Healthy Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes

I was looking through pictures of all the recipes I’ve posted and realized there’s a lot of green…. I really do love my veggies.  But time for some color.  These twice baked sweet potatoes… DELICIOUS!!!  I normally just taste recipes a little here and there while I’m cooking, but with this recipe….. sooooo many bites.  I couldn’t help myself!  I was literally eating while I was taking pictures.  Such a great multitasker!

My brain was not working last night or this morning.  Everything I looked at for inspiration, and every recipe idea that I came up with just seemed “bleh”.  I looked through my pile of recipes ripped from magazines, my favorite cookbooks, family recipes, my secret Pinterest inspiration board, and even my Grandma’s old 1965 Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.  Still, my mind was blank….

Then finally I saw something on Pinterest with sweet potatoes and I thought, “Hmmm, sweets potatoes (or yams, whatever, not getting technical at this point) have that beautiful rich orange color and I like sweet potatoes and I haven’t had them in a long time and what could I do with them??? I could do twice baked; I could make them similar to my Acorn Squash Chili because acorn squash and sweet potatoes are the same color(-ish) and are both sweet(-ish)….yeah, that sounds amazing!”   That’s how I think, constant run-on sentences in my brain.

So I went to the store and purchased all the necessary ingredients: sweet potatoes, chicken sausage, goat cheese, cannellini beans, kale, and cilantro.  I already had a Costco-sized salsa on hand…. Oh, and wine.  I bought wine to “sip” while I cooked.  Wine makes cooking better.  I also watched Meru** on Amazon Prime as I was creating this masterpiece meal.  (Again, multi-tasking). FYI, Meru is crazy!!!  You all should watch it.  It’s a documentary about the first three climbers to summit Meru Peak in the Himalayas.  Climbers like that are just on another level… I mean, I kind of get their drive and the adrenaline junkie thing…kinda…I’m afraid of heights, well, maybe just more scared of falling and hurting myself….  In attempts to conquer my fear of heights, I’ve been skydiving, bungee jumping, and paragliding, but get me on the edge of a cliff or steep ridge, I still start to panic….

Because I was multi-tasking and got totally absorbed in watching Meru, it took me the full 90 minute documentary to assemble the twice baked sweet potatoes, and that’s after the 60 minutes it takes to initially bake the sweet potatoes…. But if you are solely focused on dinner preparations, you can make these in about an hour and half.  While the sweet potatoes are baking, brown the sausage, add the onion and garlic, and then stir in the cannellini beans, salsa, and kale. Once the potatoes have finished baking, let them cool, scoop out the insides, mix with the sausage mixture, fill the skins back up, top with goat cheese, and bake for another 15 minutes or so.  Easy!

Now, I know that not everyone likes goat cheese…. I love the tanginess.  I took a few pictures before I added the goat cheese just for those of you who dislike it.  You could always top with sour cream after the second round of baking… but I topped mine with even more goat cheese before I devoured them.  And I mean DEVOURED!  When you’re watching a documentary and drinking wine while cooking, styling, and taking pictures, you work up a pretty good appetite and, often, time gets away from me, and the next thing I know it’s 9pm and I haven’t eaten yet….At least this is a healthy dinner.  Sweet potatoes, chicken sausage, cannellini beans, salsa, kale, doesn’t get any healthier.  The perfect balanced meal!

Enjoy these healthy twice baked sweet potatoes.  I recommend watching Meru after you eat these for dinner.

**Full disclosure, the links to the documentary Meru in this article are linked to take you to Amazon with our amazon affialiate ID.   We do earn a small percentage if you make a purchase.   It is seriously an awesome documentary, or we would not be linking it! **  

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Healthy Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes

Prep Time

15 mins

Cook Time

1 hr 15 mins

Total Time

1 hr 30 mins

 

The perfect healthy dinner. Twice baked sweet potatoes with chicken sausage, cannellini beans, salsa, kale, onions, garlic and topped with goat cheese.

Course: Dinner, Easy

Servings: 4 servings

Author: Emily

Ingredients

• 4 medium sweet potatoes
• 1 pound Italian chicken sausage
• 1 small onions chopped
• 2 garlic cloves minced
• 1 - 15.5 oz can of cannellini beans drained and rinsed
• 1 1/2 cups salsa
• 3 kale leaves washed, stemmed removed, torn into 1-inch pieces
• Goat cheese or sour cream, optional
• Cilantro optional

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Bake sweet potatoes on a baking sheet for 60 minutes, or until soft
3. Let sweet potatoes cool for 5-10 minutes. Slice in half longways.
4. While sweet potatoes are baking, brown chicken sausage in a large skillet or dutch oven.
5. Add onions, garlic, cannellini beans, salsa, and kale to sausage once browned.
6. Scoop out the inside of the sweet potatoes, leaving enough so the skins still maintain their structure, and add sweet potato to sausage mixture.
7. Fill sweet potato skins with sausage-sweet potato mixture, sprinkle with goat cheese.
8. Bake for 15 minutes, broil for the last 2-3 minutes.
9. Top with cilantro and more goat cheese (or sour cream) to serve.