Finally, the perfect recipe for french fries is here! An innovative method from the renowned Kenji López-Alt’s The Food Lab has made these hot chips so crisp that they retain their crispness long after they have cooled down. You hardly ever find fries this good, even in posh bistros!
Making handmade French fries from scratch only to find that they start to lose their crispness before they are even served is the most disheartening experience. This is what happens when you make homemade fries the old-fashioned technique, which entails soaking in water and then twice frying.
Thanks to the amazingly thorough research on french fries published in Kenji López-Alt’s The Food Lab, it has taken me years to develop the recipe for homemade french fries with Chef JB. The fries are crispy on the exterior and fluffy on the inside, and they stay crunchy long after you’ve finished eating the burger or the fries, for instance. The ideal french fry!
The crispy endurance is very amazing. These fries remain crunchy even after cooling off!
Please be advised that this post is lengthy because I want to give newbies who have never prepared French fries the confidence to try this method and explain the “why” behind it. To proceed to the recipe, recipe video, or even Dozer, if you’re an expert, click here.
First Secret Crispiness Tip Cut fries using a serrated knife.
- Never soak; only rinse
- Ten minutes of gentle simmering in vinegar water (top-secret crispiness trick #2! No, you cannot taste vinegar.
- frequently shallow-fry
French fry method
The conventional way to make french fries is to twice fry the raw potatoes after soaking them in water first. This still serves as a common teaching strategy in many taverns and restaurants and was formerly the norm in cooking schools.
Using this technique will produce crispy fries when the fries are still hot from the fryer. But before they even get to the table, they start to lose their crispiness, which is the first problem. I also learned how significant the potato is in this traditional method. You can get different levels of crispiness depending on the potato quality and even the season because the starch and sugar content of potatoes vary throughout the year. This is still flawed even if you use the ideal.
Well, this situation won’t remain clear-cut and unpredictable behavior is no longer acceptable. So, the old technique was dropped. It’s time to think about modern methods that deliver better, more reliable results!
In all honesty, it’s not just me. Restaurants today use a number of methods to create the ideal crispy French fries since the world has evolved. Some folks will go to tremendous lengths, like frying something three or four times, letting it rest all night, or just frying it in beef dripping.
We don’t have to participate in any of these tedious restaurant kitchen practical jokes, though. The method I’m going to share with you today is suitable for use by any home cook. It is an adaptation of Kenji Lopez-Alt’s famous cookbook The Food Lab recipe for french fries. It isn’t
What you need?
Here is everything you need to make your dreams of crispy french fries come true. That’s it, indeed.
The variety of potato matters. To make crispy fries, you need potatoes that are starchy and floury.
The vinegar used to boil the potatoes is one of the greatest fries’ best-kept secrets. The vinegar flavor vanishes entirely after cooking. See Step 4 below for the justification.
To ensure that the potatoes are well-seasoned, salt is used to season the water.
When frying, use oil. I use oils with neutral flavors, such as canola or vegetable oil. Reusing the oil: The oil may be used a maximum of four times. It won’t even be necessary to stoop. Allow it cool, then as you look around, pour into jars to store in the pantry.
How to make crisp, crunchy French fries
If you want to prepare meals in large quantities, fry the fries all the way through Fry #1, let them cool, and then freeze them until you’re ready to cook. then cook #2 from frozen. Handy!
1.Cut fries
first Cutting the fries is the first step. For a straightforward yet efficient method to produce crispy fries you might not have seen before, use a serrated knife to cut the potatoes. Unnoticeable to the naked eye, it produces a rougher surface with more surface area for the fries to crisp up on.
What size fries should be cut? The ideal batons are 6 mm / 1/4″ in diameter for the best crispiness and fluffy inside. Thicker equals less crisp. reduced internal
2.Continue to be submerged in water to avoid browning
As you make further cuts, keep the fries submerged in water to avoid browning. Actually, no soaking time is necessary. This can be easily fixed by giving the potatoes a short wash before boiling them in vinegar water.
3.RINSE
After all of the fries have been cut, put them in a colander and give them a 15- to 20-second rinse under running water. This is the first step in the process to remove excess sugar from the surface of the potatoes (a more thorough justification for this process’s “why” will be given; in a nutshell, it helps with crispiness, of course!). Since the interiors don’t come into contact with water when cooking, they become fluffy.
4.When cooking for superior crinkles, use vinegar water.
