Potato Wedges with Sour Cream and Chili Sauce

If you're looking for a warm snack or a side dish for a good hamburger, these deep fried potato wedges make a nice replacement for the regular French fry. They're relatively simple to make and cook up pretty quickly.

Popular in Australia, this dish is served with sour cream and a sweet Thai chili sauce. When I'm ready to clean out my sinuses, that's great. On other days, I prefer to make my own super secret fry sauce recipe.

Ingredients

1 medium potato per serving
salt as needed
oil for deep-frying as required

Equipment Needed

cutting board
pan for deep frying
kitchen knife
mixing bowl
colander
heat resistant slotted spoon or small strainer
large plate
paper towels

Directions

Wash the potatoes, leaving the peels on. Cut the potatoes into wedges, about 3/4 inch thick on the outer edge.

Put the potato wedges into a bowl and cover with water. Let them soak for 2-3 minutes. This will remove excess surface starch and will result in a crisper potato.

Move the potato wedges to a colander and drain. Lay out some paper towels and put the potatoes on them in a single layer. Pat them dry. If there's any water on them when they get put into the hot oil, the oil will spit out of the pan and you may end up with a nasty burn.

A few years ago, this actually happened to me. I'll never make that careless mistake again. Trust me. I had small, painful burn marks on my face for a week, and the family photos to prove it. I looked like a guy with mutated acne.

Put out a plate and line it with a couple of paper towels. You'll use this plate to receive the potato wedges after they're fried. The paper towels will help absorb any excess oil.

Pour enough oil into a pan to just cover the potatoes. Place it over medium heat, heating it to about 350 degrees Fahrenheit. If you don't have a thermometer, drop a bread crumb in the oil. If if sinks about halfway before returning the to surface and sizzling, the oil's hot enough.

Using a heat resistant slotted spoon or small mesh strainer, put the potato wedges into the hot oil, one at a time so they don't stick together. Don't put too many potatoes in the oil at the same time. That will drop the temperature of the oil too much, and you'll end up with a greasy mess instead of a crispy fried potato. It's better to cook them in batches. Deep-fry until they start to turn golden brown.

Using the slotted spoon or strainer, remove the potatoes from the oil, letting the excess oil drip back into the pan, place them on the plate covered with paper towels. Immediately sprinkle a pinch of salt over the hot potatoes. If you wait, the salt won't stick to them.

Serve with sour cream and sweet Thai chili sauce, fry sauce, or any other dipping sauce you like. My wife likes to dip them in Ranch dressing.

Three Spice Mixes

Ready-made spice mixtures can save time, money, and are pretty useful in the kitchen. The problem is, there are more commercial spice mixes available than Brigham Young has wives. Or children. To compound everything, the quality and composition can vary considerably from one brand to another. What's a foodie to do?

Within the plethora of choices, there are three common blends that are used in a large number or recipes. With these three in your pantry, you're pretty safe when it comes to quick cooking.

Finding quality mixes is important, and expensive isn't always best. For example, I love the relatively inexpensive Sun Brand Madras Curry Powder (such pure and peppery flavor!), but can't stand the more expensive McCormick “gourmet” Madras (Yuck. Did I actually pay money for this? No link for you!).

Sorry. I haven't tried enough brands of the other two mixes to give you a recommendation. Maybe you'd like to leave your own recommendations in the comments.

Which brings us to:

Curry Powder

There are several curry blends, from Indian to Thai. Some are mild, others are quite hot. Curry powder gives curried dishes an authentic flavor that can sometimes be hard to match if you're mixing it yourself. My current preference most everyday cooking is the Madras curry powder from Sun. (It comes in a lovely silver and white tin, not a bottle.) Perhaps you have a favorite curry blend you'd like to share.

Garam Masala

Usually, garam masala is a mixture of cumin, coriander, cardamom, clove, cinnamon, pepper, mace and ground bay leaves. It's quite common in curries from northern India, giving the dish a mild, almost perfumed, quality rather than the more fiery and hot mixtures.

Pumpkin Pie Spice

A traditional mixture of sweet spices, usually allspice, cinnamon, clove, coriander, mace and nutmeg. As it's name implies, it's a common mixture for pumpkin pies, but it can also be used in sweet potato pie, cookies and cakes, to impart a mild kick to the otherwise sweet dish.

Photo by Piotr Bizior

Bread Maker Recipes and Kitchen Stores

If you've been paying attention lately you probably noticed I'm building a kitchen store at Amazon. To top it off, I've started a spin-off blog for bread maker recipes.

Like I didn't have enough to do.

I've been using my bread machine like crazy, of late, and started wondering how I could use it make bread that wasn't part of the recipes that came with it. Things like sourdough bread (Yes, Virginia, there is a way). So, rather than litter this blog with tons of bread maker recipes, at the expense of everything else, I decided to open up another one.

Glutton for punishment, that's me.

Why the kitchen store? To put it simply, I need the money. Well, with all the time I've been putting into this blog, and now the new one, I've got to start justifying the work with more than a feeling of love and acomplishment. I need cash.

Don't worry. I'll never put an item in the store I wouldn't consider buying, myself. When I started this blog I had 5 goals in mind:

1. To entertain
2. To inform
3. To develop my writing skills
4. To help make cooking fun and show that you don't have to be a master chef to make good food.
5. To help people bring their families together.

I will not abandon these goals for the sake of simple profit.

Besides, there's not much profit in kitchen stuff. At the same time, if you're in the market for a piece of cooking equipment, or a new cookbook, I'd be grateful if you check out the store, first.

Even if you don't, that's okay. Keep coming to the party. It's not as much fun without you.

Photo by the amazing Maria Colangelo. Used with permission.