Sweet potatoes deserve more attention. Let them be the star of the show, by roasting them with some Old Bay. Also included: a sous vide experiment that did not go as planned.

Time: 4/5
No way around the sous vide cooking time, but at least it’s a passive process 

Effort: 4/5
Sweet potatoes are nice, but I miss how convenient rice in a rice cooker is!

Change of Pace

Since bringing some Old Bay back home from my great American adventure, I’ve tried it in a lot of different recipes. From pan seared shrimp, to meal prepped chicken thighs, to mayo-crusted cod. But it’s always been for the protein, never for the carbs.

I’ve always been curious about how I could incorporate starchy vegetables into my meal prep for the fiber and the nutrition. Sweet potatoes in particular seem like a really good idea, because of the vitamin A and carotenoids among many other good stuff. 

And if Old Bay works for regular potatoes, why not sweet potatoes? Turns out it does. Sweet, savoury and heat are flavours that play very nice with each other. With a pre-made spice blend, there isn’t much to do besides shaking the shaker until the food changes colour.

The sous vide chicken breasts were another experiment, but one that didn’t turn out that well. Since I am committed to showing my mistakes as well as my successes, I’ll tell you how it went.

I wanted to see if I could build a glaze on the surface of the chicken by using a kitchen torch to sear on several layers of barbecue sauce. What ended up happening was that the torch didn’t have the power to achieve that sort of effect, and what little sauce that was seared on ended up being smeared over the cutting board instead of staying on the chicken.

Even so, barbecue sauce tastes pretty good with chicken, and anything that makes chicken breasts fun to eat is very conducive to the fat loss phase I’m currently in. Besides, the sweet potatoes were good enough that I’m happy to consider it the main dish while the chicken was there to help me hit my protein goals.

By the way, in the coming weeks you’ll see me work my way through toasts, sandwiches, soups, wraps and all sorts of good stuff. I had a two week vacation, which let me try out a lot of ideas that are outside my usual range of oven–roasted–chicken–over–rice deal that make up half of this blog.

I reckon I have a shot at setting a high score for the number of consecutive recipes that weren’t served with rice, a record that will likely stand for a very long time.

Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 2. Let’s make history – to the moon!

Dramatis Personae

Served 6.

Chicken breast – 1kg

Boneless, skinless, sous vide straight from frozen because it’s so much easier that way. No raw chicken juices to splash around, no floppy meat ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) to wrestle into plastic bags.

I find 6g of salt to be plenty of seasoning. Right into the SV bag with the chicken still frozen. The cook time is long enough for the salt to work its way through the breast, and there’s even more salt from the barbecue sauce.

Barbecue sauce – 10 teaspoons

If I were to guess, I spread maybe a teaspoon’s worth of sauce on each side in total, and there were 5 breasts in that 1kg pack. Enough for a thick layer, although that might be part of why the kitchen torch had such trouble creating the glaze.

In all honesty I have no idea how much sauce I used, because I never measure my ingredients. It’s a horrible habit for a food blogger, I know, but I still identify as a (lazy) home cook first and a blogger second. I’ll make this better the second time round.

Sweet potatoes – 1kg

Skins on, well scrubbed. The skin takes on a pleasant texture after being roasted, and it adds to the eating experience as well as the nutritional value.

My grandma has a lot of food tricks, and one of them is how to make sweet potatoes sweeter: don’t cook them the day you buy them. Instead, keep them in a cool dry place in your pantry and allow them to dry up for a couple days first. This concentrates the sugars, and results in a sweeter, chewier sweet potato!

Old Bay – 5 tablespoons

Also a best guess. Basically, shake until the sweet potatoes change colour. The paprika in the seasoning mix gives a useful visual guide to how much flavour you’re gonna get. If you’re a more discerning individual (which I am not), go ahead and extrapolate the salt-equivalent of volume you would normally use on sweet potatoes using the sodium content.

Oil – small drizzle

Just enough to coat the sweet potatoes, so there is something for the Old Bay to stick to. I have canola oil so it’s what I’m using. Olive oil can be a nice choice because of the health benefits, but don’t use the good stuff because it’s going to have all the fruity, delicate flavours roasted out of it.

Broccoli – 2 heads

Always eat your veggies! This meal isn’t quite the full stereotype of broccoli, rice and chicken breast. But one has appearances to keep up. As usual, my advice is to have whatever vegetable you like, and/or is cheap and convenient.

Executive summary

1. Set up the sous vide bath. Cook chicken breasts at 60C/140F for 2 hours.
2. Preheat oven to 220C/425F. Scrub the sweet potatoes well. Cut into chunks.
3. Add sweet potato chunks, and toss with oil and Old Bay.
4. Line a baking sheet with foil and parchment paper. Roast sweet potatoes for about 45 minutes, or until tender and slightly browned.
5. Wash and cut the broccoli. Toss in the same olive oil and Old Bay left from tossing the sweet potatoes. Cook and reserve.
6. Once chicken is done, remove from sous vide bag and pat dry. Coat chicken with a thin layer of barbecue sauce, and sear the sauce on with a kitchen torch. Repeat several times if desired.
7. Assemble and serve.
   

Play by Play

Last things first. The chicken is going to take the longest, so I get them started first. The plate is there to keep the chicken submerged, and the fact that it has a cute cat on it doesn’t hurt.

When I say scrub well, I mean it. I actually keep a Scotch-Brite pad that I never add detergent to, as my dedicated root vegetable scrubber.

My stainless steel pan is the biggest dishwasher safe utensil I have, so it’s serving as a mixing bowl. Old bay and olive oil in, mix it around, then onto a preheated baking sheet.

Since there’s already oil and seasoning in the stainless steel pan, I might as well use it for the broccoli. Makes cleaning up easier, and I don’t need to worried about flavouring the broccoli.

Back to the sweet potatoes, while the broccoli cooks. I’m definitely overcrowding the oven, and the sweet potatoes are struggling to brown. It’s a bit better now that they’ve shrunk down a little, but at this point I have to accept that not every piece is going to get a perfect crust. I give them a toss anyway, and return them to the oven.

Broccoli is done by this time, and I’m reserving them so I can use the already dirty pan for yet another purpose …

Which is torching the barbecue sauce onto the chicken breasts. It kind of worked, but I suspect the sauce is too thick to achieve the lacquered effect I was going for, and the sauce ended up smearing off the chicken when I turned the pieces over.

Yet more smearing as I cut the pieces up. Yet another experiment, where I cut the breasts across the grain instead of straight across as usual. It made a measurable difference to the tenderness of the pieces, so this is something I might do again.

Dinner is served! Let’s see how we did.

The sweet potatoes carried the day, though. Earthy, sweet, and enhanced with the smoky savoury heat of the Old Bay. Definitely something to write home about.

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