Sweet Potato Chicken Hotpot

This simple but delicious recipe fills you up and will use any leftover chicken you don’t want to waste!

Leftover roast potatoes can also be used to top the hotpot, just bake in the oven for a little less time!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 onion
• 10g flour
• 300ml water or chicken stock
• 100g cooked chicken
• Teaspoon of olive oil
• 1 medium-sized sweet potato
• Pinch of nutmeg
• Veg – I used broccoli and sweetcorn but any mixed veg will work!

METHOD

1. Heat oven to 200C/180CF/6
2. Chop onion and cook on a low heat with the olive oil in a saucepan until soft, or for around 5 minutes.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and mix in the flour.
4. Return the pan to the heat and stir to cook the flour for 1-2 minutes.
5. Slowly add the water or chicken stock and, once added, season with pepper and a pinch of nutmeg.
6. Bring the boil and keep stirring until the mixture thickens slightly.
7. Stir in the cooked chicken and vegetables.
8. Slice the sweet potato into rounds.
9. Pour the chicken mixture into a baking dish and top with the sweet potato rounds so that no chicken mixture is exposed.
10. Brush with olive oil and season the top of the hotpot.
11. Oven bake for 30-35minutes.
12. Enjoy!

NUTRITION

Chicken – a low-fat source of protein which is high in the vitamins thiamin, riboflavin and niacin for energy production; and zinc for enzyme function, immune control and protein synthesis.

Sweet Potato – one of your 5-a-day, and a useful source for many vitamins and minerals including: retinol needed for vision, growth, immune function and is a key antioxidant; thiamin for energy production; and vitamin C for protein and neurotransmitter synthesis, detoxification and acts as an antioxidant.

The vegetables chosen will also contribute to your 5-a-day and vitamin and mineral intake. I recommend selecting no less than 2 or 3, however the more the merrier!

Why Christmas dinner isn’t THAT bad for you…

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

I hope everyone has had a splendid day full of festive cheer… but lets get onto the eating. At the moment I am sitting watching Alan Carr’s Chatty Man and feeling like a stuffed turkey, and I am sure that I am not the only one eh? Christmas Day is perceived as a nationwide ‘cheat day’, however should we even be considering that the feast of a meal we have all consumed is a ‘cheat meal’? The basics of a Christmas dinner (for the most of us) would be meat, veg and potatoes, and this does conform to, depending on how everything is cooked, the guidelines set out by the NHS in the Eatwell Guide.

MEAT

Okay so you may pass this by if you are veggie/ vegan but, for the majority of us, this is the main staple of a Christmas meal. I have narrowed it down to three main meats consumed in a regular persons dinner:

Turkey

So turkey is a very very very lean meat, with 100g containing 31.2g of protein and only 4.6g of fat. But what does this mean? There are slightly less calories per 100g than a more fatty meat so could be considered a ‘healthier’ option. It is also high in multiple minerals: zinc, which is used in carbohydrate metabolism, protein and fat synthesis and immune function; potassium, needed for nervous and heart function; and phosphorous needed for bone and teeth formation.

Chicken

Turkey’s small but mighty counterpart, many of the same nutritional values are similar to its larger cousin. It is marginally higher in calories per 100g (177 as opposed to 166 in turkey) which can be explained by a slight increase in fat (7.5g) and a decrease in protein (27.3g). SCIENCE FACT: Fat contains 9kcal per gram whereas protein only contains 4kcal per gram. These small differences should really be overlooked, as chicken is still a lean and healthy meat. As well as being high in potassium and phosphorous like turkey, it is also high in niacin (a B vitamin) which help the body use carbohydrates for energy.

Beef

Okay okay okay, so this is a more fatty meat BUT there are some nutritional benefits. Firstly, fat is NOT bad for you, if eaten in moderation, as it is needed for energy, fat-soluble vitamin absorption and organ protection. It also has a high iron content, which is needed for oxygen transport and, out of all the vitamins and minerals, has the highest number of deficiencies in humans.

VEGETABLES

So there is a reason that we all need to have 5-a-day…. because vegetables are one of the key dietary sources of the main vitamins and minerals, and there are LOADS in a Christmas roast!

