How To Make French Fries Healthy & Crispy
French Fries are delicious but almost always deep fried and in oil that isn’t healthy. I found some tips to make them crispy, here are the steps to it.
Cut & Soak.
The day before or the morning of, wash, scrub and slice potatoes or yams. I use a Swiss Borner mandolin to slice the fries, which makes it quick and easy. The trick is to use quick motions and be sure the use hand guard, the slicer is very sharp. Going too slow will get the potato stuck mid-slice and it’s a bit of a struggle is get it out. If it does get stuck, lift the blade up to remove the stuck piece.
If the potato is large, you can hold it with your hand but watch your fingers, I’ve had a couple close calls. When you get about halfway down the potato, take the hand guard and stab the prongs through the potato and finish slicing.
Cover with water and splash of vinegar. Store in tupperware and refrigerate. This will take some of the starch out resulting in crispier fries. And prepping the potatoes ahead of time splits up the work and makes cooking much less stressful. I was amazed at how doing this made cooking the day of, less work.
Preheat pan. About 1 ½ hours before dinner time, preheat the oven. Give yourself more or less time depending on how long your oven takes to heat up, our oven takes about 45 minutes to get to temperature. One trick to get your oven to heat up faster is to set it on broil, then lower the temperature back down. Cook time is about 45 minutes. Heating the baking pan before you add your food will make it crispier, it only needs a 2-3 minutes to get hot.
Coat well with oil and the pan should sizzle when you add your vegetables. For the oil, I usually just eyeball it, so the measurement listed is an estimate. Be sure not to skimp, you’ll need enough to coat the potatoes or they will burn. It may take a little tweaking on time and temperature with your oven. Be sure to record your adjustments and eventually, they’ll turn out perfect every time.
Baked Red or Sweet Potato Fries Recipe
Tools needed
Two baking pans
Wide spatula
Large Tupperware or bowl
Servings: 2-3
Ingredients
8 red potatoes or 2 medium sweet potatoes (4 red potatoes or 1 medium sweet potato per person)
3 tablespoon olive oil (or avocado oil)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon paprika
Directions
The day before or the morning of, wash, scrub and slice potatoes/yams. Using a large Tupperware, put the cut potatoes in and cover completely with water and a splash of vinegar.
About 1 ½ hours before dinner time, preheat oven to 400F. Drain potatoes well, leaving it to sit for at least 30 minutes. Use the same tupperware and drizzle oil and seasoning over sliced yams. Place lid back on tupperware and toss well to coat.
Once the oven comes to temperature, preheat the pan for 5 minutes.
Spread the fries in one layer to avoid overcrowding. You may need 2 pans.
Bake for 40-50 minutes or until golden, tossing every 15 minutes.
For yam chips: Bake at 350F convection for 40-50 minutes. You can also substitute with beets. I use 1 bag of beets from Trader Joe's for 2 people.
