Try "Addictive Sweet Potato Burritos" for a fun and different vegetarian option!

It's not crazy, it's delicious and indeed addictive, I promise! Sweet potatoes + dressed up black beans + sharp cheddar cheese in a flour tortilla = yummy vegetarian dinner! (And just omit the cheese to make them vegan!)

#foodphotography @juliank @photocontests

Original recipe credit goes to Karena on allrecipes.com. I took that recipe and changed the canned kidney beans to mashed, cooked-from-dry black beans. I also don't use as much onion. So without further ado, here's my version of the recipe, and the process!

INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2-3/4 cup chopped sweet onion
4 cloves garlic, minced or 2 teaspoons minced garlic from a jar
1 pound dry black beans
3 tablespoons chili powder
3-4 teaspoons prepared mustard
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 pinch cayenne pepper, to taste or prepared hot sauce
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 medium (<4 inches diameter) or 2 large (>4 inches diameter) sweet potatoes
8-12 (10 inch) flour tortillas, warmed
Shredded cheddar cheese (at least 8 oz)

DIRECTIONS AND COMMENTARY
Soak and cook the beans according to package directions. @schoonercreek has a great article on cooking dry beans from scratch here. What I do is simmer the beans for 1.5-2 hours, or until they are super soft and easily mashable; and when I start the beans to simmering, I also start the sweet potatoes.

To cook the sweet potatoes
Put a piece of foil on your oven rack. Scrub the sweet potatoes and prick them all over with a fork. Place them on the foil in the oven and then turn on the oven to 425 degrees. Cook potatoes for 60 minutes if they are smaller than 4" in diameter, and 75 minutes if they are larger than 4" in diameter. Turn the oven off but leave it closed and let the sweet potatoes sit in there another 30 minutes. Remove and mash; set aside.

When cooked this way, the skins fall right off and you can just stir them up rather than "mashing" them!

When the beans are very very soft, put a 2-cup measuring cup under a colander and then drain the beans, catching some of the cooking liquid in the measuring cup. Put the beans back into the cooking pot for mashing, and set the liquid aside.

Sweet taters are ready, beans are ready...time to put it all together!

Heat the oil (I prefer butter) in a medium skillet and saute the onion and garlic until soft. Add to the drained beans and mash! Add cooking liquid back into the beans while mashing, as necessary, to get your preferred consistency. I usually end up adding about a cup of liquid back in. Heat the beans until warm (just a few minutes) and then remove from the heat and stir in the chili powder, mustard, cumin, cayenne or hot sauce, and soy sauce. I recommend going easy on the mustard and cayenne at first and upping the amounts if you want to after tasting the bean mixture. Also, you can get away with making the beans more spicy because the sweet potato will tone them back down.

Obviously I like cheese. Can you tell?

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Warm the tortillas, and divide the bean and sweet potato mixture evenly among them. I can only get big flour tortillas in packages of 8, so I just make really fat burritos. I find it's easier to spread the beans first, then the sweet potato, and then sprinkle generously with cheeeeeeese (I think extra sharp cheddar is best!) Roll up or fold the tortillas around the filling, burrito style, and place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake until warmed through, about 12 minutes.

Mmmm melted cheese

Serve with sour cream, salsa, guacamole...whatever your heart desires :)

The great thing about this recipe is that the burritos freeze and reheat excellently! Once cooled, wrap up the extras in foil and place in a plastic freezer bag. The way I see it, you put in a little more work to make this dinner in the first place, but then you get several more dinners down the road with virtually no effort beyond taking some out of the freezer to thaw, heating the oven to 350 degrees and putting them in the oven till warmed through, foil and all. (I'm sure you can reheat them from frozen, but I just haven't tried it.)

ENJOY! Happy Sunday to all, and thank you for reading! :)