Crispy Baked Sweet Potatoes

I've tried a couple dozen different ways to make baked sweet potato fries and most of them haven't turned out until now!  The two things that have typically happened are either horribly burnt fries or soft squishy fries.  Been there?  

I wish I could remember where I saw this trick but it made all the difference.  I know I saw it on some Facebook cooking school type page.  They talked about the differences in sweet potatoes vs regular white potatoes.  The thing that separates the two is the starch to sugar ratios.  White potatoes are higher starch less sugar and sweet potatoes are just the opposite.  If you are somewhat experienced cook you know that sugar burns.  It's because of this and this balance that makes sweet potato fries harder to get that nice crispy texture without burning.  

You could approach this problem a few ways.  Cook them incredibly fast so they don't have time to burn, aka fry them.  Not the worst thing in the world if you are using a quality oil like coconut oil, but that becomes a pretty expensive batch of fries if you are using a whole jar of coconut oil to make them.  The next option is to reduce the sugar content, that's not really an option as far as I know.  The last one would be to up the starch content.  That can be done! 

The process of adding starch is pretty simple.  You could use a number of different starches to do this but I would recommend tapioca, arrowroot or corn starch/flour, I used tapioca.  You create a slurry of the starch plus a little water and toss the potatoes in the slurry while they are warm and slightly softened from boiling.  That way the starch mixture gets absorbed into the potato.  

I'm going to continue to experiment with this process and hopefully fine tune it a bit more.  For now, we hope you enjoy this little tip.  I would also love to find the perfect fry seasoning to add to these.  If you have any suggestions drop them in the comments.  

Boiled potatoes covered in tapioca starch slurry

Ingredients

• 2 medium sweet potatoes cut into wedges
• 2 tbsp tapioca starch
• 1/4 cup warm water
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Get a pot of water boiling and preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. Peel and cut your sweet potatoes into wedges.
3. Add potatoes to salted, boiling water for 6 minutes.
4. While potatoes are in water add tapioca starch and water to a large bowl and whisk until fairly smooth.
5. After potatoes cook for 6 minutes add them directly to the bowl with starch slurry in it.  Toss in the slurry until all wedges are fairly well coated.  Try to be fairly gentle during this process in order to not create mashed potatoes.  
6. Place potatoes onto a parchment lined baking sheet.  
7. Bake for 40 minutes, or until some brown spots start to show.  Rotate halfway through the baking.
8. Once they are finished baking, season with salt and pepper or whatever seasoning you wish.