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Created by Laura Wright
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5 from 4 votes
Sweet potato sunshine salad with Morocco-inspired spices, date dressing, mint, and pistachios. A healthy vegan crowd pleaser made in 30 minutes!
I follow a lot of the fluffy and typical cute animal Twitter/Facebook accounts.I also get in a good half cry about every other day when I see a photo or video of an animal being reunited with a sibling or its favourite human, or stories of an abandoned/mistreated animal finally finding peaceful refuge. Frequent contact with any number of species helps you understand some of the more important tenets of humanity, I think.
When we adopted our little gal Cleo through a local rescue organization, we were able to do some digging into her past through some Facebook posts and timeline updates. A local had found her and her siblings as pups in a drainage pipe beside a busy highway in the middle of a thunderstorm. From there, they spent some time at that family’s home regaining their strength and getting healthy again. A volunteer then drove them all the way to Ontario from Louisiana to be placed in temporary foster homes. A few weeks after our girl had been in Canada, we adopted her and brought her home. (Her siblings have been adopted too!)
I get a little lump in my throat when I think about what she went through to find us, and how loving, playful, and sweet she is despite all of those circ*mstances. When she snuggles up to me when I’m feeling kinda cruddy, or greets me with extra kisses when I rush through the door, or when she bugs me for a walk when I’ve been at the computer too long, I know that our lives are fundamentally linked. There’s an understanding there that goes beyond basic needs being met.
This salad is all sweet potato goodness today because that’s Cleo’s favourite treat. We get those sweet potato jerky slices for her, but I also give her little pieces when we’re having them roasted or steamed for dinner. This dish has a bit of a Moroccan stew vibe, but appropriately cool for summer. I treat it like a potato salad essentially, but with lots of extra vegetables, some chickpeas, and a creamy date, lemon and spice vinaigrette. This salad’s got a little extra something going on, but I think it could certainly be a crowd pleaser at any old outdoor gathering you might get up to.
Sweet Potato Sunshine Salad
Sweet potato sunshine salad with Morocco-inspired spices, date dressing, mint, and pistachios. A healthy vegan crowd pleaser made in 30 minutes!
5 from 4 votes
Print Recipe
Prep Time: 30 minutes mins
Cook Time: 20 minutes mins
Total Time: 50 minutes mins
Servings 4 -6
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 healthy sprig of mint, leaves chopped
- ¼ cup shelled pistachios, chopped
- sea salt and ground black pepper, to taste
Equipment
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.
Author: Laura Wright
Course: Main Course, Salad, Side Dish
Cuisine: American, Moroccan
Diet: Gluten Free, Vegan, Vegetarian
Keyword: all seasons, bell peppers, carrots, cherry tomatoes, chickpeas, chili flakes, cilantro, cinnamon, dates, dijon mustard, fall, ginger, lemon, medjool dates, mint, olive oil, red onion, spice, spring, summer, sweet potato, sweet potatoes, winter
01/07/2015 (Last Updated 09/02/2023)
Posted in: autumn, chickpeas, earthy, gluten free, grain-free, main course, refined sugar-free, salad, salty, sauce, side dish, sour, spring, summer, sweet, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, vegan, winter
62 comments
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Tiffany 
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!Reply
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Caroline
Just made this and it is SO DAMN GOOD. That dressing!Reply
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Jessamin 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.
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Carole 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.
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Emily 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!
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Emma How do you think pomegranate molasses would work instead of dates?
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Lisa 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!!
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max 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.
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