Baked Japanese Sweet Potatoes with Bachan’s BBQ Ground Beef

All you need is a few Japanese sweet potatoes, lean ground beef, Bachan’s Japanese BBQ sauce, and green onions to make these delicious stuffed potatoes. The potatoes are sliced in half and roasted until they’re perfectly crispy on all sides while staying pillowy soft inside. Once roasted, the potatoes are smashed and topped with Japanese BBQ ground beef.

If the description alone hasn’t sold you on trying this recipe yet, each stuffed potato has 18 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber with only 290 calories and 6 grams of fat. Double up for a full potato to get an awesome muscle building meal with 36 grams of protein.

How to Make Stuffed Japanese Sweet Potatoes (A Visual Guide)

Step One: Roasting the Sweet Potatoes

Start by selecting three large potatoes that are as close in size as possible. Each potato should weigh around 10-11 ounces, or about 3 pounds in total.

If you can’t find Japanese sweet potatoes in your grocery store, you can use regular sweet potatoes like my chicken stuffed sweet potatoes (roughly the same time and oven temperature). I personally find Japanese sweet potatoes to be the perfect blend of starchy russet potatoes with the nutty sweetness of regular sweet potatoes. They’re worth a trip to your local Asian market, in my opinion.

Give your selected potatoes a gentle scrub in the sink so you can eat the potato skins. After washing and drying, slice the potatoes in half lengthwise and transfer to a half sheet pan or large baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Rub the potato halves with a tablespoon of olive oil and add a pinch of kosher salt on top. Roast the potatoes in a 425ºF oven for 40-45 minutes or until the potatoes are fork tender and slightly browning on the bottom.

I’ve not tested roasting Japanese sweet potatoes in an air fryer, but I imagine it works great. You may want to reduce the temperature and extend the cooking time to prevent the halves from browning too quickly. Be sure to let me know in the comments if you make this recipe using an air fryer!

Step Two: Making the Japanese BBQ Ground Beef

You don’t need to start on the ground beef until the final 15-20 minutes of baking the sweet potatoes. That way the potatoes are coming out of the oven right around the time the beef is cooked and ready to serve.

Begin by browning a pound of lean ground beef in a pan. Emphasis on the word browning there. Give the beef time to develop a nice brown crust on one side before touching. I like to break the beef into 5-6 smaller chunks before going in the pan to create more ventilation for steam, which promotes browning.

While the beef is browning, separate the green and white parts of 1 bunch of green onions. Thinly slice the white parts for the sauce and slice the green parts into 1″ pieces to go in at the very end. For even more volume and nutrient density, you can add some baby spinach like my ground beef and spinach stuffed potatoes.

For the remaining sauce ingredients, you need Bachan’s Japanese BBQ sauce, beef broth or water, and an optional sprinkle of togarashi (Japanese chili based seasoning). A pinch of toasted sesame seeds, chili flakes, and dried ginger and/or garlic work as substitutes if you’re in, well, a pinch. You can also make your own homemade togarashi, if you’re interested.

How about Bachan’s BBQ sauce? I feel like I see this sauce everywhere now, and you can buy it everywhere from Whole Foods to Costco (they have a store locator).

At the risk of sounding like a hipster, I’ve been using Bachan’s in recipes since 2022 and even tried my hand at making a copycat recipe last year that’s pretty solid. For a shortcut version, blending fresh garlic and ginger, BBQ sauce, soy sauce, mirin, and toasted sesame oil gets you pretty close.

To finish off the beef, break the ground beef apart and fully cook before adding the sauce, cook for a couple minutes to thicken, then stir in the scallion greens.

Step Three: Assembling and Serving

Check out the photo below to see what you’re looking for in terms of browning on the bottom of the potatoes before pulling out of the oven.

Use the back of a spoon to smash the potatoes down and create a bit of a well in the center to hold the ground beef. It’s okay if the skin around the edges cracks as you smash, but you can take extra care and gently smash to keep them pretty.

Spoon the BBQ ground beef into the smashed sweet potatoes and garnish with freshly sliced scallions, a drizzle of Bachan’s, and a pinch of sesame seeds or togarashi. I garnished with a pinch of McCormick sesame and ginger crunch (pictured in the small bowl below). My light yum yum sauce would also be a great pairing.

I hope you enjoy my spin on roasted Japanese sweet potatoes. As a final note, I’ll mention the ground beef from this recipe would work great with other carb pairings. Check out my bulgogi bowls or bison bowls for rice and meal prep bowl inspiration. Happy cooking (and eating)!