Sweet Potato and Black Bean Enchiladas with Lime Crema

I’m a child of the South–Baldwin County, Alabama, to be exact–and as such, I’m a big fan of sweet potatoes. We grow them here. Well, not me personally, but the sweet potato growers grow them. In the fall you’ll see big, happy, beautiful, piles of them in local farmer’s markets and grocery store produce sections. Y’all already know I’m a sucker for local produce. I’m always delighted to bring a bunch of in-season sweet potatoes home.

Growing up my mom would often bake sweet potatoes in their skins. We’d cut them open, fluff up the insides with a fork, and add butter. I still love them that way. My uncle makes a fantastic sweet potato casserole at Thanksgiving. It has at least a stick of butter, a lovely crunchy topping, and a significant amount of amaretto. I’ll eat that any day. But those syrupy sweet potatoes in the school cafeteria, or the ones with marshmallows? I thought those were sketchy when I was a kid, and I still do.

One day a neighbor brought some really good sweet potatoes to a potluck. They were savory sweet potatoes with a little kick, and I pestered her until she coughed up the recipe. It couldn’t have been easier, but it was a revelation just the same. All you do is bake the sweet potatoes, let them cool enough to handle, pull off the skin, then mash them with butter, salt, pepper, a little cayenne, lemon juice and scallions, all to taste. Then you put all that in a baking dish and dotted the top with more butter, and bake it until it’s hot again. I started making sweet potatoes that way all the time, and thus began my love affair with savory and spicy sweet potatoes.

Since then I’ve learned that sweet potatoes are actually surprisingly versatile. They’re great peeled, cubed, and roasted with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Sweet potato scones with dried cranberries were a hit at the shop around the holidays. Sweet potatoes are weirdly good baked, split, filled with pulled barbecue pork, and topped with a vinegary slaw. My new favorite is Sweet Potato and Black Bean Enchiladas. Y’all saw that coming, didn’t you?

Sweet potatoes and black beans aren’t strangers, it turns out. Both are common in Caribbean, South American, Central American, and TexMex cuisine, and are often paired. That’s right up our Gulf Coast food alley! Sweet Potato and Black Bean Enchiladas are easy, inexpensive, and ridiculously nutritious. They also taste great.

My Sweet Potato and Black Bean recipe calls for canned red enchilada sauce (yes, you can make your own instead), chili powder, chipotle powder (smoked paprika is a great substitute if you can’t take the heat), plus a sweet potato and a can of black beans. I used flour tortillas because that’s what I usually have. Corn tortillas will certainly work, and if you can get good ones in your area, they may even be better. Heck, you can put the mixture in a taco shell if you prefer. It’s up to you. Let us know how you did them, and how you like them–we want to know!

EDIT: Actually I had a little extra filling, so I put it in a quesadilla. I’ll be doing that again.

I really like to dollop some quick homemade Lime Crema on Sweet Potato and Black Bean Enchiladas. Lime Crema is silly easy and the hardest part is cutting the lime in half. Recipe below.

Yum!