-Did you know that roots were our original comfort food?

Why sweet potatoes?

-Sweet potatoes are a superfood.

-Welcome to Walmart!

-Whoo!

-Give me that high five!

-Let's go shopping!

Take your lemon juice and go straight on top of that garlic.

When I was coming up, we were told carbs are bad for you.

Is that true?

Ooh.

I'm making a mess.

My favorite thing to make.

-You look like you'd be good with a mallet.

-Yes.

Crushing it.

This is beautiful, all the different colors.

I would much rather have a bowl of French fries after working out than a banana.

-Well, that might make your stomach hurt.

-If that doesn't look like a party, I don't know what does.

A party at my house, at least.

[ Laughs ] I'm Vivian -- part chef... This is a match made in heaven.

...part student... What is gluten, anyway?

...full of questions.

What's this?

How cold is it in here?

How do you heat it up?

Welcome to "Kitchen Curious."

-Major funding for "Kitchen Curious with Vivian Howard" is provided by... the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations, and foundations, the ETV Endowment of South Carolina is committed to sharing entertaining and uplifting stories and series like "Kitchen Curious."

And by... Additional funding provided by... Building community in Florence, South Carolina.

And... ♪♪ -Ms.

J?

-Yes, ma'am.

-Can you bring me, um, a copy of last night's Kitchen Bar menu and the dietary restrictions for tonight?

Oh, my gosh.

-Yeah.

So we have a lot of dietary restrictions this time.

We have a lot of pescatarians, a lot of vegetarians, a lot of non-meat eaters.

-So we've got this pork belly porchetta.

You know, this time of year, there's not a lot of exciting produce, except for my beloved root vegetables.

So I think I'll switch out the porchetta with, like, a cold roasted rutabaga.

-Nice.

-Does that make you excited?

-Uh, yeah.

-Okay.

Me, too.

Maybe we should charge more for dietary restrictions.

♪♪ Did you know that roots were our original comfort food?

Early humans, even before agriculture, foraged around eating roots and their greens, largely based on the example of our cousins, the apes.

It was a lot easier than slaying a mastodon and a lot more calorie-dense than snacking on seeds.

Pretty smart.

You know, I would argue that roots of all kinds, even beyond potatoes, are still comfort foods.

They are affordable, accessible, and they have a really long shelf life, which means roots are good when a lot of other vegetables are not.

So we're gonna make a sweet potato and beet relish, and then we're gonna serve it over a zhuzhed-up store-bought hummus.

Yes, Vivian Howard is gonna serve a store-bought hummus because I don't like to break out my food processor all the time.

♪♪ Let's start with my roots.

I've got sweet potato that I'm gonna shave on a mandoline.

And I know this is "Kitchen Curious," and a mandoline is pretty kitchen serious, but you could use a knife to do this.

So I'm gonna shave these sweet potatoes very thinly.

So I'm gonna do the same with my beets.

Sweet potatoes have been a part of my life since I was a baby, obviously, and my mom always had sweet potatoes that had been roasted in the oven, sitting still in the oven days after they had roasted.

My grandfather would come in -- he was a farmer -- and eat lunch and then take a sweet potato still in its jacket and put it in his pocket, and it would be his afternoon snack.

That's the dedication to sweet potatoes.

So I'm gonna take these raw sweet potatoes and rinse them in a little water.

That's gonna rinse off some of the starch and make them a more vibrant orange.

I'm gonna do the same thing to my beets.

Now, you cannot put the beets and the sweet potato in the same water to rinse, or everything will end up pink.

Okay?

So that's -- that's the precaution you have to take.

And so now we've rinsed a lot of that starch off.

And we're gonna drain the water off and combine our roots.

So we had sweet potatoes on our table probably three times a week.

But there were two ways we never had sweet potatoes.

We never had sweet potatoes raw, and we never, ever ate the skin.

Now, my family would get down with some, you know, russet potato skins or Yukon Gold skins.

But I don't know.

I think my mom thought that sweet potato skins were, like, poisonous or something.

She always said, "Don't eat that."

But as an adult chef, I've really come to love sweet potato skins, so don't sleep on them if you've got some.

