Spicy Chickpeas and Sweet Potato Salad Bowl

Starting Monday with meatless mighty spicy Chickpea and Sweet Potato Salad Bowl which will make you eat healthy, close to nature without much effort.

This sweet, spicy and savory Chickpea and Sweet Potato Bowl has everything you need for a delicious and nutritious lite winter meal. Veggie protein of chickpeas, nutrition of sweet potato, kale, and crunch of turnips, and probiotic and antioxidants of herb yogurt dressing. 

Even if you are not in mood of a healthy bowl, I can tell you there is nothing boring in this bowl. From spiced chickpeas to sauted kale... every bite of this salad has something delicious to offer. 

My love chickpeas is not hidden from you all. I'm always looking new ways to include more chickpeas in my weeknight menu. I was not so surprised when I saw last month, same day I shared Vegan Chickpea Curry with you :) That is totally coincidental but I kinda like it. At least one chickpea dish per month? What do you say? Well, I make more than one every month than why not you too get the recipe?

This chickpea and sweet potato salad bowl also is here for my love of kale. I have another amazing recipe on blog which feature chickpea-kale combo - Warm Kale and Chickpea Salad with Tahini Dressing! I dig that chickpea bowl so much that last weekend I decided to make it again. Just after cooking chickpeas, I realized, I don't have tahini paste in pantry. So, that gave me option to be little creative and this amazing bowl is the outcome! I quickly clicked a few pictures before serving so that you guys can too enjoy a healthy bowl for lunch or dinner this week.

Theme for this bowl is sweet, sour, spicy, garlicky and earthy with all natural ingredients.

For sweetness I diced to roast some sweet potatoes (can never go wrong with sweet potatoes) and added some raisins.

For crunch, I added cucumber, toasted cashews, and raw turnip.

If you planning to serve this bowl later say next day or after few hours, I recommend packing cucumber and herb yogurt separate. Mix it in just before eating. Since both are served cold, you can even mix cucumber in yogurt and pack in one container. Pack rest of the bowl, chickpeas, kale, sweet potato in one container so you can warm these before eating.

On the hand, this chickpea bowl is also great when served at room temperature. If planning to do so, just mix in everything, pack and refrigerate. Take is out of fridge 30 minutes before serving. (this time will vary based on weather condition. In hot weather, leave out for lesser time so that yogurt does not go bad.)

I like to enjoy some sweetness of sweet potato whole year long. One of my other favorite sweet potato salad recipe is here. If you roast a few extra, you can even enjoy some sweet potato waffles for breakfast.

You can look at all sweet potato recipes here.

Cooking sweet potatoes is as easy as cooking potatoes. I mean it really! Both, sweet potato and potato are root vegetable which can be cooked pretty much the same way. So, if you can boil perfect potato.. you can boil a perfect sweet potato as well. Just make sure to cook until these are knife tender. Let them cool until easy to handle. Then peel of the skin and let cool completely. Use as suggested in the recipe... Such as diced for salads, mashed for mashed sweet potatoes or pancakes, or chopped/crushed for hash.

Easy!! Right?

Oh, you can also oven or pan roast chickpeas like I did for this recipe. Roasting makes these root veggies sweeter and enhance the flavor. 

So, let's get cooking! Hunt some chickpeas from pantry, cook a sweet potato and serve this delicious salad bowl for next meal!

Enjoy! -Savita