Sweet potato fries

Someone had given me a few sweet potatoes; I intended to bake them, but hadn’t gotten around to it. I don’t know how long they keep and I was afraid they were going to go bad.

Then, this weekend, I saw Ingrid Hoffman on the Food Network make
this recipe
for a savory oven-baked sweet potato french fry, with a chili pepper and paprika-based seasoning. It looked and sounded delicious.

Well, I tried it today — with a couple of changes. I did not have any coriander, but I added cumin, which I think always goes well with chili powder, as well as some onion powder. I used kosher salt instead of the rock salt she called for. I also probably used a larger quantity of seasoning than Ingrid did (I didn’t measure that carefully), resulting in a much heavier crusting of seasoning. (On one or two of the fries, the seasoning burned a little bit.)

Also, I didn’t have the ingredients for the avocado dip which she used to accompany the fries; I tried mixing mayonnaise and salsa, which gave me a surprisingly tasty dip.

But even with my tinkering, these turned out deeeelicious. Sweet potatoes are nutrition powerhouses, which makes me feel a tiny bit less guilty about the mayo in the dip.

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About John

John Carney is a journalist, a certified United Methodist lay speaker, a veteran of foreign and domestic short-term mission trips, and author of a self-published novel, Soapstone.
  • newscoma

    This is weird.
    I'm having this for dinner as well. :)

  • http://www.rmnblog.org Heather

    I'm glad you posted this recipe. I tried to make sweet potato fries some time ago, and they came out disappointingly mushy. I wonder if the ten minutes on the top oven rack is the secret to crispy sweet potato fries? I'll bookmark this recipe to try.

  • http://www.achairandtwoapples.com kcwc

    Not that I ever cook like this anymore, but there was a time in my life where I would put cumin in just about everything. Even still, the scent takes me back to grad school. Of course, I mostly cooked Mexican food back then.

  • http://www.inthatnumber.com Phisch

    I love cumin! My dad used to make curry (not spicy) and we'd load it up with cumin. I read recently that it's a very healthy spice so it's good to have a lot of it :)

    We just had sweet potato fries but they were out of a bag from the frozen food aisle. They were great and I didn't really feel the need for a dip but I wish I'd read about the avocado dip. That sounds really good!

  • http://www.inthatnumber.com Phisch

    I love cumin! My dad used to make curry (not spicy) and we'd load it up with cumin. I read recently that it's a very healthy spice so it's good to have a lot of it :)

    We just had sweet potato fries but they were out of a bag from the frozen food aisle. They were great and I didn't really feel the need for a dip but I wish I'd read about the avocado dip. That sounds really good!