The potatoes should be rinsed before adding them to a pot with salt, vinegar, and cold water. When something is brought to a boil at high heat, the heat is immediately turned down to low, hardly raising the surface. Cook for ten minutes. The “why” of this action is outlined in the section below.
Purpose of cooking in vinegar water?
This is where it gets quite clever; Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats identified a straightforward step that truly makes a difference. The short version is as follows, however the long version is actually scientific in nature:
Simmering eliminates the excess sugars that can cause the fries to brown too much before they have a chance to fully crisp.
Yes, I did try with alternative techniques, such as cooking without vinegar, cooking for shorter or longer lengths of time, and boiling swiftly rather than gently simmering, in case you were curious. Ten minutes of simmering vinegar water is effective. Don’t cut it short or rush it!
5.DRAIN AND DRY
Use a spider or a big slotted spoon to take the potatoes from the water and place them in a colander. After carefully spreading the potatoes out on two trays covered in tea towels, they were steam dried for five minutes. Because of the heat that is still present, we won’t need to pat them dry.
7.FRY
#1 Important: For your safety, be sure to wait 10 seconds between each batch of extra batches of potatoes added to the oil. As you can see in the images below, when you add potato, the oil bubbles up fairly high and furiously. If you add all of the potato at once, the oil will bubble up higher and faster, which is hazardous. I’m speaking from firsthand experience in this case.
Three batches of fries need to be made. Make three equal stacks out of the boiling potatoes. Fry #1 will be prepared in three batches in a 24 cm/10″ pot. To ensure that each batch of fries may float in a single layer in the oil, adjust the number of batches according to the size of your pot.
- Utilizing a spider or slotted spoon, carefully pour 1/3 of the first batch into the oil.
- Before adding a further third of batch 1, wait ten seconds. It’s essential to take a moment before adding more fries to stop the oil from overheating. Make the most of the chance to stock up on fries.
- Repetition: Add the final phrase after 10 seconds.
- Fry for 50 seconds, rotating the fries once or twice throughout that time. Once all the fries are in, set the timer.
COOL FOR 30 MINUTES.
Using a slotted spoon, remove the fries from the oil, and then spread them out in a single layer on a tray lined with paper towels. They won’t be crispy yet and will be pallid.
Fry #1 should be repeated for the final two batches using the same staggered method (i.e., 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3). Before beginning each batch, make sure the oil is once again at 205°C/400°F. Then let the fries cool completely on several trays lined with paper towels for 30 minutes.
9.FRY THEM UP IN STOVE
#2! Before heating the oil to 205°C/400°F once more, fries should be cooled. The remaining fries should now be cooked for a further 4 minutes, or until wonderfully golden and completely crispy.
Once the remaining fries have been transferred with a slotted spoon into a big bowl covered with paper towels, repeat the procedure.
Why not use a tray in place of a bowl to hold the fries? Fries are kept warm in a plate that still allows for oil drainage after they have been cooked. By doing this, the first batch will still be hot after the second batch has finished cooking. You’ll see later that when you’ve applied your chosen flavor to the meal, you can also toss it in the bowl.
How can I cook a large quantity of hot, fresh fries? Flash fried cooked fries for an extra 30 to 60 seconds to reheat them. You may then serve all the fries hot thanks to this.
10.SPRAYING!
When your fries are finished cooking, season them with salt or your preferred seasoning while they’re still hot to ensure the salt sticks. After you toss, serve! Although they are obviously best eaten when still sizzling hot, keep in mind that these fries will stay crispy for longer than 15 minutes!
Remember that because we blanched these French fries in salted water, they are also pre-seasoned on the inside. Therefore, avoid using too much seasoning salt. Use moderation when sprinkling, taste (I know, I hate to ask that of you), and then add more if you feel it need it.
Various seasoning options:
- Sea salt flakes or table salt. Larger-grained salts like Kosher salt or culinary salt don’t stick as well.
- Fresh rosemary is used in a recipe for rosemary salt. My favorite
- A salty seasoning mixture recipe for fries. Addictive!
- The following nori seasoning uses nori, a dried seaweed, that has been finely powdered. really fashionable
Phew!
I’m aware that’s a lot of data to process in the space of a few bits of fried potato. But for this recipe, I reasoned that since we tested these fries a LOT!!!, some people would find the explanations for some of the steps intriguing. Even if you’ve never tried oil frying before, I want to encourage everyone to give this a try. Remember that these chips were simply lightly fried. Shallow frying is less complicated, cleaner, safer, and resource-intensive than deep frying. There are many great reasons to give it a try.
