Fast pot roast with sweet potatoes and butter beans

2 Fully cooked, frozen pot roasts

1 can of butter beans

2 sweet potatoes

1/2 onion

Cinnamon

Salt and Pepper

Cayenne Pepper

Brown Sugar 

Butter

This was a weeknight meal where I had very little time. I'm using store-prepared pot roasts, but you could use left overs of homemade pot roast, of course. I think the whole thing took less than 20 minutes. Very filling and tasty, if not the fanciest thing in the world. 

Wash the sweet potatoes and remove any long "hairs". Stab each potato with a fork multiple times on each side. This prevents the potato from exploding as the liquids heat in the microwave. 

Wrap each potato in a wet paper towel. 

Place potatoes in the microwave. 

Cook on high for 8 minutes. 

While the potatoes are cooking. Cut the half onion into chunks. 

Put onion chunks into a food processor. (If you don't want to use one, you can finely dice the onion.)

Melt butter in the pan.

Add onions, salt and pepper. 

While the onions cook, drain the liquid off of a can of beans. Add beans to the onions. 

Cover the beans with water and let them simmer while you work on the other items. Most of the water will be gone by the time you're ready to serve. 

When the microwave beeps, use tongs to flip over the sweet potatoes. Be careful, they're hot!

Put them on for another 4 minutes or so. If they feel very soft at this point, just put them on for 3 minutes. If they still feel a little hard, you can put them on for 5 minutes. 

I bought low-sodium pot roasts so I can control how much salt I put on them. These still had plenty of flavor. 

I took out two of the individually wrapped roasts.

Then I followed the directions according the package to heat them up. 

When the sweet potatoes are done, I took them out with the tongs - super hot - and cut them open so they could cool off a bit before I handled them. You can't tell from this photo, but the potatoes are steaming hot! 

I scraped out all of the sweet potatoes, throwing away the skin. It is easier sometimes just to peel off the skin than to dig out the potato. Either way, get all the insides in a bowl and mash them with a fork. If you want to make them extra delicious, add a little butter. If not, they are still fabulous. 

Add a little cinnamon, salt, pepper, a touch of brown sugar and a dash of cayenne pepper. Mix it all up. 

When the pot roasts are ready, pull them apart with two forks. 

To prevent the juices from getting everywhere, I served my meat in little bowls and divided the juices, pouring them over the meat. 

I served it all up on a large plate. Like I said at the beginning of this recipe, it's not fancy but it is very tasty and filling. It's also pretty affordable. Best of all, it was super fast and great for a weeknight when I didn't want to think too much about dinner. 

Enjoy!