Preparation time: 30
Cooking time: 25
Easy - for beginners
Serves: 4
These 'frites' and their dipping sauces were inspired by stories from a trip to Belgium. It's a recipe that will allow kids of all ages to help with various parts. Older kids can cut the potatoes, younger kids can toss them with seasoning.
For the Frites: -Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.
-First, clean your potatoes and slice them into 1/4 to 1/2 inch or so ‘sticks’. You can peel the potatoes of you’d like, but we always keep the skins on. Cleaning the potatoes is a great job for younger kids. Peeling is a job for kids that have good hand-eye coordination. The slicing should be left to older kids or adults. Note, the thinner you cut the potatoes, the more crisp they’ll get.
-Soak the sliced potatoes in water for 15 minutes. Kids of any age can help with this step.
-After 15 minutes of soaking spread them out on a clean dish cloth to dry off. Again, kids of any age can help pull the potatoes out of the water and put them onto the cloth to dry. The dryer they get before moving on to the next step, the better. Soggy potatoes mean soggy fries.
-Put the sliced potatoes into a bowl and toss the Olive Oil, Paprika and Sea Salt with the potatoes. Older kids can do the measuring and younger children can do the ‘pouring’ and/or the tossing together of the oil, spices and potatoes with their hands…it is fun :D
-Spread the seasoned potato sticks onto a greased cooking sheet. To ‘grease’ the sheet, either use cooking spray or a bit of olive oil.
-Place the potatoes into a 475 degree oven for 20 to 30 minutes…check your frites after about 10 minutes and flip them around. All of the ‘hot stuff’ should be done by responsible older children and/or adults. If the frites are burning, turn the heat down to about 450 degrees.
-Once the fries are crisp and browned, remove them from the oven.
-Sprinkle with additional salt if desired and serve.
For the Aioli -Place all of the ingredients into a bowl and mix with a hand mixer on a low speed until all ingredients are well blended (about 2 minutes). Kids of any age can help pour the ingredients in, but older kids or adults will probably have to help with preparing the ingredients for the mixing.
-Once everything is mixed together, refrigerate the aioli until it’s time to serve.
-For Seasoned Garlic Mayonnaise instead of Aioli:
-Use 1/2 cup mayonnaise instead of the egg yolk and olive oil.
-Stir in the garlic and dijon or sriracha.
-Refrigerate and serve with frites when they’re ready!