Food Fears and Stuffed Baked Yam Boats

Anyone who knew me growing up is going to think I have seriously lost it after my next comment (and after looking at the picture above).

I like the smell of onions as they saute. Yes, I don't know what has happened to me.

Growing up I had a bit of a hate-hate relationship with onions. Anytime there was an onion in anything I couldn't bring myself to eat them. At all. Ever. I would actually panic and try to get every last onion away from anything I was eating.

Fast forward a couple (or five to ten) years and I'm not as bad. I even put them in my own cooking now. And looking back I'm not even really sure why I truly hated onions so much. I think maybe I had a bad experience once with something that had onions in it, and blamed them. Poor things. Anyways, now I'm ok with them, I think. I'm not still 100% on board with them raw and I will pick the raw ones out of whatever they come in (as much as possible, except for in salsa fresco, they can stay in that). But, I believe I can say that I have conquered my fear of having them in my food.

I hope you don't have a fear of them otherwise this recipe is going to see unappetizing for you.

I bet everyone has a story about something they hated as a kid but now that they have a few meaningful years under the proverbial belt, they don't mind them as much.

Recipe: Stuffed Baked Yam Boats

Ingredients:

2 large yams, quartered

Olive oil

1/2 medium sweet onion, diced

1 lb ground turkey (or ground meat of your preference)

salt, pepper, paprika, red pepper flakes, basil, all to taste

1 cup diced mushrooms
hot sauce, to finish
sour cream, to finish

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400F. Place quartered yams on a baking sheet and put a few fork holes in them to help them cook. If desired, brush yams lightly with olive oil. Put the yams in the oven and cook for 30 minutes, or until yams are soft.

2.  Heat up olive oil in a pan. Add onions and cook until translucent, about five minutes. Add ground turkey and cook until all the pink is gone. Drain off any additional fat. Add spices and mushrooms and continue to cook until the mushrooms are soft, about five minutes.

 

3. Once the yams are cooked, take a spoon and cut out the middle of the yam quarters. Put the yam centers into a bowl and mash. In the yam "boat" add about a third of a cup of the turkey-mushroom-onion mixture. Add the mashed yams on top of the turkey mixture. Top with hot sauce and sour cream.

 

 

 

A delicious combination of savory and sweet!