Smoothies are daily thing around here. They started as my way to transition my kids to a more nourishing diet than what I thought was nourishing when they were young. I quickly learned that I could add a number of things to their smoothie that they would never eat on their plate, and I could do this without any complaints. You could say in a way… smoothies saved my kids health from an early age.
My smoothies usually look like what you would expect in a nourishing smoothie for adults… but the smoothie for my kids has a secret ingredient that makes their smoothies delicious, creamy, and energizing. That secret ingredient is cooked and cooled sweet potatos. I never would have thought of including sweet potatoes in smoothies until one day I made the most luscious dairy free chocolate pudding with sweet potato as the base. It was incredible and is sparked the idea for me to add this to my kids’ daily smoothie.
I cook my sweet potatos, for 20 minutes in my Instant Pot. Roasting them works well too if you have more time and if you are looking for the sweetest flavor. Then I cool them and store it in my fridge until I am ready to blend up a smoothie. I usually cook a few at a time and use one sweet potato a day so I only need to do this prep a couple of times a week. The sweet potato gives the smoothie a velvety texture, a hint of sweetness, and numerous vitamins. It fills my kids up a bit more than just a usual yogurt based or other recipe. I use all kinds of sweet potatoes to keep diversity in our diets and I also trade out for other root veggies on a regular basis. A few of my favorite sweet potato smoothie substitutes are cooked and cooled beets, squash and pumpkin, but if you are going to start adding these to your smoothies, I recommend starting with sweet potatoes because they have a mellow sweet flavor with an ideal consistency.
So you might wonder, what else do I add to complete the smoothie? You can add anything you want. The ones for my kids usually include yogurt or kefir (cow, goat, or coconut), frozen blueberries, a scoop of greens from paleo valley, and anything else that I want to add that day (sprouted nuts, coconut oil, sprouts, bee pollen etc.) The options are endless, which is why I love using smoothies to enhance the diversity in our diets.
So there you have it… if you are looking for a new, nourishing, and filling ingredient to add to your kids’ smoothies… sweet potatoes might be just the thing.
Eat Dirt
