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Maple candy potato salad with whipped tahini

Quick Meals

Sid

June 10, 2025

Maple candy potato salad with whipped tahini

Channelling my inner Yotam Ottolenghi – maple-roasted sweet potato on a fluffy cloud of whipped tahini, topped with crispy spiced chickpeas and a shower of chopped pistachios. This is the sweet potato version of the roasted carrots recipe I shared last year. Ridiculously good!

Maple sweet potato salad with whipped tahini

Maple roasted sweet potato salad with whipped tahini

I’m a shameless Yotam Ottolenghi tragic. He’s the reason I started seeing vegetables as more than just a nutritional checkbox – he actually made me want to make them and let them take centre stage. I especially love the bold Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavours in his early cookbooks, Jerusalem and Plenty.

To be honest, I find some of his recipes call for ingredients I struggle to find so I don’t make as many as I want, but I always come away inspired. Today’s dish is my Ottolenghi-esque creation: maple-roasted sweet potato with crispy chickpeas on a cloud of tahini enriched garlic yoghurt sauce, finished with spicy maple drizzle which keeps life interesting and a shower of pistachios.

Yes, it sounds like a lot (Ottolenghi, remember! 😃). But nice and easy to make with a streamlined workflow.

The whipped tahini

Also, rest assured, though I’ve called the sauce a Whipped Tahini which might conjure up visions of having to lug your stand mixer out – rest assured, that’s not the case. Just a handheld whisk is all you need. 🙂 You will be amazed how it transforms from a typical yogurt sauce texture into a billowy, whipped cream-like texture. It’s marvellous, and addictive, and you will understand why I have used this sauce multiple times previously, like in this recipe and this recipe.

Ingredients

Here’s what you need to make this sweet potato salad.

1. Maple roasted sweet potato

You don’t need much maple syrup to roast sweet potatoes, just a light coating. In fact, if you use too much, it makes the surface soggy.

Sweet potato – Try to choose potatoes that are shaped like the above, around 6cm / 2.5″ wide, so you can just cut them into appropriate size wedges, as pictured. However, feel free to unleash the creative demon within and cut other shapes instead – like discs, thick half moons or even cubes (you rebel, you!).
Maple syrup – I love the maple flavour in this dish but you can substitute with honey instead. (PS If you use artificial maple syrup rather than the real stuff, the maple flavour is mostly gone once cooked).

2. Whipped tahini

This is a simple yogurt sauce that is enriched with a bit of tahini, with a hint of garlic and balanced with tang from lemon, with a texture like whipped cream – hence the name. It’s the same sauce I use for my Middle Eastern style Sweet Potato Steaks and Green Beans with a Mountain of Panko (you’ll understand the odd name when you see the photos).

Plain yoghurt – Not sweetened, and not flavoured. Regular yogurt or Greek yogurt.
Tahini – Paste made with sesame seeds. Usually found in the health food aisle at grocery stores. Use hulled tahini (more common), not un-hulled which is darker and more bitter. The jar label will specify which it is. Use Chinese sesame paste as a sub if you have leftovers from other recipes I’ve shared, like this one or this one!
Lemon – The tang to balance the flavour.
Garlic – Finely grate it using a microplane so you don’t have big lumps in the sauce.

3. CRISPY CHICKPEAS

Not essential – I’d absolutely make this recipe without – but definitely adds fabulous extra textural interest and pops of flavour. Plus, they cook in the oven at the same time as the sweet potato, so why wouldn’t you? 🙂

4. spicy maple sauce

Here’s what you need for the spicy maple sauce that is drizzled over the roasted sweet potatoes:

I know this sauce looks too simple to have enough flavour, but it does! Firstly, this sauce is just an accent rather than primary flavour. Secondly, sriracha is not made with just pureed chilli, it’s got other things in it as well – garlic, vinegar, salt, sugar.

Spice level – low mild. There’s only 1 tablespoon of sriracha across this whole dish, and the sweetness from the maple syrup also dials down the spiciness.

