Unless you’re drowning your sweet potato fries in a vat of oil, figuring out how to make them extra-crispy at home can be a true challenge. But saying goodbye to soggy fries is easier than you think. You just have to stop making a simple mistake in the cooking process.
If you’re not soaking your sweet potato fries in an ice bath before cooking them, add the step to your routine, stat. According to Ali Martin, the food blogger behind Gimme Some Oven, it’s key in making the delicious vegan staple restaurant-worthy without all the grease.
“Once your fries are chopped, toss them into a large bowl. Then cover the fries completely with cold water and let them soak for at least 30 minutes,” she writes on her blog. “This will help rinse off the excess starch and help the potatoes crisp up beautifully in the oven.”
After rinsing and draining your potatoes, don’t forget one of the most important final steps to French fry perfection: “Use a towel to pat them down until they’re nice and dry,” Martin says. Then, coat them with cornstarch and any seasonings you want—which creates that crispy mouth-watering exterior—before baking them in the oven on parchment paper.
Sure, these steps take a little extra time. But once you taste the finished product, you’ll never make your sweet potato fries any other way.