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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

If you want the best fries in the world, I'd highly recommend going to Belgium and getting them from any random frituur. The market is competitive, and anybody making lousy frites is unlikely to survive long.

They really are amazing: about 1cm square in cross section crunchy and crispy on the outside, but not overly so, light, fluffy, and the perfect balance of dry/moist inside. Never oily, always cooked fresh, and without exception, delicious. Though I will confess that I never got behind putting Mayo on top.

Anybody fooling around trying to replicate the original McDonalds recipe is shooting for the wrong target. Shoestring fries don't have the inside/outside texture contrast that makes for fry perfection.

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I like how people will be snobby about everything. Belgian-style French fries can be good, but that doesn't mean that they're better than the rest, it's a matter of taste. I personally prefer McDonalds-style fries which are smaller and more homogeneous. And no I'm not ashamed of that, it's fried potatoes, not some kind of fancy technical delicacy.

There's no wrong target. Some people enjoy deep-dish pizza. It kinda baffles me but I wouldn't be telling them that they're "shooting for the wrong target" if they tried to replicate this particular recipe because that's what they like.

Sorry, I didn't think my claim that a particular style of French fry is best required a disclaimer that it was a statement of opinion and not objective fact :-)

I do think that entirely too few people in the US have ever tried anything other than fries of smaller cross section and that properly cooked Belgian style fries would be a revelation for a great number of people over here.

Besides, the whole premise of TFA is based on snobbery and a bit of nostalgia. They're recreating the old McDonalds fries, not the new because of the perceived superiority of the old ones, after all.

I only argue that if you're going to be a snob, you should at least be a well-informed snob, though perhaps my intended humor came across poorly over the internet.

Imagine reading an article written by somebody who has never tried deep dish pizza (or any other kind) writing about their quest to replicate an old Dominos crust recipe.

>I do think that entirely too few people in the US have ever tried anything other than fries of smaller cross section

Unless the American eats only at fast food restaurants (which is probably a decent sized group), then I can't imagine that to be true. There are fries with many difference cross section sizes even in a regular grocery freezer aisle.

And many restaurants frequently serve fries ranging from skinny shoestring to full on "potato logs" that are easily an inch diameter cross section.

Oh American restaurants have tried everything - potato wedges, cottage fries, waffle fries, sweet potato fries, steak cut, truffle, garlic, cheese, chili, curly, oven baked, even poutine. Sometimes more than one kind at the same restaurant.

That's the thing about America. Somebody from every country is here, making their traditional foods or riffing on them with new ingredients and processes. I can go downtown and try Ethiopian, two British pubs, two Vietnamese, French (high and low styles), three Indian places, 4 Thai, 6 kinds of Mexican. All run by folks from those places.

The problem isn’t restaurants, the problem is the American preference for cheap, bland, calorie dense food. With such a wide range of cultures and individual preferences the most widely acceptable option ends up being fairly mediocre.

Plenty of exceptions exist, but tend to be very local.

Hi, I see you just arrived from 1980. Welcome to our century! Here in our time, Americans eat all kinds of ethnic foods and some people wear face masks. Thai food is currently in vogue, we now have a spicy sauce called Sriracha (born in the USA), and you can get jalapeño poppers at fast food joints. Oh, and the food trucks! The President made a campaign promise to have a taco truck on every corner!

A promise[1] not kept[2].

[1]: He expressed it as a threat.

[2]: I think the hope that we'd have a taco truck on every corner was probably more unifying than anything else that's happened or been done by anyone in the US since.

gosh, even around 1980, I remember my risk-averse parents getting chinese and indian food in nowhereville, and demon-core hot buffalo wings were popular.

You say that, yet I will take that as evidence supporting my argument. Chinese food served in US restaurants has little in common with actual Chinese food, it’s common for them to have completely different menus for people who actually speak Chinese with a different set of dishes. Indian food went through a similar transition, where there is a distinctly American take generally served.

PS: Hot isn’t a complex flavor it’s exactly what’s left over after you extract the complexity from many ethnic dishes.

