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These sweet potatoes topped with a zesty slaw and creamy Thai peanut butter sauce are an irresistible plant based dinner recipe!
If you read our last post, you’ll know: Alex and I were very skeptical of the Instant Pot. Anything that’s trendy turns on our skeptic meter, so we avoided anything Instant Pot or electric pressure cooker for years. We finally decided to give it a try when we found a friend who cooked sweet potatoes in it religiously: and turns out it cooks rice and dried beans too. Perhaps it would give our rice cooker a run for its money?
After trying it several times, we found the Instant Pot cooks sweet potatoes in less time than baking and it’s totally hands off. This healthy sweet potatoes recipe with Thai peanut butter sauce is our idea on how to use those Instant Pot sweet potatoes! And don’t worry: if you don’t have any Instant Pot, there’s a baked version as well. Keep reading for the recipe.
Related: Easy Vegetarian Recipes for Beginners | Best Vegan Dinner Recipes
How to cook sweet potatoes?
Here’s our method for how to cook sweet potatoes in an Instant Pot! They come out with a moist and velvety interior. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, make our Steamed Sweet Potatoes or Quick Baked Sweet Potato method. (The steamed potatoes are closest in moistness to the Instant Pot method!)
How long to cook sweet potatoes? Our method for Instant Pot sweet potatoes takes 35 minutes total, including preheat time and natural release time. Just throw them in the pot, cook on high pressure for 16 minutes, and natural release for 10 minutes. If you’re baking the sweet potatoes, a tip is to cut them in half, which shortens the cooking time! This way, you can bake them for just 25 to 30 minutes at 400F.
Related: 28 Day Healthy Meal Plan | Best Healthy Dinner Recipes
This Thai peanut butter sauce recipe
This recipe is simply Thai inspired: there’s nothing authentic Thai about it! You can make the slaw and Thai peanut butter sauce in the time it takes to cook the sweet potatoes. The slaw and Thai peanut butter sauce are a loose inspiration from the flavors of Thai food: cilantro, lime, soy balanced with a touch of sweet (here maple syrup), green onion, and peanut.
This recipe is vegetarian, and naturally gluten free and vegan (plant based) as well. It’s healthy, colorful, and delicious — we served it to our neighbors and they couldn’t believe how flavorful it was. This one’s also a great Back to School recipe, since school will be starting up in a few weeks!
What are other vegetarian Instant Pot recipes?
Another hangup about the Instant Pot for us was that we thought it was mainly helpful for cooking meat quickly. Since we eat mainly vegetarian on a daily basis, we were interested in vegetarian Instant Pot recipes. This Instant Pot sweet potatoes with Thai peanut butter sauce recipe is one of our favorite Instant Pot vegetarian recipes — here are a few more of our favorites!
- How to Cook Sweet Potatoes in an Instant Pot (Pressure Cooker)
- How to Cook Chickpeas in an Instant Pot (Pressure Cooker)
- Chickpea Couscous Bowls with Lemon Tahini Dressing
- Instant Pot Smoky Lentils and Rice (Pressure Cooker)
- Instant Pot Tacos with Smoky Lentils
- All our Vegetarian and Vegan Instant Pot recipes!
Check it out: If you’re in the market for an Instant Pot, here’s the Instant Pot we use.
More healthy sweet potato recipes
Here are a few other healthy sweet potato recipes from A Couple Cooks:
- Best Sweet Potato Wedges
- Healthy Loaded Sweet Potato Rounds
- Broccoli Cheese Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
- Moroccan Sweet Potatoes with Lemon Tahini Dressing
Wondering how to cook sweet potatoes in an Instant Pot?
We have you covered! Watch the following video or read more here.
Sweet Potatoes with Thai Peanut Butter Sauce
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 35 minutes
- Yield: 4 to 6 servings 1x
Description
These sweet potatoes topped with a zesty slaw and creamy Thai peanut butter sauce are an irresistible plant based dinner recipe!
