Spice Up Your Weekend with Chili Spiced Sweet Potato Fries and Spicy Chipotle Ketchup

Admit it, back in the 90’s you listened to the Spice Girls’ music or if you’re a man, maybe you had a crush on one of those platform-wearing ladies.  Sadly, I’ll admit I used to listen to them too, but I took it a little farther than that.

As a preteen girl, I looked up to the Spice Girls. I went to one of their concerts, I used their signature peace sign in photos, and I even bought some of their apparel (which I wore to the concert). This is where it gets [more] embarrassing.

My cousins and I formed a girl “band” group based on the Spice Girls. I will not divulge the name of this so called “band” (if you could even call us that) because if you already weren’t in hysterics, you would be once you found out the name. As a “band” we combed through each others closets looking for outfits to wear to the lone photo shoot we had, which was basically just us getting together and having my grandma take pictures of us as we posed on her lawn (sad, but true). Oh we had it bad. We had the Spice Girl bug and it wasn’t going away.

We even held performances for our family during birthday parties or special occasions. Yes, I know this just keeps getting worse. We didn’t really sing, unless you count some bad lip syncing. We were more of a dance group. One of my cousins had been dancing for years and she made up all of our routines.

Looking back on those memories, I can laugh about the poses we made for the camera, the over-the-top outfits we wore, and the smooth (or lack there of) moves we made while grooving to the Spice Girls’ music. These are memories my cousins and I will share and laugh about for many years to come. 

In honor of those memories and of going to my first concert ever (yes, it was a Spice Girls concert) many years ago, I’ve made some tasty, chili-spiced sweet potato fries and a spicy chipotle ketchup to serve alongside the mild-flavored fries. I found the recipe for the chipotle ketchup on Shae’s blog titled Hello Homebody. She also recently featured a recipe for a cooling coconut, vanilla, and lime drink, which I may have to try. Here is a link to the recipe for the ketchup recipe (the only changes I made were to use 1/2 the sugar and to use coconut sugar instead of brown sugar). I didn’t feel the need to rewrite it because I made only very minor changes to her tasty recipe. This is one recipe I will surely use again and the leftovers from this last batch will last for the next few weeks, which means I’ll be making sweet potato fries again promptly.

Getting ready for the oven.

Chili Spiced Sweet Potato Fries: 

*Serves 2

Ingredients: 

1 large sweet potato, peeled, then sliced to 1/4 inch thick slices, then sliced lengthwise to make fries

1 tbsp of olive oil

1/2 tsp of chili powder

1/4 tsp of garlic powder, smoked paprika, and freshly ground pepper

1/4 tsp of salt

Method: 

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Then, slice the sweet potato into fries (after peeling it). Place the fries onto a baking sheet. Drizzle about half of the olive oil on the fries and mix them around on the baking sheet. Then add all of the spices except for the salt. Add the rest of the olive oil and mix around again. Arrange the fries so all of them are laying flat on the baking sheet. Pop them into the oven for about 20 minutes. Then stir them around or flip them and pop them back in for another 20 minutes to crisp up even more (they should be golden brown when done). While they are in the oven make Shae’s recipe (from Hello Homebody) for chipotle ketchup (find the recipe here). Her recipe was fantastic, which is why I didn’t rewrite it here. The only changes I made to her recipe were to use coconut sugar and to use half the amount of sugar. Enjoy!

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