Emtalks: Are Potatoes Healthy? My Favourite Easy Potato Dish

Friday, 27 January 2017

Are Potatoes Healthy? My Favourite Easy Potato Dish - Potatoes More Than A Bit On The Side

In my family we have always eaten a balanced diet, you will hear me mention balance a lot and that's because I've been brought up to believe eating anything you like in moderation is okay and sticking to the 80/20 rule. Doing this keeps you satisfied and prevents feeling deprived which is key to sticking to balanced eating. With clean eating being very much in vogue currently some people could be forgiven for thinking that some of the more traditional foods no longer have a place in our diets. In our family, rather than omit traditional food in favour of more fashionable food, we still enjoy traditional staples while incorporating new foods in to our everyday life as they become popular - in other words we get the best of both worlds. New foods bring variety and adventure while the more traditional foods make us feel comfortable and satisfied. I'm hoping most of you have read my blog post about the dangers of clean eating and believe me when I say: carbs are not the enemy and in fact, they give us nutrients and lots of energy.
One traditional food that I would like to stand up for is the humble white potato. When I was growing up I had baked white potatoes with scrumptious filling once a week - what could be more delicious? I actually had one yesterday filled with tuna. To this day, I still eat a lot of jacket potatoes, when they're baked in a crispy way and brimming with cottage cheese, I can't get enough. We have embraced the sweet potato in or household but equally we remain faithful to the white variety too, don't fall in to the trap of believing that white potatoes are less healthy because if you read nutritional guidelines you will see that they are packed with a variety of vitamins and minerals that are good for you. They are also great source of slow release carbohydrate to keep you going throughout the day! Here is a really heart, warming one pan dish using some traditional and affordable home ingredients! It's one of my favourites.

Em's Potato Hot Pot (can be made completely Vegetarian!)

Ingredients:

-Enough sausages for 4 people (buy good sausages with a high pork content but if you want to make this Veggie just leave the sausages out and it still tastes yummy)
- Olive oil
-20ish salad potatoes skin on
-Large bottle of good tomato passata
- 2 large onions finely sliced
-Half a red and yellow pepper
-3 cloves garlic grated
-A thumb sized pieced of ginger grated
-Two green birds eye chillis finely chopped (de-seed unless you like it really hot)
-A heaped teaspoon of ground cumin
-A heaped teaspoon ground coriander
-Half teaspoon hot chilli powder
-Half teaspoon ground turmeric
-Salt and pepper
-Fresh coriander to garnish

Method

-Warm some oil in a pan and brown your sausages (I like mine well done). No need to cook them through completely at this stage

-Put the sausages on one side.

-Add a little more oil to the pan and brown the onion and peppers together with all your spices plus garlic and ginger on a low heat for around ten minutes. The mixture should be all caramelly

-While you are doing all of that, part boil your potatoes in a pan of water with a pinch of salt until they begin to soften a little

-Drain the potatoes and add to the onion mixture stirring well

-Add the tomato passata and a pinch of salt and pepper and stir well

-Add the part cooked sausages

-Bring the mixture to bubbling and then switch down to a slow simmer.

-Add 4 - 5 tablespoons of water, stir, put the lid on and gentle simmer until the sausages are cooked through and the potatoes are lovely and soft.

This is such a hearty, easy to make and affordable dish for the cold weather we're having at the moment. I know you'll love it as much as I do. It's so easily adaptable too so please do feel free to leave the sausages out (the men in my household just love them!).

You can find more potato recipes here.

How do you feel about potatoes? Do you eat them? Do you love them? What are your favourite hearty recipes?

You might also like:

The dangers of clean eating

The 80/20 rule

Healthy homemade chocolate peanut butter cups

Lots of love, Em x

*I worked with More Than A Bit On The Side, Love Potatoes for this campaign and couldn't be happier! It's always my honest opinion.

Don't forget to follow me on bloglovin! to stay up to date with my posts!

I would also love it if you could subscribe to me on YouTube here!