Crisp and Golden Baked French Fries
Recreate the classic taste of french fries right at home with this simple baked recipe.
Recreate the classic taste of french fries right at home with this simple baked recipe.
- Carbohydrate 28.688425625 g
- Cholesterol 0 mg
- Fat 3.68875187644734 g
- Fiber 5.33666882091761 g
- Protein 2.9599675 g
- Saturated Fat 0.524268812699849 g
- Serving Size 1 1 recipe (64g)
- Sodium 19.5436250000289 mg
- Sugar 23.3517568040824 g
- Trans Fat 0.143173125039194 g
- Calories 154 calories
Step-by-step
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
- Cut potato into wedges. Mix olive oil, paprika, garlic powder, chili powder and onion powder together. Coat potatoes with oil/spice mixture and place on a baking sheet.
- Bake for 45 minutes in preheated oven.
Deep-fried potatoes rely on immersion in boiling fat to dehydrate the exterior rapidly, but oven-roasting achieves a similar crispness through radiant heat and direct contact with a hot sheet pan. Baking potato varieties possess high starch content and low moisture, which promotes a mealy interior texture while the outer surface dehydrates in the oven. High-heat baking at 450 degrees Fahrenheit ensures the oil and spice coating reaches temperatures high enough to fry the exterior skin rather than merely steaming the vegetable.
Uniform cutting is critical for even cooking times on the baking sheet. Slice the potato into consistent wedges so each piece finishes cooking simultaneously without burning the smaller fragments. Spacing the wedges out in a single layer prevents steam accumulation; crowding the pan traps moisture and yields rubbery, pale results instead of a rigid crust.
Raw cut potatoes can be soaked in cold water for thirty minutes to draw out excess surface starches before drying them thoroughly with a towel. Surface moisture acts as a barrier that prevents oil adherence and delays the browning process. Toss the thoroughly dried wedges in the olive oil and spice blend immediately before loading them onto the preheated metal sheet.
Leftover baked wedges store poorly in the refrigerator because starches retrograde quickly and turn leathery. Reheating them in a 400 degree oven for five minutes restores residual crunch far better than a microwave, which introduces steam and softens the exterior crust irreversibly.
