Can anyone suggest how much new/normal potato could be substituted for sweet potatoes? Amanda Ursell's recipes look really good, but a great many of them contain sweet potato, which I can't stand.
Help! & thanks,
Vivien

Hi

I use sweet potato quite a lot with my kids, as one of my girls needs a higher fibre diet.

I substitute about 1/3 to 1/2 of normal potatos for a sweet potato when doing Mash. Because it's for the kids, rather than from a low fat diet perspective, i also add a bit of milk, butter and sometimes cheese. The girls love it, and will not eat ordinary mash now.

The other thing i do is to sling a sweet potato into any hot pot or one pot meals that i make. It breaks down a bit faster than normal potato and so it thinkens up stews etc wonderfully, but it just kind of blends in taste wise and you would have trouble seperating the taste out. My normal slow cooker meals are just all of the veggies in the fridge, sweet potato and a handfull of red lentils. The lentils and the sweet potato work well together and it's a great stick to your ribs keep you warm winter kind of tea.

Hope this helps, i would definately try the mash.

Kind regards
Sandra

Last night I made sweet potato and parsnip mash. It was delicious and a nice, nutritous change from normal mashed potato.

Hi

I've recently started to bake sweet potatoes in the oven. Prick them first and use a baking tray to catch the lovely toffee like stuff that they produce as they cook. Superior to normal baked potato as they dont need butter to be edible.
Eileen

Yes! I fully agree - jacketed sweet potatoes are incredible, don't need butter, and aren't so starchy and heavy (and are also smaller, so you eat less...). Top with cottage cheese and ratatouille/grilled crispy bacon/chives/rocket.

On weight watchers 150g of sweet Potatoe is 2 points were as normal potatoe is 1.5 points for the same amount. Don't know if that helps.

I got this from another site:

Glycemic Index
baked potato=85
sweet potato =54

Carb/fibre value
1cup baked potato =26.3g carbs & 1.83g fiber =24.47 net carbs
1cup sweet potato (cubed, raw) = 41.83g carbs & 6.15g fiber =35.68 net carbs

So it depends.

However, to your question, Mix sweet potato and white potato in whatever ratio suits you best and mash together your usual way. On top of something like shepherds pie, it's nice.

My fave meal is oven baked sweet potato with hummus and grated carrot! Absolutely delicious. It also brings great taste to homemade lentil, veg and tomato soup.

Another great thing as a potato substitute, or to mix with potato to cut calories and increase flavour, is celeriac. If you have never eaten it before, it looks like a very ugly, knobbly swede!
I often peel it and cut it into chunks, just as you would potato and boil it along with the spuds, then mash them together. The celeriac will cook a bit faster than the potato, so either add it about 5 mins later or just cut it a bit bigger than the potato.
It is also about half the calories of potato!
You can also grate it with potato or on its own to make nice rosti (grate, squeeze out any liquid, season, shape into flat cakes, fry in a spray of oil in a non-stick pan until brown and cooked through. Lovely served with a poached egg on top!)
Butternut Squash is also a big favourite with me and also has half the calories of potato (about 35 per 100g as opposed to 75 for potato.)
You can use this to add fabulous flavour, colour and texture to a dish. It is lovely added in chunks to soups and stew of all kinds and simmered until tender. It removes the need for any flour to thicken a soup or stew if you cut some smaller chunks and let them break up or mash them into the stew liquid when they are soft. It is amazingly tasty roasted in the oven with a spray of oil if you are roasting meat or vegetables and is also fab in risotto! It also makes a great, velvety-textured soup on its own, simmered in veg stock and blended with a pinch of chilli. With a swirl of fromage frais, this makes a soup posh enough to serve to guests and is easy peasy!

I do like the sound of this soup Helen! Am going to try it out to-morrow as it is definitely the weather here in Perth for home made soups - couldn't see in front of my nose when I left the house this morning, pouring rain and very heavy mist! Hope all is going well with you - have been reading your posts and you deserve a good chunk of luck.

I am also a huge fan of the celeraic! Nearly that time of year for thick soupy dinners too! I'm going to try your sweet potatoe one, sounds just gorge!

Gosh Helen you are making me feel hungry! Also love sweet potato in the ways you mentioned. Less keen on celeriac!

Its also nice mashed with carrot, instead of using swede.

By coincidence, I mashed sweet potato and ordinary for tea and it was very creamy. I was very naughty though and added a dollop of marg (it was the Pure one with Omega 3 & 6).

My daughter loathes mashed potato - what's not to like??

Thanks for the wishes, Jeannie! I hope the soup turns out well! Let me know if you enjoyed it. I'm afraid I am from the 'old school' of cookery, in that I hardly ever weigh things or measure quantities for stuff like soup. I just add the amount that looks and tastes right. This might make my 'recipes' difficult to follow! For soup, it is better to add more ingredients to stock, as you can dilute the soup if it is too thick with either water or stock afterwards.

You are not the only one. I once added cayenne pepper instead of paprika by mistake.

Bet that landed you in the soup Jackie!
I never weigh either and my younger neighbour always wants the recipe for my soup! It's different every time, so difficult to be precise! It turned out really well Helen, so will definitely have that again, thank you.

Hurrah! A satisfied customer.

No funnily enough it didn't. At the time we were living in married quarters in Cupar, and had workmen in doing the double glazing. They polished most of it off.