Home Cooking with Jess – Twice Baked Sweet Potato

Okay, so it’s not a sexy-looking potato, but it does pack a lot of flavor!

And technically, I didn’t even bake this “Twice baked potato” once.  I microwave sweet potatoes because these days (any day really) I can’t carve out the time to bake it for 45 minutes. To me, microwaving it for 7-10 minutes is the way to go and still produces the fleshy inside.

I love the contrast of sweet and spicy when cooking. I saw a similar recipe that called for red pepper flake, but I rarely have it on hand so I used cayenne. If you use hot sausage, you could skip that ingredient.

I also love the contrast of soft and bitey. While I let the veggies cook, I also left them with a little bite. A red bell pepper would have been a better presentation than the orange I had on hand, but it did the job. You could add or substitute many veggies in this dish.

Sun-dried tomatoes or roasted red pepper would be good flavor here. You could add spinach or kale. You could also sub out the protein.

Lots of possibilities with this one!

Ingredients (for 2 servings)

• 1 large sweet potato 
• 1/3 lb of ground sausage
• 1/4 yellow onion
• 1/2 colored bell pepper
• 1 tsp of minced garlic
• Sprinkle of cayenne
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Pierce sweet potato with knife a few times on each side.
2. Wrap in a wet paper towel and microwave for 7 minutes. 
3. Brown sausage in pan.
4. Once no longer pink, add garlic, onion and pepper and cook for 5 minutes.
5. Check the doneness of sweet potato by squeezing the potato lightly.  If it is still firm, microwave for 2 more minutes. 
6. When soft, carefully (it’s hot!) cut the sweet potato lengthwise to make two equal halves. 
7. Scoop out the inside of the potato and place in the pan with sausage mixture. 
8. Scoop heaping portions in each in the potato skins.  
9. Salt and pepper to taste. 

Enjoy!