Okay, we're gonna start with some orange zest.

We're making, like, a little relish, okay?

So we're gonna cook the beets and the sweet potato in the acid from the orange and the lemon juice.

I love zest.

Anytime I have orange juice in a dish, I try to put orange zest.

The same thing with lemon or lime.

It's like the more elegant version of the citrus juice.

Next, we're gonna take this garlic, and we're gonna grate it on top of our sweet potatoes and beets.

And this is an important nuance to this, because not only do we want to cook our roots with the citrus, we also want to mellow this garlic with the citrus.

So you want to take your lemon juice and go straight on top of that garlic, and it's gonna help mellow it out, but also cook the sweet potatoes and the beets.

So we're gonna "cook" this sweet potato and beet relish in not only lemon juice and orange juice, but also salt.

It's gonna make everything a little bit limp but also crunchy.

Don't worry.

We're not gonna lose that.

And, you know, this is not gonna take long.

I'm gonna chop up some herbs and toss them in there and then plate my hummus.

And this would have already "cooked" in that amount of time.

So for my herbs, I've got parsley and mint.

You know, I choose parsley because it stays green, it stays vibrant.

And I choose mint because I love the way it tastes with hummus and anything with citrus.

♪♪ If that doesn't look like a party, I don't know what does.

A party at my house, at least.

[ Laughs ] All right, so I've got some just basic hummus right here, but all you have to do is add a couple things to make it taste like freshly made hummus.

I'm gonna put this in my bowl.

And when you add fresh things to something that's not fresh, it makes it taste a little more fresh.

So we're gonna add some fresh lemon juice and some nice olive oil.

And that's really gonna change the whole personality of this hummus.

It's also gonna change the texture of it.

I am gong to put my hummus, a big puddle of it, right in the middle of my plate.

Then I'm gonna make a little mashed-potato divot in the middle, and then take a nice handful of my sexy root relish and go over top of that.

I'm also gonna take a little bit of this juice and drizzle it over.

And then I have some tortilla chips.

Every nice plate of hummus has a nice olive oil drizzled on top.

That's what someone told me once, and I believe it.

I almost hate to try it.

It's so pretty.

♪♪ You know, my thought is if you go to the trouble to make a relish like this, which really takes about 10 minutes, no one is ever going to imagine you bought the hummus.

♪♪ I have a few questions about roots that I think Christine can clear up for me.

So we're going back to Walmart.

In my mind, a root vegetable is an edible root that grows, you know, in large part underneath the dirt.

-Right, and then the greens are what's above the ground.

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-So what do you think makes root vegetables, like, unique in terms of nutrition?

-I like the fact that root vegetables, they're kind of a double whammy of, like, they're a good energy source and they're a good vitamin-mineral-fiber source.

-Right.

-Another thing I think is interesting about them is that we hear a lot about organic food.

Buy organic.

Even if you're not buying them organic, if you're worried about anything that might be on the outside, you can peel the potato, you can peel the carrot, and that pesticide residue is mostly on the outside.

-Right.

You can remove that outer layer.

-Yes.

One fun fact that I love is that potatoes actually have more potassium than a banana.

-Well, I would much rather have a bowl of French fries after working out than a banana.

-Well, that might make your stomach hurt because there's a lot of fat in there.

-Okay, okay.

-But I like where your head is at.

♪♪ -Welcome to Walmart.

That's what I'm talkin' about!

-Whoo!

-Give me that high five!

-Let's go shopping!

♪♪ So this is one of my favorite roots right here -- the beautiful beet.

My grandmother always told me that the more colorful a vegetable, the healthier it is.

-Different colors do mean different vitamins and minerals.

So I think that's where the whole "eat the rainbow" thing comes from, because if you're eating all the different colors, you're probably getting all the different things.

-So, you know, there are so many diet trends, what we should eat, what we shouldn't eat.

And when I was coming up, we were told to stay away from carbs.

Carbs are bad for you.

Is that true?

-Anything is bad if you eat too much of it, and maybe that's where that conversation comes from.

But the sweet potato has got all of these vitamins and minerals in it, like potassium and vitamin A and stuff that you might not necessarily be getting from somewhere else.

