This recipe will teach you how to make baked sweet potatoes in an air fryer and BBQ chicken stuffed sweet potatoes. Whether you need a healthy side dish or a complete meal, you’ll find everything you need to easily transform whole sweet potatoes into perfect baked potatoes in 30-40 minutes.
You’ll find a visual recipe walkthrough below with ingredient notes and tips. If you’re feeling confident, hit the jump to recipe button above and get cooking!
How to Make Baked Sweet Potatoes in an Air Fryer
All you really need for these air fryer sweet potatoes is just that—sweet potatoes. The recipe calls for three sweet potatoes weighing eight ounces each. Using equally sized sweet potatoes is important for even cooking.
In addition to sweet potatoes, you have the option of spraying the potatoes with cooking spray or brushing with oil and sprinkling with salt if you plan to eat the baked sweet potato skins. And that’s it as far as ingredients go.
Why poke sweet potatoes with a fork? This is to vent steam and prevent the potatoes from exploding in the air fryer. Better safe than sorry, right?
For the air frying, I used a 6.5-quart Ninja Foodi. Different sizes of air fryers may affect the cook time. As you can see from photos, the three sweet potatoes take up every bit of space in the Foodi. If you’re using a larger air fryer, you may be able to fit a fourth sweet potato. Though you may need to extend the cook time a bit for more potatoes.
To test the doneness of your air fryer sweet potatoes, you can stick a fork or knife into the center. If it goes in easily, you’re good to go. You can also use a food thermometer to check the internal temperature. I’ve found that 190ºF to 200ºF is just right.
And one final note for making baked sweet potatoes in an air fryer. Check on your potatoes about halfway. If the potatoes are getting a little too dark, you can place a bit of aluminum foil on top to finish cooking without burning the exterior.
How to Make BBQ Chicken Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
While you could fill your air fried sweet potatoes with a bit of light butter, cinnamon, and sugar to serve as a side dish, I’m a sucker for a stuffed spud. And I happen to have an Instant Pot pulled BBQ chicken recipe that’s a match made in heaven. Below you’ll find a quick video on how to make it.
If you don’t want to go to the trouble of making the chicken, you could always use a bit of rotisserie chicken tossed with BBQ sauce like I mentioned in my BBQ chicken sliders recipe and used to make my BBQ chicken wraps.
You could also use other recipes like my oven baked shredded chicken, slow cooked BBQ chicken thighs, bbq smoked chicken thighs, or BBQ pulled pork tenderloin.
Assembling the Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
I found that the 8-ounce sweet potatoes perfectly held three ounces of the BBQ chicken. If you wanted to stuff them with more, be my guest. You could also scoop the inside of the sweet potatoes into a bowl and make BBQ chicken twice baked sweet potatoes!
Check out my air fryer twice baked potatoes for some inspiration.
In addition to the BBQ chicken, the recipe calls for shredded cheese and red onion. I used shredded mozzarella, but you could use any type of cheese. My loaded BBQ chicken nachos use colby jack, and that’s a highly recommended option.
I’d encourage you to make these BBQ chicken stuffed sweet potatoes your own. Add some jalapeño, extra BBQ sauce, or other toppings if you’d like. Get creative!
Once you’ve stuffed your potatoes, air fry for an additional 3-5 minutes at 350ºF to fully melt the cheese. And that’s it, you’re ready to dig in.
You’ll find the full recipe card below. If you have questions about these air fryer baked sweet potatoes that I didn’t cover, drop a comment at the bottom of the post. I’d be happy to help!
And if you have leftover sweet potatoes, check out my cajun sweet potato fries, Korean sweet potatoes and ground beef, or chipotle ground turkey sweet potato skillet next.
BBQ Chicken Stuffed Air Fryer Sweet Potatoes
Ingredients
- 3 Sweet Potatoes
- about 8 oz each
- Cooking Spray or Oil
- 9 oz Pulled BBQ Chicken*
- 2 oz Shredded Cheese, like mozzarella, smoked gouda, or cheddar
- 1/4 Red Onion, diced
- 1 handful Parsley, chopped
Instructions
- Wash and dry the sweet potatoes before using a fork to poke holes all around the potatoes. Spray each potato with cooking spray or brush with oil and place in an air fryer basket. If you intend to eat the potato skins, sprinkle salt over the potatoes.
- Air fry the potatoes for 30-35 minutes at 400ºF until cooked through (soft and tender or 190-200ºF using a food thermometer). If the potatoes get too dark, you can place a sheet of aluminum foil on top.
- Once cooked, slice the potatoes down the center and squeeze the ends to create an opening. Fill each potato with 3 ounces of chicken, a pinch of cheese, and top with red onion and parsley. Air fry an additional 3-5 minutes at 350ºF to melt the cheese.
Just wanted to drop in to say these are my meal prep this week and it is delicious!!
These hit all the flavors and heat up pretty well the rest of the week. I’ve stuffed with pork before too! mm!
If you want to step out of your comfort zone a little and try something new… this is the recipe to start with. I’ve never mixed sweet potatoes with savory ingredients and now it’s basically all I eat. Make the chicken ahead of time and just air fry the potatoes before dinner and stuff them with the chicken. SO GOOD
Loved this recipe. Loved by all around our table.