Sweet potato fries make an appearance in our house at least 3 times a week.

They are one of those foods that I love trying different ways – similar to pizza crusts, chocolate chip cookies and cakes. While they are one of my favorite foods, I love trying different recipes just to see if I can find the best one.

This is our go-to recipe when we are in a pinch, or just don’t want to bother with doing something different.

 

 

In all honestly, I don’t know if these are sweet potatoes or yams, but oh well. They are orange. Orange equals sweet potatoes in my eyes.

I peel away most of the skin, because I can be picky and I want to make sure nothing is rotting deep down inside there. You can’t blame me – I have a penchant for allowing vegetables to rot in this house. It just happens.

Good thing I peeled, because the whole upper 1/4 of one was rotting away.

 

 

Then I cut them into wedges. I also scream and shout because this hurts my tiny, grubby hands.

 

 

Here comes our favorite way to season them: olive oil, salt, pepper, brown sugar and smoked paprika.

I have done the whole soaking-the-sweet-potatoes-in-water-to-release-the-starch thing, but it really makes no difference to me. I couldn’t tell one way or another. Plus, it adds on even more time to make these. While I love them, I roast them for almost 45 minutes which is a long time when you have my attention span.

 

 

The key is setting the wedges on a wire rack.

This allows the sweet potatoes to get brown and crispy on all sides.

 

 

So while I don’t soak the wedges in water first, they still come out great. Of course, they don’t taste like deep-fried sweet potato fries that you get in restaurants, but they are pretty darn good. Occasionally you may get a mushy one, but that usually depends on the size of the wedges cut. If you attempt to make them all uniform in size, that will help. It will also determine your cooking time. It’s all trial and error friends!

 

 

Sweet Potato Fries

serves 2-3

2 large sweet potatos (or yams… whatever)

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

2 tablespoons brown sugar

Preheat oven to 425.

If desired, peel sweet potatoes. Begin cutting potatoes into wedges – I just cut them in half and continue cutting in half until I get the wedge size that I want.

Add potatoes to a bowl, and combine with olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, and brown sugar. Mix thoroughly with your hands so every wedge is covered.

Set a wire rack on a baking sheet and spray with non-stick spray. Lay wedges on the wire rack. Bake for 25 minutes, then check to see if the potatoes are close to where you’d like them. I usually rotate the pan at this time and put them back in for 15 minutes. They may also need an additional 5-10 after that.

 

 

So tell me – what is your favorite way to make sweet potato fries?