So I would say eat carbs.

-Okay, I will, I will.

-Okay, good.

♪♪ -I'm in Kannapolis, North Carolina, to meet with a woman named Jenny Brulé about these instant sweet potatoes that she has developed.

And sweet potatoes are the root vegetable nearest and dearest to my soul.

And so if somebody's doing something with my root vegetable of choice, I feel like I need to learn more about it.

So that's why we're here.

♪♪ Hello!

-Hi!

-What in the world is all this?

-Isn't it amazing?

-Yes.

-It's the North Carolina Food Innovation Lab.

And so it's a place where food entrepreneurs in North Carolina and actually from around the world can come and get help in development of a product.

-Wow.

-Yeah.

I came in and I spoke with their food scientist and said, like, that I want to come up with some kind of instant sweet potato, and, you know, I want to try to keep the nutrient level as high after processing as possible.

They helped me come up with an instant mashed sweet potato, and it retains about 97% of the nutrients of a whole sweet potato.

-Wow.

-Yeah.

-I'm from eastern North Carolina, and I thought I knew everything about sweet potatoes.

-Yeah.

-But I had never heard of an instant sweet potato, and I think it's brilliant, honestly... -Thank you.

-...because I think the reason people don't cook sweet potatoes is because it takes time.

-Yes, it takes time, and they're unwieldy.

-Yes.

-They're difficult to cut through.

-What you got there?

-So this is cooked sweet potatoes.

These are a couple of different kinds of sweet potatoes, primarily grown in North Carolina, the Covington, and that's what I use mostly.

But these are a couple different ones.

-And this is a Covington, I think.

-Yes, yes, that's what grows out in your neck of the woods.

-Yes.

-Mm-hmm.

So this -- the cooked sweet potato just goes in here, and then I process it to turn it into a purée.

-Okay.

-Okay?

♪♪ -So you got that really smooth.

-Mm-hmm.

-Okay.

And then where do we take it -- to the instatizer?

-[ Laughs ] There's a couple more processes, but, yes, eventually we'll get there.

So right now we're gonna empty this onto this pan.

-Right.

Here you go.

-Thank you.

And then this will go into a blast freezer.

And that way it freezes quickly.

And then it will go into a freeze-dryer.

-So we're going to the blast chiller?

-Yes!

-I've always wanted to go to one.

[ Both laugh ] So it's better to freeze something before you freeze-dry something?

-Yeah, well, it just saves time and therefore energy.

Freeze-drying is a very, uh... It takes a lot of energy to do it.

So if we freeze the product before, then it doesn't take as much time, less energy.

♪♪ -What's happening in here?

-This is a freeze-drying room.

Isn't it cool?

-I thought it would be really cold.

[ Both laugh ] -No, it's in a machine.

This is the freeze-dryer, and... -How cold is it in here?

-Well, right now it's room temperature, because at the end, it's drying.

It's not freezing.

But when it is freezing, it's -- it is as low as 40-below-zero Fahrenheit.

-So it gets frozen in there, and then it comes in here and it gets frozen again?

-Yeah.

It gets frozen... -Together: Even harder.

-And then it dries and it sucks any moisture out of it.

Do you want to try it?

-It smells like sweet potato.

-Yeah, try it.

-I guess it should.

-Yeah.

-Try it?

-Yeah.

-[ Crunching ] -Isn't that crazy?

-Wow!

That is so wild.

-Mm-hmm.

-It's like freeze-dried sweet potato.

[ Both laugh ] -And then we'll mill it down so it's a powder, and then it will be shelf stable for more than two years.

-And all that's in this is just sweet po-ta-to.

No preservatives, no butter?

-Mnh-mnh.

No, it's just sweet potato.

And it's just the way in which it's processed that gives it its shelf stability and to hold the nutrients.

It's just a cool thing that science can do.

I think processed foods get a really bad reputation.

-Yes.

-Applesauce is processed.

Homemade applesauce -- that's processed.

All it means is taking a whole food and turning it into something else.

-Yeah, it's going through a process.

-Yes, exactly.

Ultra-processed is not great, but processed is -- there's nothing wrong with it.

