Everything’s better with bacon

Try these bacon-wrapped sweet potato wedges this weekend.

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Sweet potato wedges wrapped in bacon, ready for dipping, snacking, and enjoyment. — Nicole Jackson

I never jumped on the bacon-wrapped bandwagon — when food trends were wrapping everything from olives to corn on the cob in bacon, I sat back and ate my bacon on the side of my scrambled eggs, or on my BLTs. I never saw much point in it, so I did my own thing and stuck to the more traditional ways of enjoying bacon. On a Sunday, I found myself home with some time and a pound of Jimmy Dean bacon in the fridge. I bought it with the notion that if I put it in my fridge, I would come home from work one day to find it cooked and ready to eat. Sadly, I live alone, and this didn’t happen.

On a whim, I decided to mix it up and have a go at making, and eating, bacon-wrapped sweet potatoes.

I took two medium sweet potatoes and popped them into the microwave for three minutes each, and then chopped them into wedges. I did this so the wedges wouldn’t take as long to cook. I wrapped the toaster oven cooking sheet in aluminum foil, for easy cleanup of course. Then I took each wedge of sweet potato and wrapped it tightly in a strip of raw bacon, arranging them on the baking sheet for cooking. I popped the wedges into the toaster oven at 400° for about 30 minutes, flipped them, and baked for another 10 minutes.

The cooking time was definitely longer than I would have liked, but I put my impatience on the back burner, and utilized the wait time to do some chores around my apartment, work up an appetite, and check on them baking from time to time.

They were salty, sweet, and paired well with honey barbecue sauce for dipping. The bacon was crispy, and the sweet potatoes were soft, but not mushy. They made a fun and tasty afternoon snack for me, but would also make a great side dish for a holiday dinner or game-day appetizer on Super Bowl Sunday.