Perk Up Your Salads With Jicama!

It’s easy to make a nice salad in the summer, when tomatoes, cucumbers, and other tasty foods abound. But winter salads can be just as good when you use a little ingenuity.

Jicama is a vegetable that adds a lot of zest to salads. Plus, it has lots of healthy benefits. According to Healthline, it is rich in vitamins and minerals, including vitamin C, folate, potassium and magnesium. It’s low in calories and high in fiber and water. It also contains antioxidants, including vitamins C and E and beta-carotene.

It also has antioxidants, lots of fiber, can be good for heart health due to the high potassium level, is a prebiotic (and therefore aids gut health), and can aid weight loss.

Jicama is crunchy and tasty. I would describe it somewhat as a cross between a radish and an apple, with a pleasant sweetness (even though it helps balance blood sugar levels). At about 49 calories a cup, it is a great crunchy  alternative to chips.

Be sure to peel your jicama and eat it raw, lightly steamed, or stir fried. Please do not make the mistake I made. When I first bought it, the store had it labeled as ‘Mexican sweet potato’. Therefore I decided to bake it. After one hour, nothing happened. After an hour and a half I gave up, took it out of the oven, and served as is. It was horribly bitter and both my husband and myself decided our best bet would be to throw it out. After that we told our friend from Guyana what we did. He laughed and told us how to prepare it. Since then we have enjoyed our jicama raw, mostly in salads.

I also like to use it to dip into guacamole or hummus. You can also add it to spring rolls or a cabbage slaw. Enjoy experimenting and please share the way you like to eat it in the comments below.