♪♪ This is how we mill the freeze-dried kind of chips into a powder.

-Okay.

-But before it gets into there, we have to crush it a little bit.

-Okay.

I'm really good at that.

-All right.

Excellent.

You look like you'd be good with a mallet.

-Yes.

Crushing it.

[ Laughs ] [ Chip clatters ] I would imagine this is like 10 sweet potatoes right here, but it's gonna be just, like, a little bit of dust.

-But then when it's rehydrated, it will multiply back up to what it would if it was a fresh sweet potato.

♪♪ -All right, Jenny, so this is the big moment... -[ Laughs ] -...where we undo everything you just did.

-Yes.

[ Both laugh ] Bring it back to its natural state.

-So that's your sweet potato.

-And I've added cinnamon and sugar.

-Okay.

-So this is just dump and stir.

-And is this, like, warm water?

-Yeah, but if you needed to, you could add tap water.

-Could this be baby food like this?

-100%.

It's so healthy.

It's great.

Great for babies.

-Oh, that's why you use warm water.

You're putting some butter in there.

-Mm-hmm.

-Melt it.

-Everything's better with butter.

Butter isn't necessary.

It just makes it taste... -Like Thanksgiving sweet potatoes.

-Yes.

-Wow.

This is delicious.

-Yeah.

Super easy.

It doesn't have to be cooked any further than this.

-So why sweet potatoes?

-Sweet potatoes are a superfood.

They're high in antioxidants.

They've got vitamin C. They've got -- they're really rich in fiber because they're a root.

They're not a tuber.

-They are!

-So they're just a bunch of roots.

And Americans need to get more fiber, but also more orange vegetables into our diet.

-Very cool.

So we're gonna make something with it.

-Yeah.

Some good Southern dumplings with more butter.

-Perfect.

-So what are we doing here?

-Okay, so this is the sweet potato powder that we just used over there.

But I wanted to make a savory recipe with it.

-Okay.

-Okay, so this is the sweet potato powder, Just plain.

And then I'm gonna mix in with it Some buttermilk.

Nice little savory dumplings.

Parmesan, one egg, and one egg yolk.

And that's, you know, to kind of hold them together.

It's kind of the cheater's way to hold a dumpling or a gnocchi together.

-So you just took the dried sweet potato powder... -Mm-hmm.

-...and you're mixing it with a few wet ingredients.

-Yeah.

-And we're gonna make a dumpling that way.

-Yeah.

If you had a mashed sweet potato, you wouldn't add buttermilk.

This is just to hydrate it.

-And the buttermilk is gonna add, like, a neat little tangy flavor.

-Exactly.

Yeah.

And then we'll sauté it with butter and sage.

-Yay!

-Yeah.

Parmesan.

-Okay.

-Parmesan-Reggiano.

And then this is just a little flour with baking powder to help lighten it a little bit.

-I would think that this would be a good opportunity for a farmer, honestly.

Like, you could get the misshapen ones or... -Exactly right.

So when you go to the grocery store, or anybody goes to grocery store and they buy a sweet potato, it's kind of perfect.

It weighs about one pound.

It's kind of a uniform shape.

But that's not really the way sweet potatoes grow.

Some are enormous, and some are tiny in the same line.

Because of that, they have to be hand-harvested.

So it's really expensive to do that.

That means that they leave sweet potatoes in the ground, up to 25% of what's planted.

So I learned that kind of factoid of the waste, and I wanted to help farmers.

Because I'm turning it into something else, I can pick up those misfit potatoes.

I can pick up the ones that are two inches long and the ones that are, you know, two feet long, and we turn it into powder.

-That is brilliant.

-All right.

We're just gonna scoop these and boil them, and then we'll finish them in a sauté pan with some sage and some butter.

♪♪ -So how do you envision your instant sweet potatoes finding the people that are gonna eat them?

-I'm trying to get this into places that are food deserts where they can't -- they don't have access to fresh fruit and veg.

-I love the thought of trying to get this into homes where there's not a lot of cooking going on.

-Yeah.

-And that's essentially what this allows you to do.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

-Thank you.

[ Sizzling ] [ Timer beeps ] -They smell good.

