Sweet potato fries are exorbitantly expensive if you buy them as frozen fries! (At least in Sainsbury's/Tesco)

[MoneyMilk]

You can buy regular potatoes in the veg section for about 70p per kg in Sainsbury's and Tesco.
The cheapest frozen chips are about double that £1.30 to £1.40 which seems kinda reasonable.

Sweet potatoes are £1.19 per kg in the veg section.
But the cheapest frozen sweet potato fries are almost £6 in Sainsbury's and even more expensive, £7 per kg, in Tesco, that's a mark up of 5/6 times!
They are even more expensive than some fresh meat products like chicken drumsticks, chicken thighs and beef burgers etc which seems crazy.

Obviously I will be chopping up my own sweet potatoes rather than paying that ridiculous price but just posting for anyone who wasn't aware of the incredible mark up.

I do my main food shop at Aldi and bought a pack of frozen sweet potato fries for £1.99 today.

It's because frozen sweet potato fries require more processing and additional ingredients than regular chips because of the texture and integrity of sweet potatoes, allso because they're not made in the same huge quantities as they're not as popular so there aren't as large economies of scale.

According to Aldi website they are £2.45 for 500g pack which is almost £5 per kg.
Presumably you got a slightly discounted price.

They do a £1.99 pack too, I bought them not long ago. Aldi is a bit of an odd one though, their fries and sweet potato fries are equally as processed (normal ones have xanthan gum ffs) and have an equal balance of potato vs added ingredients. Most supermarkets is around 98% for regular and then sweet potato about 90%.

Nope, they were £1.99 for the pack, no discount.

Not very nice either.

I know this isn’t very mumsnet but I much prefer the processed ones though. We eat a lot in our house as DD loves them and we’d rather she had sweet potatoes than regular chips. But whilst we do our own, I’m not so keen. Whatever they are putting on them makes them much nicer.

I agree! We love them a bit burnt and caramelised, dipped in mayo.....😋

The last frozen ones we had ,the brand name escapes me had a weird soap like taste.
Back to crinkle cut chips.

If you soak the chopped sweet potatoes chips for at least an hour in cold water, and then lay them out to dry, you will have a better chase of getting them crispy, or at least less soggy. This process removes some of the starch from the edges of the cut sweet potatoes.

To turn potatoes into fries you just have to chop them and fry them.
Sweet potatoes have a different consistency and don't fry in the same way. You get a soggy mess if you try. There are different techniques but usually you would soak them, then parboil them, immerse them in a light batter, fry them and then toss them in something (cornstarch for example) to stop them sticking together.

It's obviously going to require more time and expense so the markup from the raw vegetable is going to be more.

The last frozen ones we had tasted of a strange soapy aftertaste.

Buckle in, all potatoes and root vegetables are going up due to the wet weather the harvests have been awful.

I make my own oven sweet potato fries, tossed in polenta. Its never occurred to me to buy them.

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/polenta-sweet-potato-fries-herby-dip