These habit-forming oil-free Roasted Potato Pesto Cheese Fries are nothing less than divine! An easy-peasy cooking technique makes them practically mess-free; you’ve got to love that!   Now you can healthily address you carb cravings with tasty oil-free roasted potatoes.  And this recipe is so simple that it’s as comfy as a one size fits all beach dress!  Just use whatever potatoes you happen to have on hand, and you’re on your way to a satisfying, plant-based, dairy-free, unbelievably delicious, cheesy experience.

With these roasted spuds there is no need for time-consuming parboiling. In fact, it’s as easy as one, two, three!

• First, slice the potatoes.
• Second, put them in the oven on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
• And last but not least, bake until they’ve achieved your preferred level of golden color or tenderness!

There’s no need to remove the skin when you make Roasted Potato Pesto Cheese Fries! That’s a real time-saver and such a good thing, nutritionally speaking because the skin holds most of the nutrients. And here’s a bonus to consider; when baked, the potato and skin each become deliciously chewy and slightly crisp. That slight crunch and chew make Roasted Potato Pesto Cheese Fries my favorite carb-fix ever!

By the way, potatoes are not just for lunch and dinner. Breakfast potatoes are a classic morning veggie dish that’s easy to make oil-free. And if you’re a fan of the breakfast potatoes you get in restaurants, you’ll love utilizing this roasting method in the morning!

All you need to do is chop your ingredients for your breakfast potatoes and throw the mix into the oven. Enjoying breakfast potatoes cooked by this method is much healthier than the deep-fried version, and it’s just as tasty. Vegetables are incredibly delicious once you move away from unhealthy preparation methods that take away from their flavor.  For breakfast,  I love to use small gold potatoes along with onion, garlic, and red bell pepper but that’s only one option. But use whatever ingredients you prefer; after all, they’re your potatoes for crying out loud. The simple dry roasting method will be the same no matter what veggies you add to the mix.

But enough about breakfast, that will be a post on its own very soon. In this recipe for Roasted Potato Pesto Cheese Fries, I serve the tender bites of potato drizzled in a bright green Oil-Free Spinach Walnut Oregano Pesto and gooey orange Hempy Potato Carrot Cheese Sauce.  The colorful sauces brighten up the roasted potatoes nicely and make the dish look vibrant and playful – kids young and old,  love it! And it’s a blast to drip the sauces in an artsy pattern.

The nutritional bit I’d like to share with this recipe is more about the method of cooking rather than the ingredient. As you can see, I am suggesting that you cook your potatoes in the oven using no added oil.  Many people ask me why I write many recipes as oil-free so briefly, I’ll explain my reasoning. In addition to avoiding meat and dairy, I have come to understand that eliminating oil is an essential component of a truly healthy diet. Here are some facts about oil that may surprise you.

Some essential nutritional facts about oil:

• Oil is calorie dense. Gram-for-gram, oil has the same number of calories as beef fat.
• Coconut oil is 90% saturated fat, and lard is 40%.
• One tablespoon of oil has 120 calories and 14 grams of fat.
• A 130 lb woman would have to jog approximately 1.2 miles to burn off one tablespoon of oil.
• Within hours of ingesting oil, including olive oil, corn oil, palm oil, etc., your arteries stiffen, and their ability to dilate is impaired.

I don’t know about you, but that fourth reason is enough to keep the oil out of my veggie recipes! But keep in mind that consuming no added oils does not mean the same thing as eating a fat-free diet. Our bodies need dietary fat to function correctly; it’s just that plants have all the fat we need.  Even broccoli, kale, beans, and quinoa have fat in small, nutritious, amounts.  I’ve learned and gathered this valuable information on oil-free cooking from Forks Over Knives and the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies website. I encourage you to read more about it when you have the chance.

When you try Roasted Potato Pesto Cheese Fries, you’ll want to be sure to Pin the recipe for safe keeping and to share the recipe with your friends. Everyone NEEDS to have easy cheesy go-to’s to whip up whenever the next carb and cheese cravings strike.

Remember, the trick to making oven roasted veggies taste amazing is to turn the heat up super high.

Happy Eating!

Roasted Potato Pesto Cheese Fries

VEEG

• 10
  Prep:
• 30
  Cook Time:
• Yield: 6 Servings

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Here’s a roasting method for the best oil-free and vegan Roasted Potato Pesto Cheese Fries, ever!  Any variety of potato will do; adjust the cooking time according to the type and size of your slices/wedges. This recipe provides four to six generous servings as a main dish, and you could double that when serving as an appetizer or side.

Ingredients

• 3 lbs of organic potatoes, any thin-skinned variety, washed and dried
• one batch of Oil-Free Spinach Walnut Oregano Pesto
• and one batch of Hempy Potato Carrot Cheese Sauce
• optional sea salt, to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to a toasty hot 425º Farenheight. If you're in a big hurry, go ahead and crank it up to 450º.  While this recipe is relatively effortless, whenever roasting at high temps it's wise to be available to oversee the progress, so that the potatoes arrive at your desired level of goldenness.  
2. Begin by choosing potatoes that are firm and smell fresh. Check the skins for any cuts, bruises or unripe green areas and cut away any out that you find. Wash, drain and slice the potatoes in similar size so that each wedge or slice cooks in roughly the same amount of time. I prefer to cut my potatoes into wedges.  
3. Place the potato wedges skin side down on a parchment paper covered sheet pan and roast in the hot preheated oven until golden. Sprinkle with sea salt.  
4. It depends on the size of the potato wedges, but mine usually roast to a lovely golden color in anywhere from 25-35 minutes. Since ovens, slicing styles and potatoes themselves vary, some may take a bit longer or, if you're lucky, possibly need even less time.
5. Once the potatoes begin to become golden or browned in spots, they're ready to eat! Serve Roasted Potato Pesto Cheese Fries drizzled in the two sauces or offer the sauces on the side. You can also serve these with traditional ketchup or a spicy sriracha mayo, too.

Notes

• Roasted Potato Pesto Cheese Fries is a potato roasting recipe suitable to use with the sauces we've described or another sauce of your liking.  Even plain old vegan ketchup tastes lovely with these smart oven fries. My favorite brand of vegan ketchup is this one, by Annie's.
• The quick and straightforward oil-free roasting method described in this recipe works equally well for white, yellow, blue and even sweet potatoes.

Nutrition

% DV

Calories Per Serving: 204

• Total Fat 0.3 g 1 %
• Saturated Fat 0.1 g 1 %
• Cholesterol 0 mg 0 %
• Sodium 105.8 mg 4 %
• Carbohydrates 47 g 16 %
• Fiber 7.5 g 30 %
• Sugar 14.7 g ---
• Protein 4.6 g 9 %
• Vitamin A 872 %
• Vitamin C 74 %
• Iron 9 %
• Calcium 9 %