Name: Goat Cheese Shoestring Fries
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 1
Ingredients: 1 large sweet potato, peeled (1 potato per person if you want to double the recipe); Salt, to taste; Olive oil, as desired; 2 oz soft goat cheese; 1 tbsp milk; 2 tsp lemon juice

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A delicious snack or sophisticated side, these shoestring sweet potato fries are perfect for every occasion!

Thanks to the goat cheese and sauce I made, these shoestring fries are a way healthier and more delicious version than the classic fries.

Shoestring fries are perfect even for sandwiches, BBQ, and so much more. I love these super-thin fun potatoes.

Instead of making them in a deep fryer, I oven-baked these, but you can also air-fry these. These shoestring fries are crispy, customizable, and of course, delicious!

What Are Shoestring Fries?

These skinny fried potatoes are my new favorite way of preparing potatoes. I do enjoy classic French fries, but these are so much crisper and way more fun to eat.

I particularly love these as they are crispy and pair perfectly with sauces, such as this delicious goat cheese sauce.

You will love these because:

They are better than fries; it is hard to beat crispy fries, but these are even crispier.
They have a cool retro vibe; shoestring fries were super popular in the 50s and 60s and they are back again.
You can customize them; the shoestring fries can be seasoned with many spices, like garlic, and rosemary, and all of these will pair nicely with goat cheese sauce.

How To Cut Shoestring Fries

The easiest way to cut shoestring fries is by using a mandolin slicer. The mandolin slices are a hand-held device with a variety of blades that slices veggies and fruits with more precision than using a regular knife, and so much faster.

If you lack knife skills, I suggest using a mandolin slicer. If you do have good knife skills, then you can cut your shoestring fries with a knife. Make sure they are the same thickness or they will not bake or fry properly.

Which Potatoes To Use

You can choose any type of potato, but I went with sweet potatoes as their sweetness complements the zesty goat’s cheese sauce.

There are different types of sweet potatoes, like Jewel, Beauregard, Garnet, Murasaki, and Okinawa. All of these have a specific color but are all delicious.

Now, if you are thinking about yams, well they are something else. I spotted so many people call sweet potatoes yams, but these are completely different. The yams are starchy tubers, of tropical plants and the sweet potatoes have orange flesh.

Yams are not that widely available across the U:S grocery stores while sweet potatoes are. Also, the yams have a neutral flavor, while the sweet potatoes, well, have a sweet flavor.

How To Make The Goat Cheese Sauce

Goat cheese is extremely interesting with a mild, earthy, butter but tart flavor. The flavors will deepen as the cheese ripens making the tartness sharper and earthiness more pronounced. The goat’s cheese is known by the name Chevre.

Chevre is a culinary term often used to reference the entire range of goat’s cheeses and they are also categorized from soft cheeses to hard aged cheeses.

The goat’s cheeses are made across the world, from Mexico to Japan, and they also come in well-known styles such as blue, brie, cheddar, and Gouda.

For this sauce, use fresh or young goat’s cheese. This creamy rindless cheese is aged only a few days, giving the mildest flavor and the most spreadable texture.

It is the most common type of Chevre, often sold plan or mixed with fresh herbs in a log shape.

To make the sauce you will have to blend:

The soft goats’ cheese
Some milk
And lemon juice, freshly squeezed

This sauce pairs well with any type of fries, but also veggie fries, like parsnip or carrot fries.

How To Make Shoestring Fries?

The oven-baked shoestring fries are super easy to make, even without a mandolin slicer. Once you have your sweet potatoes all sliced up, season them with salt and drizzle with olive oil.

That is all you really need. If you want to add some seasonings, like garlic powder or herbs, you can add them as well.

Arrange the sweet potato shoestrings on a baking sheet, lined with parchment paper. Make sure they are all in a single line, not overcrowding or overlapping.

As these are very thin, they may burn during baking, so advise you to cover them with another piece of parchment paper in the first 15 minutes of baking.