When Jamie first shared this recipe with me, I was curious how it could be classed as Paleo when it is called stuffing. Isn’t most traditional stuffing made with bread, bread and more bread? However, once I read over the ingredients and tasted the finished product, I realized that you don’t need to have bread to make a perfect ‘stuffing’. Some sweet potatoes, sausage, apples and spices are all you need!

I don’t normally have sausage in our freezer, so a trip to the grocery store was necessary before this dish could be created. The original recipe calls for sausage not in the casing, but almost every sausage I saw was in a link form. So, we improvised. Jamie selected a beer and onion flavoured sausage link, and I took them out of the casing to have already seasoned ground pork for this recipe. So easy, and we have some left in the freezer for the next time we want to make this delicious dish.

Jamie had suggested that we add chopped apple to this recipe. Since I had apples left over from when I made applesauce I figured, why not, I trust his palate 🙂  Looking at the ingredient list, it was a great idea to marry the flavours of the sweet potato and sausage together with apples.

This was pretty easy to put together. As the sweet potatoes were baking in the oven it allowed time to combine the onions, celery and sausage in the frying pan. The original recipe called for white wine, but we didn’t have any on-hand, so we just used some white vermouth (which we always have on hand for Dirty Martini’s). Jamie and I had recently taken a wine tasting course, and our instructor told us that white vermouth can be used in place of white wine in any recipe.

Once I added in the poultry seasoning, it really did start to smell like Thanksgiving dinner in the apartment! Yum!

Everything was combined in a glass baking dish and put into the oven for almost an hour. I could barely wait for the dish to cool enough to take a taste. It was amazing. This tasted like the perfect fall side dish. This has definitely become a comfort food favourite that we will be making again and again.

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Adapted from:
Savory Sweet Potato Stuffing – Robb Wolf

Ingredients:

• 3 small sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and Pepper
• 2 stalks celery, thinly sliced
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup white vermouth
• 2 sausage links (removed from their casing)
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup chicken broth
• 2 apples, peeled and chopped
• 2 tbsp poultry seasoning
• 1/4 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.  On a baking sheet, toss the sweet potatoes with 1 tbsp olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Place the baking sheet in the oven and roast the sweet potatoes until they are just tender, about 20 minutes.
2. While the potatoes are roasting, heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the celery, onions, salt & pepper.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened and beginning to brown (about 10 – 12 minutes).  Add in the ground sausage and cook through until thoroughly browned.  Add in the vermouth and cook until it has evaporated (about 2 minutes).
3. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl, along with the roasted sweet potatoes and let cool for about 10 minutes.  Turn oven down to 350°F.
4. Add the beaten egg, chopped apples, sweet potato mixture, chicken broth, pecans, and poultry seasoning.  Mix together.  Transfer the mixture to a 9×9 baking dish.  Cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes.
5. Remove the foil and bake unitl browned, about 25 minutes more.
6. This is delicious, and you likely won’t have any leftovers! 🙂