Brussels

Love them or loath them they are a staple of a Christmas dinner. Nutritionally they are a provider of potassium, folate which helps growth and cell maintenance, and vitamin C which helps make collagen, a protein making up connective tissue, aids hormonal reactions and immune function.

Carrots

Roast carrots drizzled in honey is how my family cook them at Christmas, and we eat them by the ton! Carrots contain a whopping amount of retinol (vitamin A), which has roles in the body associated with growth and immunity.

Parsnips

The cousin of carrots, parsnips don’t contain as much vitamin A, however they can provide us with folate and a massive amount of potassium.

POTATOES

Roasted, mashed, boiled, sautéed, whatever you fancy, potatoes are the starchy carbohydrate staple in your mammoth Christmas meal, providing energy to get you through the charades and boardgames that may follow later on in the evening.

 

SO

The basics of the Christmas dinner are very healthy… so the only unhealthiness on the rest of the day may be the Quality Streets and Christmas pudding consumed throughout the rest of the day…

WTF is DF??

Dietary fibre… something that helps digestion, right? Maybe in cereal?

There are so many packages stating that the products are ‘high in fibre’, but what does this even mean for our health? Is there a set amount of it you are meant to have per day? And what foods can you eat which include fibre?

Well don’t worry my darlings, all will be explained:

WHAT IS DIETARY FIBRE??

Fibre is a type of carbohydrate of which, when eaten in high consumption, has a multitude of health benefits. It has been proven to reduce the amount of fat in the blood and therefore reduce risk of heart disease. It can also help regulate body weight, increase the immune systems function, and prevent irritable bowel syndrome and constipation. On top of this, it also lowers risk of stroke, type 2 diabetes and bowel cancer. So it’s god damn important!!

The science – fibre is a plant component that resists digestion in the small intestine, so moving into the large intestine where it undergoes fermentation. This fermentation process is important as it provides energy in the form of sugars (monosaccharides). Overall, this digestive process maximises the time to absorb nutrients from other foods eaten by moving slowly through the small intestine in a thick and viscous consistency. 

HOW MUCH SHOULD WE BE HAVING??

The government recommends, on average, 30g of fibre per day as part of a healthy diet. Most adults only consume 18g – so much lower than the expected amount. But, what does 30 grams of fibre actually look like? Most of us don’t weigh our food so how are we meant to know that we are getting our 30g in…

FOODS AND THEIR FIBRE CONTENT…

ANYTHING WHOLEMEAL – wholemeal and granary bread (2.5g per slice), cereals like wholewheat biscuits (1.9g per biscuit) and shredded wheat (3.7g per bowl), wholegrain pasta (9.2g per bowl), brown rice (2.7g per portion), bulgar wheat (you can probably get it from M&S or Waitrose?).

Porridge (1.5g per bowl).

Potatoes with the skin on (2.5g per jacket potato) (most of the nutrients of a potato, and any root veg really, are in the skin).

Pulses – beans (6.5g per two tablespoons of broad), lentils (1g per portion) and chickpeas (3.7g per 3 tablespoons). So stock up on the houmous…

VEG AND FRUIT – peas (2.8g per serving), broccoli (2g per serving), brussels (2.8g per serving), avocado (5g per serving) are all high fibre vegetables and raspberries (1.5g per 15), blackberries (2.3g per 15) and pears (2.4g per pear) have high amounts of fibre for fruits – please note that these are just vegetables and fruits that have the highest amounts of fibre, all fruits and vegetables contain some fibre so are important to include.

ADDING MORE FIBRE TO OUR DIETS….

SO, knowing all these foods and the amount of fibre is in them in grams may not mean anything to you – so if you want a slightly simpler way of knowing that you are having your 30g of fibre per day there is an easier way of doing it:
It can be recommended that, with your 5-A-DAY, you should be having 3 portions of the following foods per day (that is 3 portions overall, not three portions of each food):

• One slice of wholemeal bread
• 1/2 a wholemeal pitta
• 2 tablespoons of brown rice
• 3 tablespoons of wholegrain breakfast cereal
• 2 oatcakes
• 1 tablespoon of uncooked porridge oats

Hopefully this has cleared up some of the confusion over WTF is DF and how it works in the body. Keep posted for some easy high-fibre recipes to help with hitting that 30g a day target!!