Dice the celery. I like to cut my stalks vertically down the center to make them skinnier before I cut them into small pieces.

Roughly chop the hard boiled eggs.

Place all the choped ingredients on top of the sweet potatoes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. (Remember the mayo will add salt, too, so go easy at first.) Put on two large spoonfuls of mayo. Stir it all together and refrigerate until chilled.

Health Tip: If you're taking potato salad to a BBQ, take a large bowl full of ice. Then set the bowl of potato salad on top of the bowl of ice on the serving table. Egg and mayonaise dishes can turn deadly if left unchilled.

Variation Tips: Have fun with this recipe and experiment with the ingredients. This is exactly the same recipe I use for white potato salad. If you want to add some of your favorite ingredients, try adding a little bit to a small spoonful of your sweet potato salad and taste it before adding it to the main bowl. This way you'll avoid nasty surprises. I learned this lesson the hard way when I tried adding garlic stuffed green olives to my sweet potato salad recipe. It was pretty awful.