Ingredients
For the sweet potatoes and slaw
- 4 medium to large sweet potatoes (10 to 12 ounces each)
- 1/4 red cabbage (3 cups shredded)
- 1/2 red bell pepper
- 1/2 yellow bell pepper
- 1 green onion
- ¼ cup chopped cilantro
- 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (1 lime)
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- Crushed peanuts, for the garnish
For the Thai peanut butter sauce
- ⅓ cup peanut butter
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons lime juice (1 lime)
- 1 teaspoon maple syrup
- 2 tablespoons water
Instructions
- Cook the sweet potatoes: Go to Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes, Steamed Sweet Potatoes, or Quick Baked Sweet Potatoes.
- Make the slaw: Thinly slice the red cabbage, enough for 3 cups. Thinly slice the peppers. Thinly slice the green onion. Chop the cilantro. In a large bowl, mix together the cabbage, peppers, green onion and cilantro with the lime juice and kosher salt.
- Make the Thai peanut butter sauce: In a small bowl, whisk together the peanut butter, soy sauce, lime juice, maple syrup, and water. Taste and add a bit of kosher salt if desired (this depends on the salt content of the peanut butter).
- Serve: Slice the sweet potatoes in half and top them with the slaw. Drizzle with the Thai peanut butter sauce and sprinkle with chopped peanuts.
- Category: Main Dish
- Method: Pressure Cooker
- Cuisine: Thai
Keywords: Vegetarian Instant Pot Recipes, Instant Pot, Instant Pot Recipes, Vegetarian, Gluten Free, Vegan, Thai, Sweet Potatoes, Dairy Free, Healthy
I would never have thought to cook sweet potatoes in an Instant Pot, what a great idea! I haven’t got an Instant Pot but I’ve seen so many recipes that use them, I’m definitely tempted.
I love Thai flavours as well, so this looks great!
Looks great but warning: soy sauce is NOT gluten free!!!
There are some soy sauces which are gluten free. It will say it on the bottle
I can’t wait to try that peanut drizzle sauce! I love sweet potatoes with peanut butter for a sweet version…can’t wait to try this savory version! :)
This is a super easy recipe and surprisingly packed with flavor! It also took barely any time to prepare and was so healthy, I think this is going to become a staple recipe for my boyfriend and I. I couldn’t get enough of that slaw, I was just sitting there eating the slaw on it’s own afterwards and might just make the slaw without the potatoes in the future ? Thanks for sharing this!
Thanks for a great recipe! Made this meal for dinner tonight and it was super filling, satisfying and delicious! We had a spinach salad topped with some pineapple slices that I roasted alongside the sweet potatoes. This will definitely be added to the “go-to” meal list!
Loved the recipe! I would have never thought to use sweet potato. I added a clove of garlic, knob of ginger and a bit of red curry paste to the peanut sauce and it was amazing.
This was great! I had some lentils in the fridge that I dressed with lime and cilantro to add more protein. I think next time we may actually skip the sweet potato and serve the slaw and sauce over lentils!
I made this today and it was DELICIOUS. I did without the bell peppers because I don’t like them, and it was still amazing. YUM
Oh we are so glad to hear this! And the slaw would be great without peppers too. Thanks for making it!
This was very good. I was serving 2, so I only used 2 sweet potatoes, but I made the full dressing and slaw quantities because of all the replies saying they were so good. We agree. I did make one small modification. Using the recipe for the sauce, it said to “drizzle” it over the slaw, but mine was too thick for that. I added 1 more tablespoon of water and that worked great and didn’t adversely affect the flavor. This recipe is definitely a keeper, and the slaw/sauce combo could easily have other applications. Thanks.
Fed this to my meat-eating family. There were no leftovers. I served it with grilled pineapple. The peanut sauce recipe is no good turning out thick & not sweet enough. Use your favorite peanut sauce. Also, I used 3X the ammount of cilantro.