I had 2 sweet potato plants in my garden this summer and I finally harvested them yesterday. It’s sad to see the garden finally be done for the season, but it is exciting to have a great sweet potato harvest this year to use in my sweet potato black bean tostadas!
I absolutely adore sweet potatoes in spicy dishes. The sweet and the heat are made for each other! In this dish I use red pepper flake to add plenty of kick.
I tried these tostadas with and without salsa, thinking that I wanted to let the sweet potato shine and not muddle its flavor with the salsa. It turned out that with salsa was better. The dish was more well rounded. The complexity of flavors that is easily added with salsa is just worth it.
One of my favorite things about this dish is the simplicity without compromise for flavor. The black beans get tossed with seasonings without the need to cook them. The sweet potato is tossed with a few simple spices to give it a kick, then load the whole thing onto a tostada with cheese and salsa. What’s not to love?
Variations to the Sweet Potato Black Bean Tostadas recipe:
- Roast the sweet potato in the oven instead of pan frying it. It takes more time, in my opinion, but is a more hands off approach.
- Make your own tostada shells. Bake corn tortillas in a 375 degree oven for 8-10 minutes or until crispy and slightly browned.
- Swap out the cheese. Queso fresco is delicious, but it doesn’t last long in the fridge if you don’t use it in a few days. Cheddar or monteray jack would be delicious swaps.
- Try canned chipotles in place of the red pepper flake and chili powder if you want a smokey and spicier variation to this dish.
- 1 large sweet potato, about 12 oz, diced
- 3 tsp olive oil, divided
- ¼ tsp each: red pepper flake, and chili powder
- 1 cup cooked black beans (from a can)
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- ¼ tsp each: salt, pepper, and cumin
- 1 TBS lime juice
- 6 tostada shells
- 6 TBS salsa
- 6 TBS crumbled queso fresco
- 3 TBS minced cilantro
- Add sweet potato and 2 tsp olive oil to a skillet. Cook stirring occasionally until the sweet potato starts to caramelize and gets tender. Stir in red pepper flake and chili powder. Coarsely mash the sweet potato with a fork or the back of a spoon.
- Meanwhile combine the black beans, garlic, salt, pepper, cumin, lime juice, and remaining olive oil, stirring to coat.
- Top each tostada shell with sweet potato mixture, salsa, black bean mixture, queso fresco and minced cilantro. Serve immediately.
Recipe adapted from Eating Well.
