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Easy Recipe 

Make Perfectly Seasoned Sweet Potato Leaves

Cook sweet potato leaves in recipes just as you would spinach. Blend sweet potato leaves in smoothies, make sweet potato leaves stir-fry or eat sweet potato leaves washed and raw. Sweet potato leaves are eaten raw and cooked; add sweet potatoes to your salad or mix them in with spinach, sweet potato leaves go well with any meat dish such as chicken, beef, pork, or fish.

Perfectly Seasoned Sweet Potato Leaves

Sweet potato leaves are universally eaten throughout Africa in too many recipes to count. Sweet potato leaves are edible and delicious with a soft texture that tastes like kale or spinach. The best way to cook sweet potatoes is just to simply sauté them with a little bit of onion, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Sweet potato leaves have five times more vitamin C than other greens such as spinach. Sweet potatoes do not have a particular season but are grown year-round in the United States; however they are at their peak sweetness during the winter months from December to February. 

Uganda leads the way in sweet potato production representing half the African supply followed by Nigeria and Tanzania. In Uganda sweet potatoes are usually harvested during the first rainy season from March to June. Uganda, one of seven African countries which the Equator runs through, is in Africa’s Equatorial region, a region of the Earth surrounding the equator with a humid tropical climate. Sweet potatoes are a hardy crop and can grow in many different climates.

Bigger is not better when it comes to sweet potatoes, choose small to medium sweet potatoes that are heavy for their size. Unless your sweet potatoes are particularly small and smooth, remove the skins with a peeler. Sweet potato tubers are traditionally baked, roasted or mashed, but they can also be added to stews, soups or curries.

Picking Sweet Potato Leaves

Perfectly Seasoned Sweet Potato Leaves

Ingredients

4 large handfuls sweet potato leaves, chopped

1 chopped red bell pepper

1 bunch chives, chopped

1 tablespoon onion powder

1 teaspoon garlic salt

Pepper to taste

1 tablespoon olive oil

Directions

Add ingredients into a large pot and saute about 3 minutes. Serve with our Ugandan Mugoyo recipe below.

Ugandan Mugoyo Sweet Potato and Beans Recipe

Our Ugandan mugoyo recipe is a very popular recipe made of boiled beans and sweet potato mixed together served with your perfectly seasoned sweet potato leaves recipe above. Mugoyo is similar to refried beans with mashed sweet potatoes mixed into the recipe.

Ugandan Mugoyo Sweet Potato and Beans Recipe

Ingredients

3 medium sized sweet potatoes, peeled

2 handfuls sweet potato leaves, chopped

1 can black-eyed peas, liquid drained

½ cup vegetable broth

Directions

In a large pot boil the sweet potatoes and beans, then mash, add the sweet leaves and vegetable broth. Serve with your perfectly seasoned sweet potato leaves recipe above. 

Did you know?

The truth is what you call a yam is most likely a sweet potato. Yams and sweet potatoes are both flowering plants however, that is their only relation. 

Compared to sweet potatoes, yams are starchier and drier. The mix-up between yams and sweet potatoes began in the United States when firm varieties of sweet potatoes were grown by African slaves before soft varieties. 

They called the soft sweet potatoes yams because they resembled the yams in Africa. Therefore, soft sweet potatoes were referred to as yams to distinguish them from the new firm varieties.

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