Baked Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite vegetables, which works out great since they are packed full of nutrients and very healthy for you. They give you more than the recommended daily value of Vitamin A and about 1/3 of the Vitamin C needed, Whole Foods has the details here, or you can just trust me.

Sweet potatoes are also very versatile. I've never been a fan of the way you usually see them prepared at Thanksgiving with brown sugar and the works, that's just too sweet for me. I really enjoy them cooked on the grill, sauteed with spinach, in a black bean burrito, baked, in soups, as french fries, really the list could go on. The baked sweet potatoes I'm featuring in this post are far from fancy, and a ridiculously easy weeknight side and also make a good lunch. Most offices have microwaves, and it's definitely worth annoying your coworkers and holding up the microwave for 10 minutes for this healthy and tasty lunch. The recipe for this recipe, which is a knock off of these grilled sweet potatoes with scallions, is below.

Ingredients (adjust quantity to the number of people you are serving)
2 Sweet Potatoes
1 tsp Cayenne Pepper
3 scallions, chopped
sour cream

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees, and line baking sheet with foil. Scrub sweet potatoes and prick with fork several times. Place in the oven and cook until tender, about 45 minutes depending on size.

If you want to save time or don't have an oven you can cook them in the sweet potatoes in the microwave. To do this scrub potato, prick with fork, put it in the microwave for 5 minutes, flip over and cook for another 5 minutes, and let it sit for a few minutes before cutting open.

To top the sweet potatoes, cut them open and give them a generous sprinkling of cayenne pepper, scallions, and a couple dollops of sour cream.  And if you choose, mash it all together so it looks like the picture below.