Baked sweet potato fries

I was surfing the news aimlessly, when I came across an article that caught my attention. It was about a  recent study that had found that french fries were the number one culprit for long term weight gain.

As someone who has really piled on the pounds in the past few years, you’d think this would make me swear off  french fries.

Heeheeheehee!! You’d be so wrong!!!

I had such a hankering for fries that that very afternoon I ordered myself a juicy burger and a small portion of fries at my favorite burger joint. I reasoned with myself that I didn’t go there very often, I had ordered the small portion (which is humungous, to be perfectly honest) and that The Professor would obviously share the fries with me. We always drove back from the joint munching on those fries together.

What I hadn’t accounted for was that while  I was ordering my meal, he was waiting for me in the car, reading the news article about the top ten foods that lead to long term weight gain.

His reaction was to eat exactly two – yes, just two fries and then stubbornly refuse anymore.

[It's funny how we react so differently when presented with the exact same information!]

Anyway, so it fell upon me to finish off that gigantic bag of fries and I have to say I did a pretty good job.

And then I felt awful.

And swore never to have fries again.

Oh, maybe once a year.

Twice if I am really good.

Seriously, who am I kidding?

If it weren’t for these baked fries, I probably would have skidded off the path of steadfastly avoiding french fries and gorged on them again this week.

But I didn’t. For me these baked fries were way too good, way too healthy and way too delicious to be even thinking about taking the deep fried route.

Seriously, these are sooooo much better for you! And the taste is awesome! I loved the little charred edges of the fries and how little oil we used to bake it! Trust me, those fries were gone in minutes!

In case you want to follow suit and take the healthier route, here is the super simple recipe –

Baked sweet potato fries

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 lbs sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into french fries
2 tbsp vegetable oil
Freshly cracked black pepper
Salt, to taste

Method

Preheat oven to 450F.

1) In a big bowl mix together the french cut sweet potatoes and vegetable oil and fresh cracked pepper. Make sure that all the potato slices are coated in oil.

2) Place aluminum foil on a baking sheet and lightly coat with baking spray. Spread the potato slices on the baking sheet and make sure that they are not crowded.

3) Bake for 20-25 minutes, turning them over once midway through the process.

4) As soon as they come out of the oven, sprinkle with salt. Enjoy!

Sweet potato fries