One of our family favorites has always been our oven baked fries. My friend Mary first made these for me about 25 years ago—I had been so impressed to arrive at her house for lunch and find a basket of home baked fries on the table! Not only were they a big hit with me, but they were also a big hit with our daughters 🙂

Since then, I’ve seen recipe after recipe for oven baked fries. I think America’s Test Kitchen has one that calls for blanching the sliced potatoes in boiling water before baking. I tried it, and it didn’t work any better than Mary’s way. Another recipe had me sprinkling a lot of Kosher salt on the baking tray to lift the potatoes off the tray a bit and help with the browning—that didn’t work magic either. Here are my secrets, as passed onto me by Mary: use a mixture of butter and olive oil—1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil on one baking tray—and use smallish potatoes of equal size, cutting each into eight wedges.

Oven Baked Fries

INGREDIENTS

• Approximately 1 small Russet potato for each person—somewhere along the way, I switched to Gold potatoes, and both work fine
• 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter for each baking tray
• Kosher salt and freshly grated pepper

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 425°.
2. Spend sometime picking the right potatoes. Choose potatoes on the small size, and choose potatoes that are roughly the same size. Scrub the outside of the potatoes to remove all the dirt and soil then dry.
3. Place empty baking tray(s) in preheated oven to get hot.
4. Cut each potato in half lengthwise, then half again, then half again.  You should have eight wedges from each potato.
5. Remove baking tray from oven, and place olive oil and butter on the tray, swirling it until melted and evenly coating the bottom of the tray.
6. Place the potato wedges on the preheated baking tray on top of the melted butter and olive oil.  Make it easy on yourself and place all the wedges going to same direction in equally spaced rows.  You should be able to get all the wedges from 3 or 4 small potatoes onto one baking sheet.
7. Place tray in oven and bake at 425° for 20 minutes.
8. Remove tray from oven and turn over each wedge. This is why you put all the wedges facing the same way. Now you know which wedges you’ve turned and which you haven’t! Return tray to oven and bake for an additional 20 minutes.
9. Check your fries; do they look brown enough? Are they cooked through? Taste one, but be very careful, it’s HOT! If necessary, flip wedges one more time and return to oven for an additional 5 minutes.
10. Remove potatoes to a paper towel lined platter to drain—if you wish. Sprinkle with Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Remove fries to a serving plate. Find the ketchup!

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today!