Your Vegan Mom

Perfect Oven Fries

 

The ability to pull a perfectly crisp and brown little wedge of potato from your oven is one of the primary skills of a successful adult.  Do yours stick?  Never quite crisp up?  Brown unevenly?  Let's work this out together.  

1. Choose your potatoes.  If you don't like to peel (I don't), buy organic ones.  Any variety will make a good oven fry, but I'm partial to yukon gold's creamy interior and golden hue.  I figure about 8 to 10 ounces of potato per person or 2 to 3 smallish potatoes.        

 

2. Arrange a rack in the middle of the oven and heat to 400 degrees.  Cut your potatoes.  Start by slicing about 1/2 inch off one side to make a flat base.  Now cut the rest of the potato into 1/2 inch slices.  Then cut those slices into 1/2 inch sticks.  For even cooking, they should all be about the same size.  

 

3. Dry them well.  The moisture combined with the starch from the potato is what will glue them to your cookie sheet.  You don't want that.  Pat them dry in a clean kitchen towel.  Also, please refrain from adding salt until they're cooked.  The salt will draw out moisture and make them stick.  So, again, to prevent sticking, dry them well and hold off on the salt.  

 

4. Spread them out in a single layer on a jelly roll pan.  Drizzle them with oil, say... two or three  tablespoons for a sheet's worth, but there's no need to get measuring spoons dirty.  

 

5. Toss them around with your hands to evenly distribute the oil.  When you're done, rub the leftover oil into your hands - why would you pass up an opportunity to moisturize?

 

6. Put them in the oven.  After 20 - 25 minutes, turn them over so that they brown evenly.  Cook for another 20 - 25 minutes.  Remove from oven when they are good and brown.  

7. Sprinkle with salt.  Serve with ketchup or vegenaise or malt vinegar or pink sauce (ketchup and vegenaise, perhaps spiked with sriracha).  

(All except first photo by Dorka.)

12 Days of Thanksgiving: Pie Crust 101

Start with:

• 6 ounces flour (1 1/2 cups), you can use all-purpose, or up to 50% whole wheat 
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 ounces (1/2 cup or 1 stick) Earth Balance vegan butter, diced into small cubes and chilled in the freezer for 15 minutes
• 2 ounces (1/4 cup) ice cold water (put cold water in the freezer at the same time as your butter)

Mix the sugar and salt with the flour.  Dump the cold butter into the flour.  Working quickly, rub the butter into the flour with just the tips of your fingers.  If you're getting your whole hands in there, the butter is getting too warm and you're losing those precious pockets of cold fat that make your crust flaky.