There’s a story behind almost every ingredient on the Thistle menu. This one starts like this: we love farmers. And we love sweet potatoes. So of course we love Mininger Foods, a sweet potato farm that provides Thistle with both orange and magically-hued purple varieties.

With dishes like sweet potato hash for breakfast, adobo rice & veg bowl for dinner, and sweet potato corn chowder as a side, Mininger Foods’ orange sweet potatoes frequently appear on our menu. The White Bonita variety, which has more potassium per ounce than bananas, can be enjoyed in Thistle meals like Cauliflower Couscous & Za’atar Salad. Meanwhile, Mininger’s beautiful purple sweet potatoes are the key ingredient in our Okinawan Sweet Potato Bar, one of Thistle’s most popular snack menu items.
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Like any ingredient you’ll find on Thistle’s menu, orange and purple sweet potatoes do two things at once: they taste delicious and they provide tons of great nutrition. Let’s break down the benefits of this member of the morning glory family.

Orange Sweet Potatoes

This naturally sweet, perfectly orange, and super versatile vegetable can be prepared a myriad of ways: pureed, baked, roasted, or fried. They work wonderfully in both sweet and savory dishes. The orange sweet potato varieties most commonly grown in the US are Beauregard, jewel, and garnet. Nutritionally, like most orange veggies, these sweet potatoes are a beta-carotene superstar, containing more per ounce than carrots. They’re also rich in vitamin B6, vitamin C, potassium, and fiber.

Purple Sweet Potatoes

Although purple sweet potatoes are native to Central and South America, they’re often called Okinawan sweet potatoes thanks to their popularity in that region of Japan. They’re high in vitamin C and get their vibrant purple color from anthocyanin, a beneficial antioxidant that supports neurological health and has antimicrobial properties. Purple sweet potatoes contain more anthocyanin per ounce than blueberries. In the kitchen they’re just as versatile as orange sweet potatoes, so have fun using them to inject some vibrant purple into all sorts of dishes.

Mininger Foods: Their Story

It began thirty-five years ago at a kitchen table in Merced, California. Mininger Foods founder “Papa” Nathan Mininger realized the potential for his family-farmed delicious sweet potatoes to benefit people well beyond his own family and local farming community. It was time to share the sweet potato love.

Over the past few decades, the business grew, but some things didn’t change. Mininger Foods Sweet Potatoes remain GMO-free and are still proudly grown in the fertile soil of the family's Central California fields. The region’s sunny and warm weather makes for perfect sweet potato-growing conditions. 

The life cycle of a sweet potato at Mininger Foods begins with propagating greens, over and over again, a process that’s not much different than propagating houseplants. Mininger grows some of the less common varieties of sweet potatoes, including Binyagi, Purple Purple, Covington, and Murasaki. 

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For quick growth, the potatoes and their roots require freedom of movement underground. That’s why the sweet potatoes are grown in sand, which is looser than traditional soil. In the event of windstorms that may carry away all the fertile sand and leave young roots exposed, new plantings are immediately irrigated. Each day, Mininger farmers walk every row of every field to check irrigation hoses, which can be damaged by thirsty birds and coyotes.

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One sweet potato slip, or eye, grows 5-10 potatoes. To harden the sweet potato vines, Mininger farmers cut them down and let them grow back up to three times. In Mininger Farms’ organic fields, mustard seed and radish, both off-season cover crops, provide pest control. The most common pest is the nematode, a microscopic grub, with wireworm (click beetle larvae) being a distant second.

Given sweet potatoes’ bright colors, top-notch nutrition, and versatility, there are so many fun, tasty, and healthy ways to cook up what Mininger Foods has to offer. Brad Ralls, Director of Business Development at Mininger Foods, shares his favorite way to prepare their sweet potatoes: “I love our White Sweet Potato Cubes grilled up in some olive oil with a little fresh garlic, onions, coriander, pepper, and garlic salt. Super easy and fast with delicious results.” Getting hungry?

Why Thistle Loves Mininger Foods Sweet Potatoes

Our weekly menus wouldn’t be complete without nutritious sweet potatoes, and we count on farmers like Mininger Foods to provide Thistle with a top-quality selection. Mininger Foods reached out to the Thistle team a few years back, a time when we didn't have the bandwidth or necessary volumes to source directly from a potato farm. But now we do, and we love the high-quality, delicious product they provide, direct from the source!

One of the things we love about Mininger Foods, in particular, is their ability to provide us with pre-cut sweet potatoes; they’re the only sweet potato farm to process their own crops before selling them directly to customers. This makes for greater quality control and one less step between the farm and your plate! We also appreciate that Mininger Foods shares our goal to reduce food waste. 

We’re so glad our sweet potatoes come directly from wonderful farms like Mininger Foods, just one of the many farmers and food crafters who help make Thistle meals possible.