Whole30 Sweet Potato Noodle Glow Bowl

This Whole30 Sweet Potato Noodle Glow bowl is just the carb load your life needs. We’ve all seen the quarantine carbs on Instagram. Homemade Pasta. Made-from-scratch bread. And bagels. Beautifully chewy bagels. Those of u doing the Whole 30 at Home are likely looking at our phones with rage when these perfectly carby carbs take over our screens. So this Whole30 Sweet Potato Noodle perfection is here to save us.

These anti-inflammatory Whole30 Sweet potato noodle glow bowls only take 25 minutes to come together. They’re covered in a gingery, turmeric-lime creamy coconut sauce and tossed with handfuls of whatever green veggies you have on hand. It’s everything you need to make it through your Whole30 without sliding down the bottomless pit of processed carbs and sugar filling our feeds these days.

First, the Anti-Inflammatory part

I throw the term anti-inflammatory around a lot on my recipes. It’s truly everything when we talk about maintaining optimal health. Inflammation is the body’s natural response to invaders. When you get a paper cut, for example, it triggers inflammation in your finger to signal emergency. Your body then goes into healing mode. This is all and well. The problem is chronic inflammation. Meaning, eating foods that are so irritating to your system (i.e. the alcohol, grains, dairy, sugar and legumes) that they make your body think that it is under a constant state of attack.

When that happens, your body is not able to efficiently regulate itself and things can haywire. This paves the way for things as seemingly harmless as an ache in your shoulder to things as serious as asthma, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and even cancer and diabetes. Inflammation is at the root of all chronic disease. I improved everything from asthma to acne by sticking to a diet free of inflammatory foods.

It is possible to completely eliminate inflammation in our bodies with things like the vitamins C and E in sweet potatoes, beta-carotene in zucchini, antioxidants in mushrooms, and two of the most potent anti-inflammatory spices in existence: turmeric and ginger. And guess what, ALL of these healthy, anti-inflammatory ingredients are in this recipe. Bonus: it tastes plain amazing in addition to how healthy it is for your hormonal system, skin, joints, and more.

So let’s make some sweet potato noodles already!

If you have a spiralizer and a blender or food processor, you’re good to go here. (Note: if you don’t have a spiralizer, a potato peeler would work, giving you a thinner, more translucent noodle.) Once you spiralize your sweet potatoes, you’ll sautee them in a pan until slightly cooked yet crispy. You can toss them once or twice while they’re cooking but be careful not to handle them too heavily. They can tend to break on you if you mix them too much. This can happen especially toward the end of the cooking process.

Now, onto the Sauce

While your sweet potatoes are going, you’ll blend your cashews, coconut milk, turmeric, ginger and lime. You’ll blend until you’ve got a rich and creamy consistency. You can check on your noodles while your sauce blends or you can just stand there and watch your sauce do its thing in a blender like I did. I am way too mesmerized with these types of things, embarrassingly so, but someone’s gotta do it.

When your sauce is golden and perfect and your noodles are tender and crisp, it’s time to drench the noodles. In the most epic pour moment you can pull off, you’ll pour your sauce into the pan and add your veggies to the mix. You can use any veggies you have around, but since the theme is anti-inflammatory, I threw in a cup of swiss chard, a handful of mushrooms and a zucchini that I caught just in time before it started to go bad on me. I could also see spinach, tomatoes, kale or yellow squash being tossed into the mix. Really, anything goes here in terms of what veggies you toss in.

Once you add the veggies in, you’ll cover your pan for a bit until everything cooks down (about 8 minutes). Be careful to remove before the sweet potatoes soak in all of the sauce. If this happens, add a little more water and lightly toss, again, careful not to break up too many noodles.

The Finished Product

What. a. beauty. Tender, slightly sweet and golden sweet potato noodles kissed with a bright and tangy turmeric sauce the color of sunshine. Slightly spicy from the black pepper and 100% addicting. You will want to drink this sauce and you’ll glow all the more for it thanks to the ginger, curcumin in the turmeric and green veggies which all help decrease skin puffiness and breakouts. So, so good.

Serving it Up

This is the kind of thing you can garnish with any crunchy veggies you’ve got on hand and a dash of something spicy if you want to take it up a notch. I used julienned carrots and cucumber, white sesame seeds, a drizzle of sriracha and extra limes for good measure. I recommend swirling your noodles with chop-sticks to make it an extra-fun eating experience. This is the perfect bowl of healthy disguised as a bowl of comfort.

The fiber from all the veggies makes it very filling and dense, too. You’ll feel like you’re eating a ton of food even though it’s basically just a sweet potato, half a zucchini and a few other veggies in a bowl. Talk about a win-win. This is perfect for a spring or summer Whole30 because its light, has tons of fresh seasonal vegetables, its bright and its just easy to make and customize.

Let me know if this recipe makes its way into your Whole30 Pinterest board! Is there anyone else trying to do a low-meat version of a Whole30, too? Let me know in the comments of your ideas to ramp up the fruits and veggies in your Whole30 if you have any or if you put any fun twists on this recipe. I’ll be sharing more meat-free Whole30 recipes this month with you guys so get excited about that.

In the meantime check out my 5-Veggie Pesto Sauce or Anti-Inflammatory Thai Coconut Lime Green smoothie. Both Whole30 compliant and filled with all the greens.

Okay, that’s all. Wish me luck on my almost-marathon length of a bike ride with the bae happening tonight. Hopefully I don’t pass out.