Simple & Easy: Baked Steak Fries

Thanks to my friend, Linda, I've found that there's an easy and painless way to make your own restaurant-quality steak fries at home without frying them!

These go very well with grilled steak, burgers or chicken, even fish. They are simple to make and are done faster than you might think!

You will need:

Baking potatoes, washed and drained or dried off (1.5 potatoes per serving)

Olive oil
(several tablespoons to 1/4 cup depending on how many potatoes)

Lowery's seasoned salt OR your favorite seasoning
(I enjoy a Cajun blend spice along with a very light sprinkling of the seasoned salt.)

a gallon-sized Ziploc bag

Preheat oven to 450

On a cutting board, slice the baking potatoes the long way, and slice them again, then again into pieces as shown above. I usually get at least eight good sized fries from one regular baking potato.

Place the potato slices into a Ziploc bag, then add enough olive oil to coat lightly but don't drown them. Work the potatoes around in the closed bag until they've all had a light coating of the olive oil. It will depend on how many potatoes you use, just hazard a guess on the olive oil.

Once the potatoes have been coated, put them in a hot oven (450) on a large cookie sheet or jelly roll pan that has been sprayed with PAM and put them in the center top of the oven.

Bake for as long as necessary (anywhere from 15-30 minutes or so) to get the desired crispness; the first time you do these, you'll need to be keeping an eye on them .

You can flip each one individually half way through baking if you want them all done evenly on both sides. Or not. I usually let mine go longer because my guys prefer them to be dark or well done and very crisp.

Once they are done, shut oven down and remove the fries, season them lightly while still hot on the cookie sheet.

Remove the fries to a platter that has been lined with paper towel.

Break out the ketchup and serve!

This is a healthy side dish and not too heavy on the calories!

YUM!

Garden note:
We are JUST NOW running out of the potatoes we grew in our own gardens last summer! We are going to plant potatoes every year from now on and add even more rows this spring. We may be able to get two harvests of potatoes if we can stagger the plantings, we're excited to see how it works out. We loved having our own home-grown potatoes all winter!

This is one of a batch we had of super-duper sized potatoes...It's pictured next to the big sized soup can and WOW!

This is our potato harvest when they were fresh out of the ground and ready to wait a week to wash. Potatoes prefer to grow in cool weather and last summer was very cool so that might explain why we had such a good harvest.

Do you grow your own potatoes?

They're actually a lot of fun to grow, except for the part that requires one to mound dirt up around the plant. GOOD GRIEF! We ran out of dirt! The more dirt, though, the better the potatoes turn out, as the dirt denies the sunlight a chance to turn the skin of the potatoes a green color which is a mildly toxic substance called solanine.

If you plan to grow a garden this year and are looking for a good all-around gardening book this one is it:
Go to this link to see a copy and read the reviews:

READER'S DIGEST
1001 HINTS & TIPS
FOR YOUR GARDEN

It's arranged A-Z. Want to know how to grow your own potatoes?
Go to P for potatoes. Simple! Is your lawn giving you fits? L for lawn!

This book is chock full of easy to read information and just enough illustrations and diagrams to not be dry and boring. I find it to be a great gift for a gardener, first time or not! I am constantly referring to this book.

I buy mine that I give to my friends used off AMAZON.COM and usually get it for under $2 plus shipping. Right now there's a copy for 39 cents plus shipping! Amazing!

I've given many away because interest in gardening is way up and no wonder! Saving money on food is a smart move, and if you've got the room for growing your own food, it's a relaxing and rewarding way to feed your family! Growing and preserving food for your family is a double blessing.

I have a copy sitting on my table right now that I ordered for my friend Shelley, who is going to plant a basic kitchen vegetable garden this spring. I can't wait to give it to her as I find great pleasure in helping others learn to do what our parents and their parents did: make your ground work for you and earn its keep!

And, here are some more gardening/canning/preserving photos for you to enjoy, I know I had fun finding them in my photo files, it makes me anxious for spring!

Dreaming of spring and of gardening!