Recipe: Refried Sweet Potatoes

I love burritos. I hate rice and refried beans. This has been a serious dilemma for sometime now... because without either beans or rice, most burritos are just big phony fajitas. Not to say that fajitas are not absolutely delicious, but sometimes you want the substance that a little starch provides.

I tried using corn in my burritos for a while, which while tasty, led to the discovery that I'm allergic to corn. Which in turn led to me realizing I should drastically limit my HFCS (read: pop) intake, which I should have done long ago anyway. Bummer.

Well, today I had an epiphany. I had a small handful of chipotle sweet potato fries in my freezer, and having tried regular potatoes in burritos and finding them a little too bland (during a week in Mexico at the end of which we were putting doritos, pretzels, and even plastic cracker jack toys in our sandwiches and burritos to spice them up), I wondered if sweet potatoes in burritos would do the trick.

Boy, did they EVER. After trying the recipe below in what was meant to be a trial-and-error process but turned out to be an instant success, I had a bowl of beautifully-textured bright-orange sweet potato "mash" that made the best damn burrito ever. Seriously, someone needs to let Chipotle and Qdoba know about this, because was DELICIOUS. And gorgeous too, unlike the very unappetizing brown mess that is refried beans.

Recipe for One Burrito:
Sweet potato fries*
Dash of water

Put about a handful of frozen fries in a microwave-safe bowl (a small handful - it makes a lot more finished product than you might expect). Sprinkle a little water - maybe half a teaspon - over the fries and put in the microwave for one minute. After a minute, mash them with a fork, stir them, add a little more water if needed (and any seasonings you might like), and microwave for an additional 30-60 seconds. Presto - refried sweet potatoes! Use it however you might use refried beans - personally, I'm going to try one of those layered taco dips with this stuff.

*I would recommend using frozen fries, though I haven't tried anything else yet. But frozen fries are high in moisture, and they aren't fried all the way because they're meant to crisp up when you bake them, so they mash really nicely. If you try using leftover restaurant fries or homemades, let me know how it goes.