Skillet Roasted Sweet Potatoes Recipe - Laura Vitale - Laura In The Kitchen Episode 662

I'm Laura Vitale and on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen I want to share with you a recipe that I like to call Skillet Roasted Sweet Potatoes and we're going to make them with bacon and sage and garlic, it's going to be fantastic. Now the reason why I really love this recipe and I wanted to share it with you is because this is one of those recipes that is quick to make, it's absolutely delicious and you don't need an oven to do it, meaning most of us only have one oven. So the day of your holiday, whether it's Thanksgiving or when not, you just don't have enough room in the oven to cook everything at the same time, so having recipes like this that you can make on your stove top but still give you that sort of crispy edge that a roasted potato would have in the oven, you can achieve that right on your stove top. So the recipe is incredibly simple and easy, you'll need some sweet potatoes of course, what I've got here is some chopped up bacon, I've got some garlic, tons of fried sage, a pinch of cayenne pepper, salt and pepper. You might need some vegetable oil, but that all depends on how much fat your bacon renders out, so we're going to have to see about that. Let's get started! The part I'm going to do right now which is peel my potatoes and cook them in the microwave is something that you can do the day before. You don't have to use the microwave if you don't want to, the reason why I'm using the microwave is because one, it's easy, and two, I don't, because I'm not parboiling them in water, the sweet potatoes will stay really dry and therefore they're going to get crispier instead of if I were to boil them and they'll absorb a lot of water, if that makes any sense. But you can certainly parboil them, the key here is to just partially cook these and then finish cooking them in the skillet, so just go ahead and peel them up. Once you have them peeled, you can cut these in big wedges if you want to, however you prefer, like your roasted potatoes, that's how you do it. I'm going to probably just cut these in, I'm going to cut it in half because these are pretty long, and then I'm going to cut them in big thick wedges like this because then when I go ahead and sauté them, I can get maximum crispiness on both sides. Right? Right? Right? Right? You feel me? You feel me? There's no point of a roasted potato unless it's got crispiness on all sides, I mean, what would this world be coming to if we didn't worry about that? So we're just going to cut these up. Arrange these on a microwave safe plate, and like I said, if you don't want to put these in the microwave, parboil them, just make sure that you dry them off really, really, really well. Alright, these are going to go into the microwave for 5 minutes, and in the meantime we'll get started on crisping up our bacon. I have the potatoes in the microwave, I've got a really large skillet here, you want to get the largest skillet you have because you want to get those potatoes in there all in one layer, it's really, really important for that crispiness. I'm going to add in my bacon, I have this over about between medium and medium high heat, not all the way to medium high, not all the way to medium, something in between. I'm just going to put these, I'm just going to let that crisp up a little bit, and in the meantime, what I'm going to do is I'm going to chop up some fresh sage. If you don't have fresh sage, you can use dry, but right now, you should be able to find fresh sage pretty much anywhere, your local drug store should be carrying fresh sage, just because it's meant to be cooked in the holiday season, you use sage like you wouldn't believe, well at least I do, and I tend to really find it anywhere, so I'm happy about that. Go ahead and chop this really nice and fine, and then I'm going to get going on mincing up my garlic. Mince up some garlic, and I love the smell of garlic, it's like one of those really comforting smells for me, probably sounds so weird, but it's true. Mince it up nice and fine, now my bacon is not rendering a lot of fat, so I'm just going to put in a tiny bit of vegetable oil at this point, and then I'm going to add in my chopped sage, this is going to get that oil flavored incredibly, and it's going to crisp up the sage and it's going to be like confetti, it's amazing. I put it in at this point after I've added the bacon, after about a minute or so, and then I just let them crisp up together for the last couple of minutes, it's going to be delicious. That looks fantastic, I'm just going to remove the bacon and crispy sage pieces, just with a slotted spoon and leave that oil slash fat behind because that's what we're going to cook our sweet potatoes in, I'm telling you, this is going to be one killer of a side dish, whether you're hosting your holiday get together or you're going somewhere, this is definitely one to please. Okay, my potatoes are done, I'm going to, at this point I have the heat kind of down a little bit, just because I'm going to add the potatoes in with my hands and I don't want to get burnt, you can certainly use tongs, which is probably what I should use, but I like living dangerously, what can I say? I'm just going to put these all in one layer, I'm actually going to grab my tongs, there you go, totally not how I normally roll, but guess what, a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do. Put these in one layer, at this point I'm going to turn the heat back up to where it was between medium and medium high, a little bit closer to medium at this time, and now you're going to let these cook for a good, I would say 4-5 minutes on each side, you're just looking for them to be a beautiful golden brown color, I'm going to cover my skillet with my screen splash thing, clean up, and I'll show you what they look like when they are about to be flipped. Flipping these over, you can see they've got a gorgeous deep brown, crispy, that's what a good roast potato should be, I'm sorry, but it should be, and all I'm going to do is flip these over and let them cook another 5-6 minutes, it really depends, you just want to make sure they're cooked all the way through, take a knife and insert it into one, if they come out really, if the knife comes out without any resistance, you know they're cooked all the way through. All I'm going to do now, and then we will finish these off with a bang. My potatoes are looking good, you want to make sure that you season these well with some salt and pepper, and because I like to offset the sweetness of the sweet potatoes, I always like to add a little chili powder, cayenne, hot pepper flakes, just anything like that, a little bit of black pepper, and then I'm going to add in the garlic, I'm adding the garlic in at this point just because I didn't want to overcook it, and I'm also adding back in the bacon and sage that we cooked together, oh, it's going to be fantastic, you're going to have to trust me on this, and then I just really carefully just kind of flip these around and cook this all together for another 2 minutes or so, or until that raw garlic flavor kind of goes away, and then we will be ready to serve. Now some will get a little, you know, obviously mine, I had too many potatoes for the skillet so I should have done it in batches, but just a couple, like this one didn't get as much color, but that's totally fine because it's cooked all the way through and that's what counts. So just go ahead and cook this for one last minute and then we will be ready to serve. Oh, look at those! Look at those! You, if you could smell this, you'd go crazy! It smells fantastic! Garlic, the sage, the bacon, I'm going for the real crispy one right here. Really nice and cooked through, perfectly fluffy and soft. It's really hot though. I wish I had a turkey and some gravy right now. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm! That is so fat! Mmm! That is a winner! But it's also really hot. Mmm! It's so good and simple, yet so much character. This would be the sweet potato favorite dish of your holiday table, I guarantee it. Go to LauraintheKitchen.com to get this recipe, I wish you can try every single thing on there because I feel like holiday recipes are so dynamite and this is one of the very top ones that's just a little bit more special than your classic just plain old roasted potato. I hope you've enjoyed spending time with me and I will see you next time. Bye-bye!