Roasted Sweet Potato Salad with Wheat Berries

Discover enticing textures and flavors in each bite of roasted sweet potato salad with wheat berries, soy ginger dressing, veggies, cranberries, and walnuts. 

This is such a great salad. So good in fact, that we had it 2 nights in-a-row. We’re not talking leftovers – there weren’t any.

You may well be tempted to make this twice in short order too. And why not?

Simple and delicious. Just peel and dice up sweet potatoes and roast them up while you cook wheat berries and make a creamy soy ginger dressing. How easy is that?

Wheat berries – what the heck?

Just recently, I discovered that wheat berries are fantastic! And talk about a whole-food, they are the original source of all wheat products before any refinement occurs. They are the edible part of the wheat kernel.

You’ll find wheat berries in a few varieties and colors (red and white). You may have passed right by them, thinking they were brown rice. Nope, not rice, wheat berries, are an entirely different pot of fun. 

Are wheat berries good for you?

The ultimate whole grain, wheat berries have the only the husk removed. That means you get all the bran, germ, and endosperm in one little grain equalling powerful nutrition for every calorie. And if anyone asks 'where’s your protein?', as they tend to do, just answer back 'in this pot of wheat berries, man, let's eat!'. 

How to cook wheat berries

Because wheat berries are hard, they will take a bit to cook than some other grains, quinoa, or rice. No worries, we have sweet potatoes to roast, dressing to make, and lettuce to chop.

Here’s a flexible guideline on how to cook them:

Rinse – Be sure to rinse your wheat berries, just like you should any grain, quinoa (definitely), rice, bean, or lentil. It’s a good practice. It removes dust or other debris and allows you a moment to remove any suspicious wheat berries before they make it into the pot.

Toast – Add the wheat berries to a heated cooking pot and toast them. Because they are rinsed, you’ll want to take 5-10 minutes for this process. This brings out the nutty flavor of the wheat.

Liquid – use a ratio of 3 cups of water for every cup of wheat berries. You can add a pinch of salt to help further develop the flavor, but that’s not required.

Cook – bring the water and wheat berries to a boil, reduce the heat, and cover the pan. Allow 30 minutes and then start checking for doneness.

Drain – if there is any liquid left after cooking, just drain that off.

Are they done?

The best way to test for doneness is to taste them. Cooked wheat berries will be tender, but chewy. If they aren’t done, keep cooking, and test them every 5 minutes or so. Cooking time depends on the kind of wheat berries you are using, age, precise heat, type of pot, the universe…

Of course, I’ll take those wheat berries, but I’ll also raise you some smooth, melt-in-your-mouth roasted sweet potatoes.

Diced sweet potato measurements are notoriously difficult to judge – at least in my case. There always seems to be a breaking point somewhere at the half-potato. I’ll trade precision for more sweeties at any time. Should there be too many for the salad, I'll just force myself to eat them off the baking tray.

The trick with getting your potatoes to roast evenly and throughout every piece is to try to cut them somewhat uniformly and a bit on the small side. And don’t mistake uniformity for the true nature of sweet potatoes – they have weird shapes. We’re not trying to make a magazine picture. Our aim is to make fork (or spoon) to mouth. 

I always advise lining your baking tray with parchment paper or a baking mat when you roast sweet potatoes. Speaking of notorious, they are also messy. I still have a worn-torn baking tray from the first time I made loaded sweet potatoes. Functionally, the baking tray still works, but the stains and scratches annoy me. So please, use parchment paper.

Make soy ginger dressing

A salad with this much potential really deserves a great dressing. I concurred and concocted soy ginger. You don't need a lot of almond butter for the dressing to add an amazing flavor. If you don’t have almond butter, peanut butter could be substituted, although it will change the overall taste a bit. Here’s all you need for this great dressing:

2 Tbsp. almond butter

¼ cup of rice vinegar

1 garlic clove

1- inch ginger minced (about 1 Tbsp.)

2 tbsp. soy sauce or Tamari

1 Tbsp. agave syrup

Just whisk everything together. If it is a bit too thick, then add a bit of water. You could also cut it with lime juice to edge it up slightly.

To fork or spoon

Confession. I made a slight mistake the first time I made this sweet potato salad – I didn’t chop the lettuce small enough. So there was a big bowl with wheat berries, diced sweet potatoes, diced carrots, sliced scallions, dried cranberries, chopped walnuts, and in comparison, oversized pieces of endive.

Fork or spoon? Neither worked in this case. You might starve before you stab or balance the wheat berries along with the rest of the ingredients. Big pieces of lettuce run riot over everything else, knocking the carrots and walnuts back onto the plate.

This is all to suggest that you consider the maneuverability of each ingredient as a sum of a bowl. Chop accordingly to your preference.

Final thoughts

It isn’t just psychological that adding grains and roasted veggies to salads turns them into hearty meals – it's science. What I like to call the science of filling me up, so I am not hungry in 30 minutes. I know, it’s the fiber, the slow burn of digestion that lasts after all the textures and flavors are but a distant memory.

But if adding a few cooked wheat berries or some beans on salads means the temptation to graze later can be mitigated, it’s a strategy worth trying. More good stuff, less grazing. Peace.

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