Baked Sweet Potato Fries

My favorite food is a sweet potato... at least today it is. My favorite way to eat them is in fry form with a nice cold strongbow from the tap. Yum, seriously, yum.

Since eating deep fried food accompanied with ice cold hard cider is neither healthy or an activity I can do each and every day of the week, I decided to learn how to "healthify" them, and I cut out the strongbow, when I have to.

Start with an entire bag of sweet potatoes, because if you're making them, you might as well make a lot.

Don't peel them all at once, do it one at a time and slice them as you go. Sweet potatoes get brown so fast, and the less time they are exposed to air the better.

Peel and slice into whatever size you want. I've done cubes before, they were delicious too, but I prefer fries.

Yes I do it the old fashioned way, yes I use a knife. No I don't have a fry cutter. (Want to get me one for my birthday? It's coming up)

This stage takes the longest, about a half hour.

As long as you really do cut them one at a time you'll be Golden.Plunge them immediately into a salt water bath once sliced to prevent browning. I don't know why this works, but it does. If you skip the step you'll have brown potatoes, and they won't be as wonderful.

Once finished with all of the potatoes drain them, dry them off and put half back in the bowl to toss.

You'll be tossing them in a little olive oil, some cinnamon, paprika, and a pinch of salt.

You want them covered in oil, and spiced with the rest. You can do it all at once or toss in oil first then the spices; whatever works best for you.

Just make sure they are covered, but not drenched.

Cooking them on a foil lined cookie sheet makes clean up easy. I'm all about easy.

After you've done the tossing in however many batches it takes, lay them out on the cookie sheet. Make sure they aren't overlapping at all. I usually need two cookie sheets if I do a whole bag, the more exposed to the hot air each piece is, the crispier they'll be.




Cook at 350°F for 10 minutes.

Take them out, toss them around, put them in for another 10 minutes.

Take them out again, toss them again, and put them in the oven for the final 10 minutes.

When they are evenly brown on all sides that's when they are done. Serve them with ranch,

whipped cream, caramel, Ice cream, or plain. They are truly delicious.

The only problem you'll have is making sure you have left overs to eat the next day for breakfast... these go faster than something that goes really fast. :) I'll work on my similes... and you work on making these asap.