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You won’t believe the flavor in these Mexican sweet potatoes, topped with black bean salsa and creamy cilantro sauce!

Mexican Sweet Potatoes
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Meet our favorite meal: the baked sweet potato. Alex and I have been eating this meal since the very beginning of our marriage, when we decided we wanted to start cooking more vegetables. At the time, I had myself convinced that I didn’t like sweet potatoes, mainly due to bad connotations with marshmallow goo on holidays. But I gave them another chance with these Mexican sweet potatoes, and our sweet potato obsession was born.

These Mexican sweet potatoes are the perfect blend of sweet and savory. The spicy black bean salsa is the perfect complement to the light sweetness of the potato, and topped with creamy cilantro sauce, it’s a little bit of heaven. And 100% whole food plant based (WFPB), too!

Related: Easy Vegan Recipes for Beginners

Mexican Sweet Potatoes

How to make Mexican sweet potatoes

This recipe uses our Quick Baked Sweet Potato method, which makes them intensely flavorful. And we’ve used one of our favorite tricks to cut down the cooking time: cut the sweet potatoes in half before roasting! Rub a tiny amount of olive oil and a sprinkle of kosher salt onto the potatoes before popping into the oven. Depending on the size of the potato, it cuts down the roasting to about 25 to 35 minutes, instead of 45 minutes to 60 minutes.

Of course, you can top these Mexican sweet potatoes with any toppings you’d like! But the toppings we’ve chosen here all work together splendidly:

  • Black bean salsa: chop up some tomatoes, add jalapeno, red onion, and cilantro, and you’ve got a delicious savory spicy salsa that’s fresh in contrast to the roasty potatoes.
  • Creamy Cilantro Sauce for dolloping, which is 100% plant based (see more on the sauce below). Of course if you prefer, you could use good old sour cream and cheese for topping.
  • Corn
  • Hot sauce
  • Cilantro leaves
Mexican Sweet Potatoes | Cilantro Sauce

Top with creamy cilantro sauce!

To top off these Mexican sweet potatoes is Creamy Cilantro Sauce! Using the cilantro sauce makes the entire dish vegan and plant-based, which is helpful for feeding a crowd of various diets. The sauce is made creamy using soaked cashews. The cashews are soaked for 1 hour before blending the sauce, so if you’re able to make it in advance it’s also helpful. As you’ll see in the recipe, you can add water to taste to make it as thick or as drizzle-able as you’d like. The flavor is super tangy and savory, and a perfect contrast for the earthy potatoes!

Alternate sauces

If you’d prefer a quicker sauce, try our Creamy Cilantro Dressing! It uses Greek yogurt and a little mayonnaise. Or, try some of our other Mexican-style sauces:

Make sure to eat the potato skins!

A quick word about the humble sweet potato: you can eat the whole thing! Most people throw out the skin of the sweet potato, but that’s actually one of the healthiest parts of the meal! Sweet potato skins are packed with fiber, beta carotene, and vitamins C and E, just to name a few of the many reasons you should eat the skin.

These Mexican sweet potatoes work for many occasions: as a healthy family dinner recipe, or as a party appetizer. They’d be especially great for game day! Let us know if you try them out in the comments below.

Mexican Sweet Potatoes | Black Bean Pico de Gallo

Looking for more easy weeknight dinners?

Outside of these Mexican sweet potatoes, here are some of our favorite easy weeknight dinners:

Mexican Sweet Potatoes

This Mexican sweet potatoes recipe is…

Vegetarian, gluten-free, vegan, plant-based, and dairy-free.

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Mexican Sweet Potatoes

Mexican Sweet Potatoes
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5 from 4 reviews

You won’t believe the flavor in these Mexican sweet potatoes, topped with black bean pico de gallo and creamy cilantro sauce!

  • Author: a Couple Cooks
  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Cook Time: 30 minutes
  • Total Time: 40 minutes
  • Yield: 4 1x
  • Category: Main Course
  • Method: Baked
  • Cuisine: Mexican Inspired

Ingredients

Scale

Instructions

  1. Start soaking the cashews for the Creamy Cilantro Sauce (or make it in advance; you can also soak the cashews the night before for easy day-of prep). If you’re planning to make the Creamy Cilantro Dressing, skip this part. 
  2. Preheat oven to 450°F.
  3. Wash the sweet potatoes and slice them in half. Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and rub lightly with olive oil, just enough to coat. Sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake until tender and lightly browned on the edges, about 25 to 35 minutes depending on the size of the potatoes. 
  4. Make the Black Bean Pico de Gallo.
  5. Defrost the frozen corn. 
  6. Make the Creamy Cilantro Sauce (or Creamy Cilantro Dressing). Save out a few cilantro leaves and chop the cilantro for a garnish.
  7. To serve, top the roasted sweet potatoes with Black Bean Pico de Gallo, corn kernels, cilantro, and dollops of Creamy Cilantro Sauce.

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About the authors

Alex & Sonja

Hi! We’re Alex & Sonja Overhiser, authors of the acclaimed cookbooks A Couple Cooks and Pretty Simple Cooking—and a real life couple who cooks together. We founded the A Couple Cooks website in 2010 to share seasonal recipes and the joy of home cooking. Now, we’ve got over 3,000 well-tested recipes, including Mediterranean diet, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, smoothies, cocktails, and more!

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22 Comments

  1. olivia dunkley says:

    This was absolutely mind blowingly delicious! thankyou :D






  2. Leanne H. says:

    That creamy cilantro dressing atop of sweet potatoes has quickly become one of my all-time favorite food combo. This recipe is such a fresh take on “Taco Tuesday” in our household!! Thank you for sharing this delightful dish with the world!






  3. Naomi Youngstein says:

    This is scrumptious. I made it with the creamy cilantro sauce with the yogurt/Mayo, and just put the corn into the black bean salsa. Absolutely yummy!






  4. Heidi says:

    I’ve just begun cooking vegan recipes, and I love this one! What a wonderful combination of flavors.






  5. Jamie Vandegriff says:

    An explosion of flavors! Thank you so much for the inspiration!

    1. Alex Overhiser says:

      You are welcome!

  6. Heather Roselle says:

    Just made this and was pleasantly surprised and amazed by how all the components worked so well together!!! I am not the biggest fan of sweet potatoes but I am experimenting (2nd day) with going vegan and this was AWESOME! Even my 17 year old son loved it and commented on how fresh and deliciously composed it was. Thank you!

    1. Alex Overhiser says:

      So glad you loved it!

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