Sweet Potatoes have always been a regular part of our family diet. Our kids as toddlers gulped down sweet potato puree and now they regularly have sweet potatoes in some form with their dinner. But like a lot of kids they are picky eaters and they do sometimes get bored with the same thing over and over. This is understandable, but it can be frustrating as a parent seeing foods in your child’s comfort zone suddenly fall out of favor because they are bored with them. Sometimes it feels like the area in between, those foods your kids will actually eat, is razor thin. So one strategy we employ to combat this is to make sure can offer foods in different formats. Today we’ll show you a super easy alternative to Sweet Potato Fries, our Roasted Sweet Potato Cubes. They are just different enough to keep the kids interested and as we mentioned in our post earlier in the week, we love pairing these Roasted Sweet Potato Cubes with our Crispy Oven Roasted Brussel Sprouts (See this post for more thoughts on raising picky eaters).
I think one of our biggest reasons for having Roasted Sweet Potato Cubes so often is simply because sweet potatoes are easy to find at the store, they won’t break the family budget, and they are easy to prepare. A few minutes of chopping, some quick seasoning and you’re ready to go. We sometimes roast whole sweet potatoes, but usually for inclusion in other things; As far as dinner side dishes go, we find sweet potato cubes or fries work much better than whole potatoes. We like to cook both of these items until they get a little crispy on the outside; Our kids don’t like sweet potato fries or cubes that are too mushy. And we tend to agree, crispy is better.
We tend to just use basting oil (The Wegmans basting oil is amazing and new and improved) and then season with a little salt and pepper, but there are a lot of variations on this that would work. The Wonky Spatula uses coconut oil on their sweet potato cubes. Others just use olive oil. And for seasoning, I know some people like to use cinnamon. We feel like sweet potatoes have a nice sweetness to them already so I guess it really just comes down to your palette and what you want to try. We just tend to stick with what is easy and we know our kids will eat. Meal time can be challenge! 🙂
Reasons we love Roasted Sweet Potato Cubes
- sweet potatoes are inexpensive and easy to find
- our kids will eat them
- simple prep, easy to make
- high in fiber
- lower in calories than normal potatoes
- good source of magnesium
- taste great!
If you’re looking for an easy side item tonight, give these oven roasted sweet potato cubes a try!
Ingredients
- 1 large sweet potato , cut into small cubes
- 1 T . basting oil
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400.
- Mix all ingredients in a bowl.
- Spread in a single layer on a large baking sheet (or two if too close together).
- Bake for 15 minutes.
- Stir thoroughly and then return to oven for an additional 10 to 15 minutes.
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