This warm and creamy baked sweet potato is stuffed with a flavorful chickpea filling! It’s vegan, healthy and filling and my most favorite comfort food these days!
Every second sunday my husband makes dinner together with our oldest son. And it often used to be a chicken based dish – they made very tasty food by the way! One of their classics was a Greek chicken dish where the chicken was marinated in a yogurt and herb sauce and then fried. Super tasty! But since our oldest decided to become a vegetarian at the beginning of the year, I’ve been missing the flavors of that dish and wanted to create a vegan version! And this chickpea-based version definitely made me very happy!
Obviously it’s not in any way close to fried Greek chicken and it’s not trying to be. I wanted to create vegan comfort food with Greek flavors. Stuffed vegetables and potatoes are something that I love to make (and eat). I had never really tried to stuff sweet potatoes but my husband made some a while back and I really loved it. Sweet potatoes are absolutely delicious anyways but I normally had them as fries! Turns out that stuffed sweet potato is also super yummy!
The filling is done quite quickly while the sweet potatoes definitely need their their time in the oven. But you want them to be soft and creamy on the inside so just think of it like that: goodness needs time! I saw that you can also microwave a sweet potato in five (!) minutes but I don’t own a microwave so no idea if that’s true. It does seem to save a lot of time in that case though!
The filling consists of only a few things. Chickpeas, cucumber, coconut yogurt and spices. If you’re sceptical about coconut yogurt, just hear me out. I was also sceptical of any plant-based yogurts because all the ones I had tried up to that point didn’t taste anything like yogurt! But then I tried Happy Coco and their coconut yogurt absolutely rocks! I have bought it several times now and I absolutely love it. It’s a beautiful base for this Greek flavors inspired sauce!
It’s very important that you sqeeze the cucumber as much as you can after grating it! Cucumber contains a lot of moisture which – if not squeezed – can turn your wonderful flavorful sauce into a watery mess. Rather squeeze it more than less! After mixing it all together with spices, it could also be eaten straight out of the bowl. And believe me, you will be tempted! But it’s even better on top of your warm and creamy sweet potato! I love it topped with a few quartered cherry tomatoes (or other kinds of tomatoes) for a bit of fruity tartness.
Will you make this for dinner soon? Or how about my Roasted Butternut Risotto?
Greek Chickpea stuffed Sweet Potato
Description
This warm and creamy baked sweet potato is stuffed with a flavorful chickpea filling! It's vegan, healthy, filling and my favorite comfort food these days!
Ingredients
Instructions
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Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (356°F). Cover a baking tray with parchment paper.
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Pierce the sweet potaotes with a knife all over the potato. Then place on a baking tray and bake at 180°C (356°F) for about 1 hour and 20 minutes.
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In the meantime, drain one can of chickpeas and rinse them. Add them to a bowl and mash them just a few times with the masher. The chickpeas should NOT be mashed, just bashed a little bit. Remove the peel.
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Grate the cucumber on the side for shredding and squeeze the moisture out really well using either a cheesecloth or just your hands.
Add to the chickpeas together with coconut yogurt, salt, dried oregano, pepper, chili powder, garlic powder and lemon juice. Mix together really well.
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Cut open the sweet potatoes after they're done baking and squeeze the ends together slightly to create a bigger opening. Fill with the chickpea mixture.
Cut the tomatoes into quarters and add on top. Enjoy!