Agreed on the second menus. While eating inside my local Chinese place a few years back I saw an amazing dish being eating by another patron and was given the scoop. It was literally a second menu, no photos, all Chinese. Everything I've tried has been great but it's definitely different food from the main menu.

Americans eat ethnic foods in the same way local Chinese restaurants serve authentic Chinese cuisine, or pizza is an authentic ethnic Italian dish.

American Thai food as generally consumed is rapidly becoming it’s own thing that’s somewhat related to actual Thai food. Like California rolls or hotdogs what’s left over after the free market has it’s say is a very different thing.

I mean, that's what happens as a cuisine gets passed down from generation to generation: it evolves. Cuisine and language are similar in that respect. The sort of English spoken in the US is no less "real" than the sort of English spoken in England; why would the Chinese food made and sold by the descendants of Chinese immigrants in the US be any less "real" than the Chinese food made and sold in China? They both evolved from the same point, and simply diverged and evolved.

And that's what we're seeing now with Thai food. As the generations get further and further removed from the original immigrants, the cuisine continues to evolve in its own direction. And why shouldn't it?

It's also worth remembering that restaurants are not always (and in fact, rarely are) representative of the actual local cuisines. There's still heavy emphasis on the good ol' home cooked meal (as hard as frozen food chains might try to supplant home cooking), and that's where you see both the preservation of tradition and the proliferation of experimentation, marketability and profit be damned. Indeed, looking at these home cooked meals, it becomes readily evident that the oft-denigrated Chinese holes-in-the-wall and small town pizzerias are far closer to authenticity than the fancy gastropubs and fusion restaurants of snobbish preference; authentic cuisine puts form over function, and heartiness over presentation. Authenticity comes from humility and self-awareness; it doesn't need to try to impress anyone's palate.

It’s the speed of change that suggests it’s more than just the natural evolution of food. I am not saying it’s a purely negative effect, just describing what’s happens when a new ethnic food gets introduced to the American pallet.

I stand by my original point that you can’t call something authentic X after you significantly later what it is. Small town pizzerias and snobbish restaurants are both very distinct from classic Italian food.

That said, if you go to Italy today they very much cater to tourists expecting food their familiar with. Further, while the tomato was only imported in the 16th century, that’s plenty far back to confuse the issue.

And pretty much any Italian dish you make with meat, is American Italian. Made by Italian-Americans once they got to America and meat was plentiful.

So does that make it "not Italian"? It was first-generation cooks that made it. Certainly not "Traditional Italian" but so what?

Yeah the guy we know at our favorite Indian place says "You know this is Restaurant Indian Food. Some time ask me, and I'll have Mom make you the stuff we eat at home!"

So we're gonna ask the next time.

The "plenty of exceptions" part is the key! There are truly a lot of exceptions, and you can subsist eating entirely local, authentic, interesting, and healthy food in any mid-sized American city if you make it a priority.

Everything tastes better when you're on vacation. Less stress. Heightened senses It's science.

I think the main factor for those - and lots of other 'traditional' chip shops in both Belgium and the Netherlands - is the use of beef tallow instead of the generic 'frituurvet', which is mostly sunflower oil.

I mean don't get me wrong, at home we have a fryer and we make the odd load of homemade chips as well and they are the tits, but it's not the same.

We used to be able to get solid blocks of frying fat, probably was beef tallow or something like that, but it's all saturated fats (I believe) and bad for one's health and the like. According to the wisdom of the time anyway; I don't know, there may have been some lobby behind it (like how the wheat lobby made fat the boogeyman, and now someone is making the sugar / carb industry look bad).

The evidence seems pretty compelling that sugar / carbs are bad.

A lot of the things humans put in their mouths just aren't safe long term. We're pretty good at making suboptimal long-term choices.

Without being able to run experiments on real human bodies over full life spans like I suggest here [1], it's impossible to quantify.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235013 (I advocate for this rather frequently)

Potatoes are pretty much pure carbs.

You can get calories from protein, fats and carbs, so choose a balance diet.