No spice option – Substitute the sriracha with equal parts ketchup and apple cider vinegar plus a small garlic clove finely grated.

How to make this Sweet Potato Salad

This recipe has a nice flow to it because the sweet potatoes and chickpeas cook at the same time in the oven, and while they’re roasting you just make the sauces. Easy!

Toss sweet potato with oil, salt, pepper and maple syrup on a paper lined tray. The paper will stop maple syrup caramelised edges from sticking to the tray and ripping off the sweet potato (it’s so sad when that happens!).
Plain chickpeas – Drain the liquid out of the chickpea can then spread the chickpeas on a tray. No need to pat dry – where going to oven dry them instead. Easier, and more effective – the chickpeas come out crispier.

Oven together – Put the sweet potato on the top rack and chickpeas on the rack underneath set so it’s 20cm / 8″ apart (to allow the hot air to circulate). They will both take around 30 minutes.

The oven temperature is fairly high – 220°C/450°F (200°C fan) – to encourage some colour on the sweet potato. If the oven temperature is lower, I find they just go from raw to soft and soggy.
Season chickpeas – After 10 minutes, take the chickpeas out. Now they’re nice and dry, which means crispier chickpeas! Push them to one end of the tray, toss with the oil and spices. Then bake for 20 minutes or until they are crispy – you can easily tell because they will clatter on the tray.

The chickpeas will stay quite crispy for a good 15 to 20 minutes, so you can just leave them on the tray until you’re ready to use them.

Optional charring under grill/broiler – Roast the sweet potatoes for 30 minutes in total, turning at the halfway mark, until they are soft. By this time they will have a little colour on them, but if you’d like to char them like pictured for a little extra flavour and maple caramelisation, give them 5 minutes under the oven grill/broiler.
Spicy maple sauce – Mix this while the potatoes are in the oven. Literally just put everything in a small bowl and mix.

Whipped tahini – This is a two step process – whisk the ingredients together in a microwave proof bowl (do this anytime ahead). Then within 5 minutes of serving, warm the mixture in the microwave for just 30 seconds and give it a vigorous whisk again. The sauce will transform from a typical yogurt sauce into a texture almost like softly whipped cream.

Optional tahini drizzle sauce – Remove 1/4 cup of the whipped tahini and mix with around 2 tablespoons of water or until it has a drizzle-able consistency. This isn’t essential, it’s mostly for aesthetics.
Assemble – Bear with me, this step will seem overly instructive but the intention is to ensure you get a bit of everything with every piece of sweet potato scooped up. Nobody wants to be that person who ends up with a plain piece of sweet potato – how sad!

So, here’s the order in which I build: spread a large flat plate with the tahini sauce then lay the sweet potato on top, mostly in a single layer. Drizzle with tahini sauce (if using), sprinkle with about 3/4 of the pistachios and coriander. Then pile or scatter the chickpeas on top, and sprinkle with the remaining pistachios and coriander. Then, serve!

How to serve this sweet potato salad

Serve this as a show-off side, a meat-free main, or part of what I call a “salad spread”, my go-to low-stress lunch option. It covers make-ahead ease with room temperature serving and the inevitable “I’m being healthy” friend, plus gluten-free and vegetarians.

To be clear, when I say “salads”, I am not talking about your everyday Garden Salad. I mean things like Pearl Couscous Salad, Farro Salad with Sizzled Dressing, Sexy Lentil Salad (it’s name worthy!), Roast Pumpkin Feta Salad, Wild Rice Salad, Lentil Roasted Eggplant Salad , Yotam Ottolenghi’s Cauliflower Salad and Honey-Cinnamon Pumpkin Salad – to name a few. Here’s a little preview:

Nothing boring there!! 🙂

To find more, have a browse through the Vegetable and Salad index which is grouped by vegetable, a useful way to find substantial salads. Start with legumes, then head to pumpkin, sweet potato, cauliflower and other “meaty” / starchy vegetables.

Let me know if you get a chance to try this sweet potato recipe! Love to know what you think. – Nagi x