Loaded Sweet Potato Boats are great any time of day. Because the filling includes eggs, breakfast or brunch comes to mind. But they also work for dinner (and leftovers for lunch)!
After baking, the sweet potatoes are scooped out, leaving a 1/4″ layer of flesh as a base for loading up. Then, the goodies are added: cooked sausage, scrambled egg, spinach, and cheese. The portion of sweet potato that is removed can be refrigerated or frozen to use in another meal. Shepherd’s Pie with Sweet Potato Mash, decadent sweet potato casserole, or just sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and eaten as is.
The Potato Process
This works best with FAT sweet potatoes. It’s hard to find ones without pointy ends, but do your best. Wide and rounded makes the best boat for ample loading. I cut them in half prior to baking. Rub them with your favorite oil (olive, coconut, avocado), then give them a sprinkle of sea salt, place them cut side down on a baking sheet, and bake at 400° for about an hour. They can be checked at 45 minutes to see if they are tender enough to scoop out the flesh easily.
Remove them from the oven and let them cool off for 20 minutes or so before trying to handle them. Hot Potato isn’t a game you need to be playing in the kitchen. Once you can hold a potato in your palm easily, use a spoon in the other hand to scrape out most of the flesh, leaving a rim on the edges and bottom to serve as the base to hold all of the fillings.
Fillings For the Sweet Potato Boats
While the sweet potatoes are baking, brown your sausage. Choose whatever your family likes best: Italian, mild, hot, sweet, breakfast. Drain it off and wilt the spinach in it. Scramble your eggs, and combine with the sausage and spinach. Then spoon it all into your boats, top with cheese, and place it all in the oven at 350° to get hot and melty.
Serve it up with a fruit salad, or biscuits, or roasted vegetables on the side.
Loaded Sweet Potato Boats
Ingredients
- 2 large sweet potatoes halved, oiled, and salted
- 1/2 pound sausage
- 1 cup spinach packed
- 3-4 eggs scrambled
- 1/3 c cheese your choice, shredded
Instructions
Prepare Sweet Potatoes
- Preheat oven to 400°. Select fat sweet potatoes and wash and dry them well. Cut in half, rub with oil (your choice of coconut, olive, avocado) and salt both sides. Place cut side down on a baking sheet and bake for 45-60 minutes.
- When they can be easily pierced with a fork at the deepest part on the cut side , remove from oven and allow to cool for 10-20 minutes.
- Scoop the flesh out, leaving a 1/4" rim of sweet potato flesh all around the edges and bottom of the potato. This will provide some nice sweet potato taste to go with your boat fillings.
- Save the flesh for your next sweet potato meal: Shepherd's Pie with Sweet Potato Mash, mashed sweet potatoes, or a decadent, doctored-up sweet potato casserole.
Assemble Your Boats
- Preheat oven to 350°. In a large pan, cook sausage (pork, chicken, Italian, mild, ground, or diced-up pre-cooked links, your choice!)
- Wilt spinach into sausage and set aside.
- In a non-stick skillet, scramble four eggs, seasoning as you prefer. Combine eggs with sausage and spinach mixture.
- Spoon into four halves of hollowed-out sweet potato. Top with a sprinkle of cheese and warm in oven until cheese melts, about 10 minutes.
This is a “must try”…. or maybe you can make it for us on your next visit. 😊