Crispy Oven French Fries make weeknight meals easy and extra satisfying for the whole family. Roasted in healthy fats mean they diabetic friendly too!
We make food in our kitchen just about every night. Like a lot of folks, I struggle with one meal that satisfies picky eater, diabetes, and gluten food allergies. The kids have a list of foods that they like. Any that spikes blood sugar, but is gluten free, I will attempt to modify. Crispy Oven French Fries is one that I could modify and not get spikes in blood sugar.
Funny, there is never resistance to crunch, salt and flavor. I mean who can resist a perfect fry?
Homemade means that we get to choose the quality of ingredients that taste amazing and makes us feel great too! No additives, no gluten, no preservatives.
The problem with fast, processed food, is that the ingredients, are optimized for profit, not for gut health. By consuming these foods for pleasure, our health suffers.
I played around with fats, types of potatoes and struggled with blood sugar spikes. What I found is that the simple, pure ingredients made for the best tasting and best blood sugar control. Using pure fat is the only way to slow down the absorption of glucose into the bloodstream. It takes a quality fat, but a lot less than you might think to create a masterpiece.
In fact, these Crispy Oven French Fries are by far the most requested side dish, LOL!
The alchemy of creating the crispy french fries is similar to a symphony, in this case, heat, fat and salt are the instruments.
For optimal health, though, it must be tasty while nourishing for our guts.
Heat
Heat is transformative energy. Roasting vegetables at a high temperature for as short amount of time is an excellent way to keep the moisture in while and crisping up the outside. For outstanding results, cut the potatoes small and have enough space between them to allow the water pulled from the vegetable to escape, otherwise a soggy mess will result.
Fat
Fat conveys flavor. Butter melts in our mouths at 98.6 F and has a texture like no other. Here, the fat control the absorption of glucose into the blood stream which was a criteria for this recipe. Since we are roasting the potatoes at a high temperature, butter while delicious has a smoke point of 350F and will burn, so we need to find another suitable fat. Ghee, or clarified butter, is the perfect choice here.
Ghee is clarified butter. Clarified butter is heated and the milk solids, lactose and whey are removed. Removing the milk solids increases the smokepoint 300 to 450 F and enables high temperature cooking! Yay!
Nutritionally, ghee is a superfood, it contains fat soluble vitamins like A, D E. Additionally, it contains omega-3 fatty acids, Butryric acid that reduces inflammation in the digestive system, and used as a treatment for Crohn’s.
Salt
Salt is one of the most compelling seasonings and really brings the whole thing together. Advice has been given to remove salt shakers from our homes, actually studies have been shown that only 6% come from home cooking. 80% comes from processed and prepared foods. I like to use kosher salt as a finishing salt because it is light, fluffy and economical!
Now, let’s get to our homestyle
Crispy Oven French Fries Recipe
What you will need
2 russet potatoes
1 tsp of ghee
1/2 tsp of kosher salt.
Instructions for Crispy Oven French Fries
- preheat the oven to 425 F
- line a large baking sheet with parchment paper
- peel the potatoes and slice into 1/4″ pieces, making a little pile on the parchment sheet
- sprinkle salt over all the potatoes
- place the dollop of ghee on potatoes (resist doubling up on the fat, too much will give you soggy fries :))
- coat potatoes with butter/salt until they are nicely coated
- arrange on the sheet so they are single layer with space between the potatoes (note: if you pack them too closely, they will be soggy)
- place sheet into oven, pushing to the back of the oven
- set the timer for 12 minutes
- at 12 minutes, remove the baking sheet, move the potatoes around and return the sheet to the oven turning such that the front of the pan is now facing the back of the oven.
- set timer for 12 minutes
- remove sheet and allow to cool for 5 minutes
- sprinkle with finishing salt
- serve with apple cider vinegar or fermented ketchup.
Variations
To switch up the ingredients, you can use the same methodology for sweet potatoes, turnips.
We also like to add herbs like oregano, basil or Herbs de Provence to make the side dish more fancy.
You could even match the herb to compliment your main meal. Like using rosemary when serving with porkchops!
Vary the fat, try avocado, try coconut.
Have you made Crispy Oven French Fries?
Let me a comment and tell me any secrets you use.
Shop this post
baking sheet