AIP Sweet Potato, Bacon and Kale Hash

If you’ve followed along on instagram for any amount of time, you know what a big fan I am of pre-cooked components. I have a serious aversion to anything that looks like or feels like leftovers (thanks childhood) and I especially hate microwaved food. This hash is so versatile it makes an excellent egg-free breakfast, but is also a fantastic side come dinner time (and something about reheating in cast iron really chases away that leftover feeling) It is an excellent accompaniment to roast chicken or pork loin.

The hash is pretty low key and comes together easily from scratch, but if you’re like me and pre-cook your sweet potatoes (hello Instant Pot, Hello resistant starch) and bacon then it literally makes itself as its being reheated. What more could you possibly ask for? If it were any less work this shit would cook itself!

Ingredients

2 medium sweet potatoes, cubed

4 strips-ish bacon, chopped

1 medium onion, finely diced

2-4 cloves garlic, minced

1 bunch of kale, finely chopped (*See below recipe for Tip)

1-1.5 tsp sea salt, to taste

Method

If you’re starting with pre-cooked sweet potato+bacon- High Five, time saver!

Warm fat of your choosing in a large skillet. Bacon renderings are the best here, obviously. Add onion and garlic and saute until translucent and starting to turn golden.

Cube sweet potato, add to the skillet so they can start getting warm. Salt the whole lot, you may need more or less salt depending on how salty your bacon is.

When the edges of the sweet potato are just starting to get crispy add the bacon and move toss gently to combine.

Once the sweet potatoes have crisped a bit and the bacon is warmed through add your frozen kale shards (see kale tip below;), Warm through. Eat it upppp!

If you’re NOT starting with pre-cooked sweet potato+bacon- consider it!

Thinly slice bacon, like 1/4 inch bits. Add to a large cold skillet with a lid. Turn heat to medium low and let it begin to soften and render its fats, this is a bit of a slow process, hence why I prefer to make bacon bits as part of my prep routine. Continue cooking and stirring breaking it up over low heat until it starts to firm up and has released a considerable amount of its fats and juices.

Add onions, garlic and salt. Cook until onions become translucent.

Add cubed sweet potatoes. Toss to combine, then cover with the lid. Cook until sweet potatoes are beginning to get tender-crisp. Remove the lid and increase the heat until the bacon and sweet potatoes get crispy around the edges.

De-stem and chop kale (see tip below for my time saving hack) Add kale and toss to combine. Cook until the kale is tenderized. Eat up!

Wanna know my chopped kale Pro-tip…wash, shake dry, bag it and drop it in the freezer—when you need kale pull it out when you’re ready and give the bag a few good scrunches. When you pop the bag open you will find finely “chopped” destemmed kale shards. Boom! Kale is such a pain in my ass, it would deter me from cooking it (I see you too spaghetti squash) but I’m such a food-waste hating cheapskate that once I saw the bunch had started to get sad and I hadn’t made the time (just being honest) to deal with it …so I just jammed it in the freezer and forgot about it. A few weeks later I was rummaging around in the freezer and came upon an unmarked grocery sack, “what the hell could this be? “ I mumbled to myself. Lo and behold when I opened the bag I found that my utter hate for cooking kale had basically done all the shitty parts for me—the stemming, the chopping, the inevitable kale shards all over the place. If you leave it in the freezer long enough you wont even need to bother with the scrunching step ;)