-All right.

You ready to try?

-I am.

-Okay.

Super, super simple.

Sweet potato dumplings with a little sage and brown butter.

-And it really took, like, no time for you to whip that up.

-Mnh-mnh.

-I mean... -Mmm!

-You seem surprised that you like your food.

-I'm always surprised when I like my food.

-I can relate to that.

Mmm.

That is delicious.

-Yeah.

I think sweet potatoes kind of suffer from a branding problem.

People think of them at holidays and sweet.

-Yes.

-And they're so healthy for you.

We can really incorporate them into every day.

-And I love to pair them, because they are sweet, with things that are really, really, you know, kind of umami or salty.

-Mm-hmm.

-Like, I love sweet potato and tahini.

You know what would be good with this also?

Country ham.

-Country ham would be great.

-Mmm!

-Sweet potato queen right here.

-[ Laughs ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Probably the main reason we think of comfort food today when we think of roots is because we're generally eating potatoes, and they're generally fried or mashed with butter and cream, and I'm not mad at that.

So I thought that I would give my less-popular roots the same treatment.

So we're gonna make a gratin, or a cheesy, bread-and-root bake with sweet potatoes, beets, rutabagas, and turnips.

♪♪ So I have taken some cream and steeped it with thyme and garlic and a little bit of black pepper.

So I'm gonna take this cream, dump it into my bowl.

Then I'm gonna add some Parmesan cheese.

And you want to make sure your cream has kind of cooled at this point, because we're gonna add an egg and we don't want to scramble it.

Some mozzarella or fontina -- any melting cheese you want.

An egg.

And we're gonna add a little salt to this, black pepper.

I think roots love black pepper.

And then we're gonna whisk that all up.

And -- ooh.

I'm making a mess.

My favorite thing to make.

Roots also love a different type of, like, deeper sweetness.

So I love to pair them with caramelized onions.

So I'm gonna whisk these caramelized onions into this cream mixture.

Okay, now that there's cream everywhere, I'm gonna take crusty bread that I've cut up and made stale by just letting it sit at room temperature for like 30 minutes.

You don't have to have stale bread to have stale bread, if you know what I mean.

And then I'm gonna take it and put it in a casserole dish that I have rubbed with butter.

And to it, we are gonna add our roots.

So all these roots I blanched in boiling salted water.

The rutabagas I blanched about a minute and a half longer than the others because the beets and the sweet potato and the turnip all cook about the same amount of time.

But you do have to cook them separately, because if you cook the beets with anything else, everything's gonna be pink.

And this is beautiful, all the different colors.

So please do not mess that up.

Okay, so now I'm going to take this beautiful creamy caramelized-onion-thyme mixture and pour it over top.

And then I'm gonna get my spoon in there.

And the spoon is kind of cool.

You know, we're in an old church kitchen that I made a new church kitchen.

And I found a lot of interesting things in here, among them this guy.

Like, I've been talking to everyone about what they think it is, and I think that it's actually meant to maybe turn chicken when you're frying it, which would make sense.

Something they would do here in a church fellowship hall.

See, this is gonna all kind of, like, seep together and the bread is gonna get really crusty.

The roots are gonna brown on the top.

And, you know, the really cool thing about this is that you can mix it to this point and tuck it in your refrigerator overnight and then put it in your oven the next day.

But you don't have to do that.

And so now I'm gonna put this in the oven at 375 for about 45 minutes.

♪♪ ♪♪ These are the sexiest root vegetables you ever did see.

[ Laughs ] I think the beets, for me, really make it, like, incredibly beautiful and something that you kind of can't take your eyes off of.

♪♪ Mmm.

Okay, I'm overdoing it, I know, but I want you to understand how delicious and satisfying and gooey this is.

No, that's enough.

[ Laughs ] -Okay.

-Cut.

[ Laughter ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Major funding for "Kitchen Curious with Vivian Howard" is provided by... the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations, and foundations, the ETV Endowment of South Carolina is committed to sharing entertaining and uplifting stories and series like "Kitchen Curious."

And by... Additional funding provided by... Building community in Florence, South Carolina.

And...