The single most important step to improving your health and your family’s health (both therapeutically and preventively) is to stop eating fast food.
It’s especially sad to see an entire generation of children being raised on fast food, with French fries being a staple in their diet. Am I saying I’m anti-French fry? No, not when they’re homemade using healthy ingredients and are served on occasion.
My boys love these fries, as do most kids, which is why they’re one of my favorite recipes to make in conjunction with the Healthy Chicken Nuggets for kid-parties. It really opens the door to talk about healthy eating when Moms see their kids devouring real food with a big smile on their faces! We hope you enjoy this recipe too!
P.S. You can also follow this same recipe using yummy sweet potatoes to create delicious Sweet Potato Fries, see photo and note below!
Slice fries and place on clean dish towel. Be sure to pat dry with clean paper towels.
Making fries together is a fun way to get your kids in the kitchen with you and talk about why it’s so much better for us to eat real food!
Encourage your kiddos to try something new! Replace the white potatoes with sweet potatoes for an extra yummy boost in nutrition. See recipe notes below for details!
Ingredients
- 3 medium-to-large organic Russet potatoes (or sweet potatoes)
- 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
- 1/4 tsp Celtic sea salt
- 1/8 tsp rosemary
- 1/8 tsp thyme
- 1/8 tsp paprika
- 1/8 tsp garlic powder
- 1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- Pinch of cayenne pepper (or more if you like ‘em really spicy!)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to *425 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Peel and slice potatoes into fries and place on a clean dishtowel. Pat potato slices with clean paper towels until completely dry.
- Using a gallon-size ziplock baggie, add olive oil and seasonings to the bag. Mash and combine the oil and seasonings, while evenly distributing the mixture throughout baggie.
- Place slice potatoes into the baggie, seal and shake until potatoes are well coated.
- Immediately transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet, making sure that potatoes are evenly spaced for best results.
- Bake 20-25 minutes until lightly browned around edges. (If making sweet potato fries, check them at about 15-20 minutes, as they often take less time, depending on how thick they're cut.)
- Serve with a turkey-veggie burger or healthy chicken nuggets.
Notes
*If you have convection, that’s best. It's important to have high heat when baking fries and not to use too much oil, which is why you do not want to oil your baking sheet. These fries will be softer than "fried" fries, but should not be soggy. If they are, reduce the oil and try up-ing your oven temp to 450 degrees, as ovens do vary in actual temperature (some run hotter, some not so much).
These french fries are amazing! My family loves them. I make them at least once a week now.
Hooray! So glad you’re enjoying this recipe, Jacqui! Thanks for taking time to leave a kind note! Blessings, Kelly 🙂
Can these fries be made in advance and sent to school with the kids in their lunch, heated in the microwave and still be tasty?
Are you chicken nuggets good reheated in this same manner? Looking for school lunch ideas. Thank you!
Hi, Kathie. I don’t recommend microwave use. I got rid of mine due to my personal research into it and it’s affects on food. I know not everyone agrees with this and therefore I don’t try to push my views. But regardless of my personal choice to not microwave, I still wouldn’t recommend reheating the fries in a micro, as they will be quite limp-soggy. Both the chicken nuggets and fries reheat great in a small toaster oven – nice and crunchy results! Yum! However, my kids eat the chicken nuggets, as well as my oven baked chicken drumsticks cold. They’re actually quite good that way. Blessings to you, Kelly 🙂
P.S. I have a lot of lunch ideas in my “Lunch” category, including some new posts for back-to-school. Hope you’ll pop over and check them out: http://thenourishinghome.com/lunch/
I stumbled across your website and I am so happy I did! I made these french fries for dinner and my husband(who is very picky) stated they need to be on the menu again. The entire pan was gone in no time. Thank you so much for sharing these recipes. It feels great knowing that I am providing healthier food choices for my family. Sending major kudos from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Muchas gracias, Jennifer! My hubby and I have a huge affection for Cubans – our church has done mission work there and the people are so beautiful! So glad you enjoyed this recipe! Please keep in touch! Blessings, Kelly
I just found your site and I am bookmarking it — you have so many delicious looking recipes I want to try for my family. I’m going to make these but wondered if you recommend using fresh herbs or dried? Thanks for your great work!
Hi, Andrea. Welcome! So glad you’ve found my site. I hope you enjoy taking a look around and trying the many healthy whole food based recipes here. You can really use either, keeping in mind that dried herbs tend to be much stronger than fresh, so you generally have to almost double the measurement if using fresh. I tend to use dried herbs for high-heat roasting, such as these fries. Lots of blessings to you, Kelly
Hi Kelly. I made them tonight using the dried herbs along with the turkey-veggie-guacamole burgers (recipe also from your site). Both were delicious! I used sweet potatoes. My only problem was, they stuck to the pan and burned on the bottom just before 15 minutes was up. Do you think I should try turning them halfway through or just use a bit more oil? My oven was at 425. Other than that, all went well! Thank you!
You’re oven may run hotter than mine. I also need to add in there for sweet potatoes I’ve been using a parchment lined baking sheet since they cook faster than regular potatoes. Sorry I forgot to add that. Will do it right now 🙂
Just made these tonight and they were a HUGE hit! Thank you for sharing the recipe, Kelly! 🙂
Hi, Reb! Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a kind note. So glad you enjoyed these! Lots of blessings, Kelly 🙂
I’ve made these a couple of times now and they were gone in no time. I had to stand guard over them until the rest of dinner was on the table. I even made extra the second time and joked with them that they ate more potatoes than if I had actually baked them each their own potatoes. Yikes! But, these were so easy and so good.
So happy to hear this, Marie! Thanks for taking the time to leave a kind note! You are so sweet!