Sausage Pizza Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes

Sausage Pizza Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes - made December 27, 2017 from Paleo Running Momma

When I was in college, about a millennia ago, my freshman year college roommate made twice-baked potatoes. Having grown up in an Asian household where rice was the main carb staple, I’d never had such a thing before. I have nothing against potatoes, particularly French fries *cough*, and I actually like baked potatoes but only if they’re cooked well. As in not underdone. There’s little risk of that with twice-baked potatoes since you literally bake them twice.

I prefer sweet potatoes over white potatoes so I was looking forward to trying out this recipe. Mine didn’t come out anywhere nearly as picturesque as the original blog I got the recipe from so don’t go by my pictures. 

This was a fairly healthy, tasty dish. The only issue is sweet potatoes bake up much softer than white potatoes so leaving some sweet potato around the potato skin was tricky because the skin wants to come off. 

They also didn’t crisp up like white potatoes would, at least not when I baked them the second time. The sausages started to darken before any crisping happened so I took them out before the filling burned. They didn’t look anything like the beautiful twice-baked potatoes of my freshman year college roommate but they tasted good nonetheless.

4 small/medium sweet potatoes

3/4 pound sweet Italian sausage
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/3 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes (I left out)
1/2 small onion, chopped
3-4 garlic cloves, chopped
large pinch or more crush red pepper flakes
salt to taste
1 1/2 teaspoons dried Italian seasoning

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Coat sweet potatoes lightly with coconut oil or bacon fat; sprinkle with salt if desired. Bake on a foil-lined sheet 1 to 1 1/2 hours until soft on the inside. 
2. Heat a large skillet over medium heat and add 2 teaspoons cooking fat. Crumble the sausage into the skillet and sprinkle with red pepper flakes; stir and cook until the sausage begins to brown.
3. Add the onions to the skillet; stir and cook until translucent, then add the garlic, sundried tomatoes and Italian seasoning. Continue to cook until the mixture is soft and toasty, about 2 minutes, then remove from heat.
4. Cut each baked sweet potato in half, scoop out inside, leaving a very thin layer, then mix with cooked sausage pizza mixture. Add salt to taste.
5. Scoop the sweet potato-sausage mixture back into baked potato skins and bake in 400-degree oven for 15-20 minutes or until browned on top and skin starts to crisp. Serve hot.