 Today we're making french fries and we're not using potatoes. We are using jicama. So if you want to cut your carbs, eat a little bit healthier, incorporate more vegetables in your life then you stay tuned and watch this video and we'll tell you how to do it and all the benefits right after our chef joke. All right, so I'm going to start off here with chef joke number one. Chef joke number two will be just a little bit later. So stay tuned for that. All right, so what do the french fries do when they meet up after a long time? They catch up. So what is a jicama? Some of you may not know. Well it's this right here. This is a root vegetable originally from Mexico. Now it grows on a vine but only the root part, this part, is edible. So don't eat the leaves if you decide to grow this on your own, let's say in your garden. Don't eat the leaves, the beans, or any other part, just this because the other parts are toxic. So why bother with jicama? Why should we eat it? It contains a great amount of fiber in it, six grams per cup, which is very good. And it's also a type of fiber that's called insoluble fiber or inulin. And that passes through your digestive tract undigested and it goes into your colon and it feeds the good bacteria. So think of it like a fertilizer that you're just putting all over your good bacteria and it helps it to flourish and keep you healthy. Jicama is also loaded with vitamins and minerals. There's magnesium, there's folate, there's zinc, there's vitamin B's, there's vitamin C, there's a ton of that actually. And it's pretty amazing because jicama is a white vegetable, right? And usually you think of colorful vegetables as having the most nutrition. Well, this little guy is a powerhouse for sure. And it's also very low in sugar so it's great for a low carb snack and it won't spike your blood sugar. So how do we use jicama, right? You're probably wondering. You could just peel it because you have to peel it first before you can eat it and cut it into little strips or even chip size, you know, little chunks that you can use and eat raw or you can use it for a dip. You know, it's great substitute for, say, potato chips. And you could also use it in a stir fry. It will stay crunchy unless you cook it, you know, substantially. It's going to stay kind of crisp. I know that Trader Joe's sells the little tortillas, they're just nice little shapes about that big and you can fill them with whatever ingredients you want, roll them up and you've got a great snack. I've also heard that you could make mashed jicama, like mashed potatoes. I haven't tried that yet so that might be a video coming out in the future. Let me know if you're interested in that by leaving me a comment down in the description. Today we're going to make french fries which means we're going to have to cook these a little bit so that they're not quite so crunchy and we'll show you all that. In fact, let's get into that recipe right now. So to start off here with our french fries, I'm going to take my jicama and I'm going to cut off the two ends. So I would use a nice sharp knife for that. Now some people like to take a potato peeler and do that. I just like using my knife so that's what I'm going to do today. And I'm going to cut this in half. And then I'm just going to take my knife and thinly just peel off the skin. That nice thing about jicama if you decide to eat it raw is that it does not oxidize and turn brown, which makes it great if you want to serve it at a party for example and just set it out. So from this point you can do pretty much however you want to slice it. I'll take it this way and I'll cut it. It's not quite a half an inch but it's about maybe a quarter of an inch depending on the size of your french fries. Just try to make them all uniform. You want something like this. Now place your fries into a saucepan and cover them with some water. Place these on the stove and boil them for 10 minutes. I'm going to put a cover on it, a lid so that that way it'll boil quicker and we can get this going. Once they begin boiling you can remove the lid. Once the jicama is done boiling for 10 minutes on the stove then you're going to want to pour it into a strainer or a colander and drain out all the water and let it cool for about 5 or 10 minutes or so and then we're going to place it onto some either paper towels or a nice clean dishcloth to absorb as much of the liquid or water that we possibly can so that they will cook up nicely and crisp up in the oven. Our jicama has been draining and cooling off here so I'm going to take it and place it into my bowl here so that we can add our spices and you can feel it. It's relatively dry and that's what you want. What we're going to add here first is some olive oil and I'm going to drizzle in probably a tablespoon or so. You just want to be able to coat all of the pieces so that the spices will stick and once we have the olive oil mixed in we're going to add a little bit of salt, garlic powder and I'm going to use some smoked paprika. Like I said you could use cayenne pepper, you could use chili powder, so I like to put some on and then toss it a little bit and then put a little more on so that I get it mixed everywhere. So a little more salt, garlic powder and a little more smoked paprika and then we'll give this one final toss. Add a little parchment paper to your baking sheet so that it makes clean up nice and easy and then place your fries in the pan. I usually just line them up and I want a little bit of space between them so that they don't steam and they actually roast and we'll get a little bit crispy. All right we're going to place these in a 425 degree oven for somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes depending on how brown you want yours and maybe how crispy you want them to be and we're going to turn them over about halfway through the cooking time so I'll use a pair of tongs and just flip them over. Okay are you ready for chef joke number two? Here we go. Did you know that french fries were not first cooked in France? They were cooked in Greece. Here's our fries after 15 minutes, now it's time to turn them over. Tongs work great for this. Our fries are done, I cook them for about 40 minutes and you can see here how nice and you know toasted up they look. So I'm going to pour them into my dish here hopefully and you can serve these up plain or with any kind of dipping sauce, ketchup, whatever you know whatever you like. They're still a little bit hot, this is the best time to eat them you know if you want to keep them overnight then you're gonna have to reheat them in the oven to kind of help crisp them up again so let me give these a taste. They still have that nice little crunch much softer than if we had not boiled them in the water. These are truly delicious, they have that slight sweetness to them. They make a great alternative to regular french fries. I hope you give them a try. If you're enjoying this low carb and healthy recipe you might want to check out my roasted radishes recipe that we cook in the oven. It will remind you of roasted potatoes they are so delicious and I'm sure you'll enjoy them. Thanks so much for watching don't forget to subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and leave me a comment I always love to hear from you and smash like button if you enjoyed the video. Thanks again we'll see you next week for another rockin recipe.