“Life ain’t worth a dime without a little colesterol” Leah Chase

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Chase

Sugar is bad, carbs are bad, fat is bad, animal protein is bad, soy is bad. Not a whole lot left to eat.

There are a lot of vegetables, whole grains, and beans. You can make an excellent diet just from those.

Small amounts of any of those "bad" things is just fine. The problem is that many people have come to see them as the core of their diet, with vegetables as an unpleasant supplement to be minimized. Learn to cook vegetables well, and vast frontiers of interesting, delicious food open up.

Indian food is an excellent starting point[1], for either vegetarian or vegan eating. For that matter most authentic Asian cuisines are heavy on the vegetables, with small amounts of meat for flavor, which is also a very healthy way to eat (especially if you substitute whole grains for the white rice).

Plenty of other cultures have thrived on vegetable-based diets. It's really not that difficult. You just need to get over the notion that "food" consists of a meat main dish, a starch, and a desultory, obligatory vegetable side.

[1] https://www.priyakrishna.me/indianish is a current favorite of mine.

The problem, generally, is that people are accustomed to certain tastes, and often "healthy" options are overloaded with things to make them taste good. Mayo on salads, tenderstem broccoli roasted with olive oil, corn cobs on a BBQ, etc. - and Indian food, at least as it's known in the West, is no exception. Curries tend to use a lot of ghee or oil, and I'm fairly sure that people skimping on the fat at home is why home recipes (usually from health-conscious/vegetarian/vegan recipe sites) never quite hit the mark. Vegetables can taste great! ...So long as you smother them with the junk that actually gives it the flavor and texture you like.

Think of a dish composed mainly of "vegetables, whole grains, and beans" with minimal carbs and even more minimal butter/oil. What is the recipe? Then, consider if it tastes good - as good or better than similar recipes where more carbs and oil is used. I've been cooking a variety of meat and vegetarian dishes of various cuisines for years and I know of no such dish I'd want to eat with regularity. Brown rice, steamed chicken breast, and cauliflower just doesn't cut it for my palette, and I suspect the same for the majority of people who know how good a Sunday roast or pizza tastes.

There's nothing wrong with a dish containing a fair bit of fats. A lot of plans call for getting 30% of your calories from fat, which is about 12% of food by mass (since fats are about twice as calorie-dense as carbs or proteins).

Controlling total calories is important in weight loss, and that's a matter of portion control. A diet with a good proportion of fat will be fairly satisfying; you just need to limit the total amount of it. That'll still leave you a little hungry. There's no magic that makes calorie deficit pleasant. Tweaking the ratios can make it less unpleasant, a matter of personal taste.

It doesn't need to be junk. You don't even necesarily need a calorie deficit, if you're happy with your weight. There exist good vegetarian and vegan diets with appropriate amounts of fat and appropriate total calories, and they don't at all resemble "brown rice, steamed chicken breast, and cauliflower".

Vegetables usually have carbs, and some have a lot of sugar. Whole grains are carbs.

If carbs are bad, you can't have those.

Carbs aren't "bad". You should be getting around 40% of your calories from carbs.

The problem is that some foods have nothing but carbs, and if you eat a lot of those, you'll either consume too many calories overall or fail to get necessary nutrients. So eat fewer white, starchy foods like potatoes, and more leafy foods, squashes, and other colorful foods.

Similarly, whole grains bring a lot of vitamins and fiber, while refined grains like white rice are reduced to just the starch. It's just fine that those whole grains also have carbs in them. That's actually a good thing, becuase you do need calories for energy. You just need more than that.

Lack of exercise is Most Bad. If healthy living were a decision tree, amount of exercise each day would absolutely be the root node.

Most people can get away with eating whatever they want with a modest amount of rigorous exercise each day. Granted, they still need to control their food intake and ensure they are getting required nutrients, but that's pretty straightforward.

Yeah, new research seems to show its the opposite... animal fats are extremely good for you, and its plant fats - specifically linoleic acid - that promote metabolic dysfunction.

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of shitty "frituurs" in Belgium that just fry bought frozen fries instead of the double fried freshly cut ones. Problem is, they get taken over by new owners very quickly (also the the barrier to entry the market is very low).

