Oven Baked Sweet Potato Fries

By AliceV

Ingredients

• 2 pounds sweet potatoes, about 3 large ones
• 1/4 cup olive or other vegetable oil
• 1-2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 1-2 Tbsp spice or spice combination of your choice: chipotle powder, smoked paprika, Chinese five-spice, pumpkin pie spice, garam masala, Cajun seasoning, etc.

Details

Servings 4
Preparation time 10mins
Cooking time 40mins
Adapted from simplyrecipes.com

Preparation

Step 1

Wedges or slices of sweet potatoes, tossed in olive oil, sprinkled with spices, and baked on high heat until crispy and browned. Addictive!

Preheat oven to 450°F. (For more crispiness, preheat your oven to 500°F.)

Put the sweet potatoes into a large bowl and add the oil. Mix well to combine. Sprinkle with salt, sugar and spices of your choice. Use your hands to mix well, so all pieces are coated with oil and spices.

Spread the sweet potatoes out in a single layer on a baking sheet; the oil they are coated with should keep them from sticking to the pan. If you are trying to cut fat, reduce the oil to 2 Tbsp and use a non-stick coating on the baking sheet. (Note: a commenter has recommended putting them on a wire cooling rack on top of a baking sheet, so that the oven air circulates around the sweet potato pieces and you don't have to turn them in the next step. Another commenter recommends preheating the baking sheet, to help the fries get crisp.)

These are delicious with garlic mayonnaise as an alternative to over-sweetened ketchup. At Tides, the little bar-with-food I run in Monrovia, we just add chopped fresh garlic to store-bought mayonnaise, but if we had fresher eggs, I’d want to make my own…

Delicious! And *so* addictive…

— the sprinkling of sugar definitely brings out that crusty caramelization. I make mine without sugar, and while they’re delicious, they don’t have that star quality that yours have.