More comforting food at its finest!

Winter is definitely the best time for those dishes that require you to run the oven for multiple hours. Twice-baked potatoes are a prime example. First you bake the potatoes whole. Then you hollow them out, stuff them with filling, and bake them again. End result? A toasty warm kitchen and a plateful of soothing starchy goodness. Perfect.

The standard twice-baked potato is generally seen as a side dish, but I make mine into the star of the show. How? By adding not only cheese and vegetables, but protein, generally in the form of beans. This creates an entire little mini-casserole stuffed with every good thing, and perfect for a one-dish meal. Add a salad on the side and you're completely covered.

This time I picked out a couple of beautiful sweet potatoes, added some refried black beans, broccoli, and kale, and topped the finished product with some chunks of herbed goat cheese. This made for an intense & delicious winter dinner combination.

Not the best pictures, but the potatoes in question are still delicious. Let's go.

Twice-baked sweet potatoes with black beans and broccoli

sweet potato
onion or garlic
cooked black beans, refried or roughly mashed
broccoli
kale
salt, pepper, paprika or cayenne
optional cheese

Scrub your sweet potatoes well under running water, pat dry, and stab all over with a fork. Bake at 400F for 45-60 minutes, or until they're cooked through. You can also choose the quick method and microwave them for about 6-7 minutes if you happen to own a microwave. I don't, so the oven method always wins.

Let your potatoes cool enough to work with them. Cut them in half longways and scoop out the cooked sweet potato flesh, leaving behind a thin but intact shell.

Mix the flesh with some chopped onion or garlic, a few big spoonfuls of black beans, some diced broccoli (including the peeled stems--and if you have a random kohlrabi lying around, peel that, cube it up, and throw it in too. Kohlrabi: it's totally a big, round broccoli stem.), and a few leaves of kale. You can definitely go for either all broccoli or all kale, but I had a few odds and ends lying around and I wanted to use them all up at once. That's the beauty of a stuffed potato--practically anything goes.

Season your stuffing mixture with salt, pepper, and paprika or cayenne to taste. If you want cheese, go nuts; if not, no problem. I've mixed in a few handfuls of grated sharp cheddar to excellent effect. This time I decided to rebake my potatoes sans dairy & garnish with cheese at the end.


Stuff your potato shells with the filling mixture, dividing it up as evenly as possible. Arrange them on a baking sheet and bake at 375F for about a half hour, or until heated completely through. If you want to, you can throw on a few handfuls of grated cheese and finish them under the broiler; otherwise, you can just call them done when hot.

Serve with salad or soup for a full and hearty lunch. Garnish with anything you think sounds good. I added chunks of goat cheese, which melted nicely as I mashed them in with my fork. Some fresh chopped parsley or a spoonful or two of thick Greek yogurt would be excellent too.

Hooray: potatoes. Don't you feel better?

How are you eating your potatoes lately?