Air Fryer Sweet Potato Fries

Air Fryer Sweet Potato Fries - made May 5, 2019 from OOLA

I have a new gadget obsession. Move over Instant Pot and make room for the air fryer. I'd heard of air fryers before and been intrigued but managed to ignore the craze. Then I visited my niece and her fiance in Denver during my time off and they had an air fryer. One whirl of the sweet potato fries from Trader Joe's in their air fryer and I was hooked. It tasted better than the sweet potato fries from Elephant Bar, which had been my previous gold standard  for sweet potato fries. Crisp on the outside but mealy inside. They were amazing and much faster than baking in the oven.

Trader Joe's sweet potato fries from the air fryer

So, when I got back home, despite my inner urgings not to buy anything because I'm moving shortly and would just have to move it, I lasted a whole three days before I broke down and bought an air fryer from Costco. Then the package of sweet potato fries from Trader Joe's. They turned out as well as when my niece and her fiance made them except this time I didn't have to share with either of them, ha.

I've long been on a quest of making my own crispy sweet potato fries "from scratch", aka an actual sweet potato, sold "as is", i.e. dug up out of the ground, rather than from the plastic package from the TJ's freezer section. With the air fryer, I optimistically thought I had a chance. I mean, really, how hard could it be now that I had this swanky gadget?

That would be the foreboding and premonition section of this post for those of you who have seen my prior efforts at this Don Quixote quest. Yes, you guessed it, I was tilting at windmills again. But honestly, it all seemed so easy. I followed the recipe, I read the blog tips, I did it.

Except someone forgot to tell the sweet potato fries to crisp up. They turned out pretty good, taste-wise, as I liked the spice mixture that covered them. Even if said spices burned in my (over)enthusiastic quest to make them crispy so I let them keep on chugging in the air fryer until they were threatening to turn into carbon.

So I tried a second time and this time did the other tricks I've tried before: soak the sweet potato strips in cold water then drain, pay dry and toss in the spice mixture with some cornstarch to add that outer coating for the crispness. Um, yeah. As you can see from the pictures, this time, I had a heavy hand with the cornstarch and it still didn't work. *hands thrown up in despair" #fail

Never mind. I'll always have Trader Joe's....and their packaged sweet potato fries.

2 large sweet potatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
kosher salt to taste
pepper to taste
2 teaspoons paprika
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder
cooking spray

1. Slice the sweet potatoes into half-inch slabs and then into strips of equal size. Place the strips in a medium bowl and add the olive oil, kosher salt, pepper, paprika, onion powder and garlic powder. Toss to coat the strips.
2. Lightly coat the basket of air fryer with cooking spray. Preheat your oven to 380 degrees. 
3. Place half of the sweet potato strips into the air fryer basket and cook them for 5 minutes. Flip the fries in the basket with a pair of tongs to brown all the sides evenly. Continue to cook the fries for an additional 5 minutes or until the fries are crispy and slightly brown. Transfer the fries to a cooling rack. Repeat steps above for the remaining strips. Serve immediately.