Homemade Sweet Potato Fries

Memorial Day was very relaxing this year. We had our own little BBQ in our backyard and pulled out the kiddie pool for the manchild to play in.

The menu was very simple, but Ryan and I had fun making everything together, and were grateful for such a beautiful afternoon to share as a family. We made cheeseburgers with bacon/lettuce/tomato on wheat buns, grilled corn with cilantro lime butter, Simply Lemonade (we call it ''rich people juice'' because it's expensive, but the BEST tasting juice in existence), and.... sweet potato fries!

After tasting them today, Ryan has decided that making sweet potato fries should be a new family tradition on the holidays.... as in ALL of the holidays. I settled with just having them on the menu for  future Memorial Days. He must have liked them just a little bit, eh?

I was really scared of making these - I've never fried anything at anything higher than medium temperature (making tortilla chips) and I didn't want them to be sopping in oil after frying. But I'm really happy things worked out really well, that it turned out to be very easy, the fries were dry from any oil, and that we could enjoy our favorite sweet potato fries at home (with fry sauce, of course).

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Homemade Sweet Potato Fries

4 medium sized sweet potatoes
1 T garlic powder
1 T flour 
salt
pepper
vegetable oil

Wash and peel sweet potatoes. Slice up in skinny-fry sized pieces. Throw in a bath of cold water for a few hours. Drain, and dry (either with a salad spinner or towel).

Once dry, toss with some salt, T flour,  1/2 T garlic powder and some pepper. This is a really good video tutorial on how I fried 'em up. (And it's by Alton Brown, so you know you're in good hands).

Have a cookie pan + cooling rack over it, ready for after your potatoes have been through the hot oil. Do not use paper towels. Also, have a tool ready to remove your potatoes from the hot oil.

If you've watched Alton's video, you know you need to fry your potatoes twice - once at a medium/high temperature for the inside layer, and once at a high temperature to give the outside that delicious crunch. Here we go... 

First fry: Heat up your oil to about 320 degrees (I didn't have a thermometer, so I just put my stove on medium high) in a pan deep enough to cover your fries, but not shallow enough to bubble over. Working in small batches, add your potatoes to the hot oil (about a handful's worth) and fry for about 1 minute. Remove from oil, place on cooking rack and sprinkle with salt and the rest of your garlic powder  (which is over a cookie sheet), and repeat until all your potatoes are fried. They should be floppy. 

Second fry: Let them drain and cool to room temperature. Turn up heat on oil to 375. Working in handful batches, add potatoes to oil and fry for about a minute (or until they're golden and crispy) and quickly move them over to the draining pan and sprinkle with salt/pepper to taste (don't burn your mouth, though :)  ENJOY!

note: If you're doing more than about 4 potato's worth of sweet potato fries, you might have to change the oil often. We did only 4 potatoes and the oil didn't need changing.

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