oven baked sweet potato fries.

When I was at my parents last week, my mom took me to this little fruit and vegetable stand in town. We got some zucchini and squash for my dad to grill, some tomatoes to cut up and have with dinner, and also some sweet potatoes. 

I've never made anything with sweet potatoes before, but I have had sweet potato fries at restaurants and loved them! The first time I ever had sweet potato fries was at this really cool cafe in Binghamton when I was visiting my friend. It was called the Lost Dog Cafe. 

I got some type of seasoned sliced steak, and it was served over portobello ravioli and grilled asparagus. It had probably the most delicious cream sauce I've ever had in my life drizzled over it. Every single thing about that dish was absolutely delicious. Oh! I think I still have a picture of it on my iPhone: 

*Drool*...where was I? Oh yes. Sweet potato fries. Anyways, I got an order of their sweet potato fries on the side. They were incredible. I vowed to try them at other restaurants and to someday make them myself! Well folks, that day has come. 

I washed and peeled the potatoes and then cut them length-wise and cross-wise. Sweet potatoes are a lot harder to cut than regular potatoes! 

I've made quite a few batches of regular oven baked french fries lately, so I knew that putting them in a bowl before putting them onto the baking sheet would make things easier.

I decided to add olive oil, salt, and paprika. I've always thought that paprika was "just for looks" (like on deviled eggs), but it turns out that it really does add a nice smokey, spicy flavor! 

Plus it gives them those pretty red specks- how fancy :) After trying tin foil (major fail), no tin foil (semi-fail), and then spraying the pan with Pam before adding the fries, I've finally perfected how to get the fries NOT to stick to the pan.

At first I had the oven on 450 degrees, but after flipping the fries half-way into cooking, I thought that they weren't going to get crispy enough... so I turned the oven up to 480 for the second half. Bad idea. Some of the fries got burned and it set the smoke detector off. Lesson learned.

As you can see though, most of the fries were still perfectly edible- and they were delicious! I like salty sweet potato fries (because I'm a freak of nature and LOVE salt), so I added salt after they came out of the oven too. They were perfect- not too sweet, not too salty (this is not possible in my world), and nice and crispy!


Oven Baked Sweet Potato Fries

2-3 large sweet potatoes
1 tsp salt (plus some for sprinkling once cooked)
1 tsp paprika
2 tbs olive oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Wash and peel potatoes. Cut into whatever shape fries you would like. I went with traditional. In a bowl, combine fries, olive oil, salt, and paprika. I added the olive oil first so that the spices would stick better. I added the salt and paprika while "tossing" the fries around so that they would be evenly coated. Spread fries out into a single layer onto a greased baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes, remove fries from oven. Using a spatula, flip fries over. Bake for 13-15 more minutes.