hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with loaded twice baked sweet
potatoes that's right i've loaded potatoes before and i have twice baked
potatoes before but i don't believe i've ever loaded an twice baked potato and if
I have it certainly wasn't with a sweet potato but boy am I glad I did and since
we're heading straight into the season where we're looking for spectacular side
dishes I think the timing is perfect for sharing this easy and beautiful recipe
so with that let's go hang get started with hopefully four uniformly sized
sweet potatoes and when I say uniform I'm not talking about length it's all
about the girth so when we're picking these out we want to find ones that are
about the same size around the middle and what we'll do after those are placed
on a baking sheet is perform the old poke oil and roast which means we're
gonna first prick the skin with a knife so they don't explode which is extremely
unlikely to happen but I still enjoy saying it and once prick we'll go ahead
and drizzle on some olive oil and then give them a little massage since I like
my sweet potatoes like I like my bodybuilders well greased and glistening
and then what we'll do once those are evenly spaced is transfer those into the
center of a 400 degree oven for about 35 minutes or so or until completely tender
and what we'll do while we're waiting for those to roast is move on to the
filling which is going to start by adding some sliced up bacon to this pan
set over medium heat and of course bacon is the only mandatory ingredient in a
loaded baked potato and what we'll do is cook that stirring until it just starts
to crisp up and as you may have heard me mentioned before one great visual clue
is that bacon fats gonna start to look foamy and that means most of the fat is
rendered out and it's getting crispy all right you see that and as soon as our
bacon looks a little something like this we'll go ahead and add a handful of
sliced green onions also known as scallions as well as some diced jalapeno
pepper and what we'll do is stir that in and only cook it for one minute and the
reason we only need a minute is because those peppers and onions are going to
continue to cook in that hot bacon fat and by the time this sits and cools down
those are going to be perfectly cooked so what we'll do after one minute is
simply turn off the heat and reserve those until needed
and by the time we've sliced and cooked those ingredients theoretically our
potatoes are done and we'll go ahead and pull those out of the oven and of course
test those with a knife and since we're gonna mash this we
really do want to make sure they're tender so give them the old poka poka
and make sure and at this point what we'll do is let these cool down a little
bit before cutting off the tops and scooping out the flesh an ideally you do
this when they're warm and easy to handle and that's still dangerously hot
like mine were but either way we're gonna take a knife and cut off the top
third of the potato angling our knife about 45 degrees and we'll go all the
way around and then pop off the top and I should mention any sweet potatoes
gonna work for this but I really like the orange flesh the best since I
believe it's the most beautiful and the most nutritious and trying to be careful
not to cut off more than a third from the top all right since that's gonna
provide for a larger shell to fill and these are gonna be easier to handle and
work with and then once we have all those tops taken off the next step of
course is going to be to scoop all that tender flesh into a bowl all right from
the tops and the shells and one tip here is not to scoop out too much from the
bottoms all right I try to leave at least a quarter inch of flesh inside
which is going to give these a little bit of structure so they don't collapse
when we bake them and then what we'll do once all that's been scooped into a bowl
is season it up with some kosher salt some freshly ground black pepper and of
course a little bit of our old friend cayenne pepper and then besides that
we're also gonna toss in a handful of sharp white cheddar as well as a nice
big spoon of creme fraiche or a spoon of sour cream or even a splash of regular
cream and then we're gonna finish up by squeezing in the juice of half a lime
and then once all that's in there we'll take a potato masher and we'll mash this
up nice and smooth before we add our onion bacon and pepper mixture all right
we don't want that stuff to get all smashed up so what we'll do is mash this
first and then we'll use a slotted spoon to transfer that stuff in at which point
we'll give that one last mix and that's it once mixed that filling is ready to
stuff back into our sweet potatoes oh and I should mention if you're not into
spicy things you could if you want to do this with sweet peppers instead
I mean you are for all the Vado of your sweet potato so if you
elected not to use the hell pena that'd be fine but personally I think the heat
from the jalapeno pairs perfectly with the starchy sweetness here but either
way we'll go ahead mix that up in fill our shells and once we have that
transferred in and we've done any final fine-tuning we'll finish these off by
scattering a little extra cheese over the top all right not too much all right
we don't want complete coverage because sometimes we'll take that first bite
with a fork and all the cheese comes off in one giant piece so instead let's just
do a nice scattering and that's it once cheese we'll go ahead and pop those into
the center of a 400 degree oven for about 20 to 25 minutes or until they're
heated through and the tops have started to brown and they look absolutely
awesome and hopefully something very similar to this check it out I mean if
those don't look like something you'd want to eat I don't know what does and
at this point those ready to transfer onto our plates or in my case onto a
platter so I could take some pictures and then once I had those plated up I
attempted to do one of the most difficult maneuvers in all of the
culinary arts and that's to get small round bouncy sliced green onions to stay
on top of a rounded slick a cheesy surface but eventually I got it done and
finally my loaded twice baked sweet potatoes were officially ready to enjoy
and as fantastic as these looked the taste and texture was even better okay
one of my main complaints with sweet potatoes is that they're too sweet and
not savory enough but here because of that smoky meaty bacon and bittersweet
heat from the peppers and acidity from the lime and sharpness from our cheddar
we've really pushed this flavor profile much further down to the savory end of
the scale all right to be honest I almost forgot I was eating a sweet
potato which because they're so sweet can really be sort of a OneNote
experience but not here we have so many notes and all of them good but anyway
that's it what we're calling loaded twice baked sweet potatoes above and
beyond the great taste and appearance these are also very versatile since
they're just as effective as a spectacular side dish for your holiday
turkey as they are served as a meal placed next to a simple salad on any
random weeknight which is why I really do hope you give
these a try soon so head over to food wishes comm for all the ingredient
amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy
you