Although checking out the Google Reviews before a visit filtering by the Belgian names of the reviewers' is generally a good enough measure to go by.

But please, do try them with mayo!

For anyone in the UK looking for the same kind of mayonnaise that you get in Belgium, the closest I've found is this Polish one, available from Tesco or your local Polski sklep.

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/262110048

> But please, do try them with mayo!

It's astonishing to me that mayo is not the default dipping sauce for fries in the US, considering mayo is put on everything in the US.

Mayo with hot sauce is my favorite fry dip by a staggering margin.

Utah has a local condiment called "fry-sauce" which is I believe equal parts ketchup and mayo, and some pickle juice. It's pretty good.

> But please, do try them with mayo!

On the rare occasions I make fries at home, I like to mix some curry powder into mayo for dipping, a taste I acquired on a trip to Italy.

> Shoestring fries don't have the inside/outside texture contrast that makes for fry perfection.

They absolutely do have the contrast, where are you getting your shoestring fries?! :P

The only thing is, shoestring fries need to be eaten within ~10 minutes of being fried, before they dry out. Maybe you let yours sit around too long, or get them from somewhere that does.

Thicker fries are too close to baked potatoes for me. :( I want golden cripsy goodness!

Thankfully there are 100 types of fries because people like 100 types of things. :)

As a Belgian, I was looking in horror at that recipe. Why would people put sugar on their fries?!

So I'm glad you like the Belgian fries. What I've always learned to be key is that we fry our cut potatoes twice: once at 140°C, wait for them to cool down, and once at 175-180°C. Then you add salt, that's it.

And the mayo: I don't think many people like it like that when they eat fries at home, but it's easy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There is something very weird with mayo from a Belgian "frituur". I love it, I usually order mine with mayo on top, wrap them with paper and let it soak in on the drive home. Makes the fries delicous. And I order an extra packet of mayo on the side because they usually don't put enough on top.

But, in any other situation if mayo is involved I'm grossed out to the point of puking. Even when I just smell the mayo (from the same brand) someone is putting on their plate of vegetables or whatever.

do you remove them from oil when raising temperature? What kind of oil do you use?

Yes, you remove them completely from the oil and let them rest a bit. Mostly the fries are baked in 'fat' rather than oil though. Besides this, the type of potato that is used is pretty important too, as its consistency will impact a great deal too. The potatoes we use at home are called 'bintjes', they are a bit 'flowery'.

Yes, when double frying you remove fries from the oil and allow moisture near the surface to evaporate so it becomes tacky. For oil any common oil works but saturated fats get fries crispier. Even oven roasted potatoes in ghee and can almost get a french fry crunch. Duck fat is next level. Obviously much slower than frying.

>Why would people put sugar on their fries?!

FWIW, they're brined in a solution containing sugar, it's not like there's sugar sprinkled on them. Very little of it makes it into the final product and in my experience brined fries aren't perceptibly sweet in an obvious way. It assists with browning and a crunchy exterior.

Some years ago a different “MacDonalds french fries” recipe was posted, I think it did the rounds on HN, and it was much more like the recipe you describe: fried twice and cooled between, no sugar, add salt.

There are some other variations, like blanching the potatoes with vinegar, or freezing the potatoes overnight between frying. The idea is to make them crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

No "best" fry exists just as there is no single most attractive piece of art. It's all personal taste, which is why the author is trying to replicate something.

There's no disputing taste.

Yes! So great, especially after a night of drinking Belgian beer. These Belgian frites are the best fries I've ever had (and I'm old enough to have had the original McDonald's fries.)

I love them topped with mayo but some places have a curry option that is even better!

The best fries I ever had (as an American who has eaten fast food since the 70s, including the legendary McDonalds fries) were served in Switzerland. The guy quickly sliced up the potato and prepared the fries in some sort of wok with some sort of oily substance that I always assumed was clarified butter, but may very well have been beef tallow or some other concoction.

They also don't brine the fries in sugar afaik.

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