Buffalo Chicken-Stuffed Sweet Potatoes Recipe

While buffalo chicken wings are typically paired with carrots and celery sticks, here developer Jessica Morone is using chicken chunks, buffalo sauce, and blue cheese dressing as a topper for baked sweet potatoes instead. This might not be a common combination, but spicy chicken, funky blue cheese, and sweet potatoes make for what Morone calls "the perfect balance of flavors." She does note, though, that if you're not a sweet potato fan, you can use the same topping for either russet or Idaho potatoes (which are the best types for baking).

If you like to prep as much of your meal as you can ahead of time, the potatoes can be baked up to 3 days ahead, while the blue cheese dressing will last for a week in the refrigerator. The chicken can be cooked the day before, then the potatoes assembled and heated on the day you want to eat them. This is especially convenient if you only want to bake a single potato at a time instead of all four.

The base of this dish is sweet potatoes and chicken thighs (boneless and skinless), while you'll also need olive oil, butter, paprika, garlic powder, salt, and Louisiana-style hot sauce (Morone uses Frank's RedHot, which is a condiment found in many homemade buffalo wing sauces.) For the blue cheese dressing, you'll need buttermilk, sour cream, lemon juice, blue cheese crumbles, and pepper, while chopped chives provide a green garnish.

In a small bowl, whisk together the cayenne pepper sauce and olive oil until combined.

Add the chicken to a medium bowl or a resealable plastic bag, then pour the cayenne pepper mixture over the chicken thighs. Cover and refrigerate.

Preheat the oven to 425 F.

Use a fork to poke holes all over the sweet potatoes, then set them on a parchment paper–lined baking sheet.

Bake in the preheated oven for 40–50 minutes, until soft when pierced with a fork.

When the potatoes have baked for around 15 minutes, place the chicken in a casserole dish or baking pan, discarding the extra cayenne pepper mixture.

Bake the chicken for 20–25 minutes, until it is cooked through.

Cut the baked sweet potatoes in half lengthwise. Carefully scoop out the flesh and place it in a medium bowl. Reserve the skins.

Lightly mash the sweet potato flesh with a fork until smooth.

Add butter, paprika, garlic powder, and salt to the mashed sweet potatoes. Mix until combined.

Spread the mashed sweet potato mixture evenly into the potato skins.

Transfer the chicken to a cutting board and use two forks to shred the meat.

Spread the chicken evenly over the mashed sweet potatoes. Drizzle with additional cayenne pepper sauce, if desired.

Make the topping: In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, sour cream, lemon juice, blue cheese, salt, and pepper.

Drizzle the topping over the sweet potatoes.

Spoon chopped chives over blue cheese topping.

Serve warm, and enjoy!

Morone notes that in some quarters, ranch dressing is preferred to blue cheese as a dip for buffalo wings. "It can be quite a controversial conversation with people," she says. If you play on Team Ranch, you can always use that to top these sweet potatoes in place of her favored blue cheese. (Here's a recipe for buttermilk ranch dressing if you'd like to make your own.) If blue cheese is your favorite, though, you can always double down by sprinkling some extra crumbles atop the potatoes.

The chives Morone uses as a topping can easily be replaced with green onions, while other green garnishes include parsley, cilantro, and chopped jalapeños. Bacon bits, shredded cheddar, and sour cream are other possible additions. While none of these is part of the classic buffalo wing presentation, all of them taste great with just about any type of baked potato and wouldn't be out of place here.

If you do decide to stick with a classic blue cheese topping for these buffalo chicken sweet potatoes, you'll likely make more than you'll need for the potatoes. That's not a problem, though, as there are a number of other things you can do with it. For one thing, you could always use it as a salad dressing. But, if you like your dressing thinner and more pourable, you could always thin it out with some white wine vinegar or additional lemon juice, buttermilk, or oil.

Leave the dressing thick for spreading on sandwiches, hot dogs, burgers, and steaks. You can also incorporate it into a pan sauce or use it as a dip for chips or raw vegetables. If you have leftover buffalo-sauced chicken as well as blue cheese dressing, the two of them can be combined with cream cheese to make a tasty buffalo chicken dip.