I’ve been growing my own food for about 2 years now and the process, for me, is still full of trial and error. To be honest, I really don’t know what I’m doing. I just put seeds in the ground, try to come up with a good mix of soil, water it (when I remember) and cross my fingers. I planted sweet potatoes for the first time this year and was completely caught off guard when my two sweet potato plants began to completely take over my garden growing into the tomatoes, the green beans, suffocating my carrots and growing out of my raised bed and into my salad greens gardens and my lawn. With all this growth I saw no actual potatoes. I finally found one hidden under what seemed like 2 feet of foliage. I figured they were growing under ground but if they were what was with this ridiculous amount of leaf growth with nothing to show for it? Finally, a couple weeks ago I started to pull up my summer garden to make way for fall and I began to pull up my sweet potato plant. To my surprise there were sweet potatoes everywhere buried deep in my garden (I was still finding sweet potatoes a week later as I continued to till and turnover the soil). Giant, orange flesh potatoes just kept coming out of the garden. I was so excited! I got to work making sweet potato everything – biscuits, muffins, pancakes, waffles, baking the smaller “fingerling” sized ones up and eating them whole and, of course, sweet potato fries.
Paula’s original version of this recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of salt which is nearly 1700mg of sodium per serving! Whoa! I can feel my blood pressure go up by just looking at the recipe. Leave it to Paula to take a perfectly healthy sweet potato fries recipe and find a way to make it disastrous for your health. To put things in perspective high risk populations shouldn’t consume more than 1,500mg of sodium a day and the general population shouldn’t consume more the 2,300mg a day. Well I reduced the salt down to almost nothing, just enough to bring out the natural flavor of the fries, and baked them up nice and crispy. When my daughter saw these coming out the oven she immediately exclaimed that it was dinner time and sat down at the table to eat so I didn’t get a chance to plate it up pretty for a picture. Instead, I I was able to get a quick shot of her dinner plate (with the potatoes, a black bean burger and peas) before she devoured it all.
Baked Sweet Potato Fries
Makes 4-5 Servings
5 sweet potatoes, cut into 1/4 inch thick fries (skin on)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon Paula Deen’s House Seasoning
1/4 teaspoon paprika
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Line a baking sheet with a silpat or parchment paper. In a large bowl toss sweet potatoes with olive oil and sprinkle with house seasoning and paprika. Spread sweet potatoes in single layer on prepared baking sheet. Bake until sweet potatoes are tender and golden brown, turning occasionally, about 25-35 minutes.
