Recipe Makeovers

French fries

These easy to make French fries are golden and crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, and good for you too!

Last month I showed you how to create guilt-free cheeseburgers that contained much less calories and almost five times less saturated fat than a typical fast-food cheeseburger. Of course there's one food that goes perfectly with a cheeseburger-French fries. But typical French fries are packed with calories and contain lots of fat, usually not the good kind either. So this month I'll show you how to create your own fries at home that contain less calories and that are cooked using "good" fat.

But before I show you how to create healthy fries at home, I want to talk a little bit about potatoes. The poor old potato has been getting a lot of criticism lately--mostly from diet gurus who say that they will cause a massive rise in blood sugar and will make you horrendously fat. I've even heard some diet gurus talk about how eating a potato is the same as eating pure sugar.

Well, I beg to differ. For a start, potatoes in their natural state are low in calories. In fact a medium-size potato contains only around 130 calories.

However, what we have a tendency to do in the West is eat potatoes with lots of high calorie foods, such as sour cream, butter or cheese. Another way we add lots of calories to potatoes is by deep frying them to make French fries and potato chips. So it's actually the way we typically eat potatoes, and not the potato itself, that's fattening.

Potatoes and blood sugar levels

And don't be concerned about getting a rapid rise in blood sugar and insulin levels from eating a potato. The rate at which a potato is converted into blood sugar (glucose) and released into your bloodstream is directly affected by what you eat with the potato. If you sat back and ate a plain potato you would get quite a rapid rise in blood sugar. But when you eat a potato with slowly digested foods such as fish and poultry, fibrous vegetables and healthy fats you don't end up getting a rapid rise in blood sugar and insulin levels.

Potatoes are also very good for you from a nutrition standpoint. They contain high amounts of health-promoting nutrients including vitamin C (a powerful antioxidant), dietary fiber, and potassium (which helps to maintain the stability of heart cells and the central nervous system). And the carbohydrates in potatoes provide your muscles with energy and your brain with fuel.

How to make healthy fries

Now that you know potatoes can be good for you if they're eaten the right way, let's get down to the nitty gritty of how to make healthy French fries.

Before I show you step-by-step how to do that, here's a nutrient comparison between a typical large serve of fries from a fast food outlet and our healthier version:

As you can see, our fries contain around half the calories of typical fries and also much less fat. And unlike fast food fries, which are cooked with either unhealthy partially-hydrogenated fat or beef fat, these fries are cooked with heart-healthy canola oil.

Here's how to make these fries at home. This recipe makes two serves:

Peel two good sized potatoes (floury potatoes like Russet or spunta or sebago are best) and slice off the sides and ends of each to form a rectangular shape.

Slice each potato lengthwise into approximately 1cm (½-inch) slices.

Stack the slices on top of each other and cut into 1cm (½-inch) sticks.

Pat the sliced potato dry with paper towels and put in a bowl with 1½ tablespoons of canola oil. Toss gently with your hands to coat.

Preheat the oven to 250°C/480°F. Place the fries on a baking tray in a single layer (not touching each other) and bake for 35 minutes in the center of the oven.

Sprinkle with a little salt and serve immediately.

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