Sweet potato fries. Photo: Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission

Sweet potatoes, long touted for their nutritional attributes, are soon to make a cameo in the fast food world.

To keep up with the mushrooming demand for sweet potato fries -- a snack which about a decade ago was primarily available from eateries that stocked their condiment caddies with liquid aminos and stuffed their Reubens with tempeh -- ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston has announced plans to build the world's first large-scale facility dedicated to sweet potato processing. According to a release, the Louisiana plant will allow Lamb Weston to meet the sweet potato fry needs of the nation's "largest quick-service restaurant chains."

"Sweet potatoes are a strategic priority for ConAgra foods," CEO Gary Rodkin says in the announcement.

René Simon, director of the Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission, isn't bothered that the deep-fryer has helped turn the spotlight on his state's signature Beauregard sweet taters (which, weirdly, many Louisiana farmers call "yams," a misnomer that entered the Pelican State's vocabulary at the behest of a 1950s marketing exec).

"This is the South," he laughs, telling Slashfood: "Don't we fry everything?"

These delectable oven-roasted sweet-potato fries would be fine by themselves, but Pinch My Salt gussies them up with buttermilk blue cheese dipping sauce. Get the recipe here.

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