How to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries (2010)
aht.seriouseats.com
aht.seriouseats.com
http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/05/12/the-quest-for-french...
I believe Kenji Lopez-Alt, the author of the Serious Eats article, is the "Former Cooks Illustrated Test Cook" quoted at the end of Dave Arnold's article.
(Everything at Cooking Issues is amazing, especially Dave Arnold's weekly podcast; also, you can get Pectinex Ultra SPL from Modernist Pantry online).
Funny. I tend to think of super thin fries as an American thing. Fries from McDonald's, in particular, taste like cardboard to me.
Then again, I'm Belgian.
So, last time this article came up on HN I generously filed it under "maybe fries in fast food chains in the US are different than fries in US fast food chains everywhere else".
Everytime I go back to a McDonalds in Canada I find the food just tastes better. It's still fast food, but I'm enjoying it so much more.
They say that McDonald's adapt their recipes to the taste of the country they're in, which these anecdotal observations would support :)
It's a shame we don't have 5 Guys though...
There's actually a second type of American fries that I think is somewhat better than the ones at McDonald's. They're called Cajun fries [1]. They're made in an oven and are a bit spicy. You can get them at cheap fast food places like Checkers or fancier hamburger places like Five Guys.
[1] http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/cajun-oven-fr...!
If you can access this 30 min radio programme from the BBC about chips (from June 2010), you might find it interesting. It features a segment on Belgian fries
"In Belgium the oven chip hasn't caught on. Instead friterie shops proliferate, and Belgians take their chips very seriously. How the potato arrived in Europe remains contentious, but the Belgians are confident that it was them, and not the French, who invented the "French" fry. Ray Kershaw visited the Friet Museum in Bruges established to celebrate their national fry with director Eddie Van Belle."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sqkgb (segment starts at 18:33 seconds)
Just a wink to the ridiculous conflict that goes on between French-speaking-Belgians and the Dutch-speaking-Belgians, now for years.
If you called them that in Belgium I bet you would cause a riot. ;-)
Slightly thicker (square) fries are just called fries (patat): http://i.imgur.com/tui5FDe.jpg. These are served most often.
The big rectangular fries are referred to as Flemish fries (vlaamse frieten): http://i.imgur.com/QDwv9IA.jpg.
Anyway, in Belgium people still use beef fat for the perfect fries.
Anyway, still appreciate the article, it just started with the wrong premises.
If nothing else, I appreciate that the author laid out his criteria for selection, and didn't just jump straight into it.
That's a pretty decent acknowledgement that other perspectives exist.
"my thick-cut pub-style fries are super-potatoey and fantastic, and when I'm in the mood for them, my seasoned steak fries can't be beat, but for thin, super-crisp fries..."
The "taste like cardboard" is probably because McDonalds no longer fries in beef tallow.
I've had lots of wonderful french fries in the US -- and none was in a McDonalds (or Burger King, or Jack in The Box, or Arbies, or ...).
He doesn't mention what's he using to cut the fries?
In the TV series, In Search of Perfection, he goes the extra mile to figure out a way to reproduce the recipe in reasonably well equipped home kitchens. One of the many tricks is that having salt in the blanching water is mandatory. It helps to create the porous surface. His recipe is so good I can make delicious chips at home even without access to a temperature controlled fat fryer.
(Incidentally, Jamie Oliver blanches whole skinned potatoes before roasting them in the oven. I've tried that too and it does make a big difference to how they come up.)
But the vinegar trick was something I hadn't heard before. I'll have to give it a try, because it would seem to give some extra leeway with timing. For a home cook, that is an important factor.
Is that what Jamie Oliver recommends, or is it some further less standard trick?
Just one deviation: steam-dry step instead of putting the lid back on. The potatoes are poured out to a colander and left there for a few minutes.
I'm reading it more as a slow story book. The history of the dishes, their evolution and particularly the failures are fascinating in and of themselves. Some of the nicer ways to cut the difficult corners (or in a way, "cheat") are the only things I can apply in my own cooking. Well... maybe some of the more unexpected flavour combinations might come in handy too. Haven't had the opportunity to try yet.
The main feature are the stories. After the history of any single dish it's interesting to see the final application of the procedures, and just how far the kitchen staff at the Fat Duck are willing to go. (eg. "Store in cool for five days to properly infuse the flavours.")
I have yet to eat at the Duck, though. Maybe sometime next year...
It's so much better to visit the restaurant with some knowledge of Heston's philosophy and the dishes. Having skimmed through the book and watched some of Heston's shows, eating there was much more exciting. If you are interested, [here](http://rafal.io/posts/the-fat-duck.html) is my write-up of my evening there together with some photographs. I definitely recommend you attend. Even though it's very expensive, I always prefer to spend money on experiences I'll remember, such as this one.
I don't blanch them, I first soak them, dry them, then deep fry them twice per Alton Brown's guidance: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/chips-and-fis...
They're perfect.
bostik has also already mentioned that Heston Blumenthal covers a method in detail in the fish and chips episode of his In Search of Perfection series. I've only gone all the way with this method once, but it is fairly close to what we did at the restaurant, only we never froze our fries, only refrigerated them. It does make nicer fries than simply double frying, but not by a wide margin.
Fries are a bit of an ongoing project for me. I'm trying to find some reasonable method to have nice baked fries. What I get so far is serviceable, but not nearly as nice as frying them.
Edit: I forgot to add the second reason I wanted to make this post: Kenji has an ongoing series on Serious Eats called The Food Lab. He takes the same semi-scientific approach to certain dishes as in the submitted article. Another good post in the series is on dry-aging beef at home [0]. American's Test Kitchen [1] tends to do the same thing, but they only really share the final result with a few tidbits on their process of discovery.
[0] http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/03/the-food-lab-complete-gui...
Be careful, it's ridiculously easy to slice way fingertips with these.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Selkin-Borner-V1-Slicer-White/dp/B00...
etc etc etc.
Thick: http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/thick-cut-french-fries
Thin: http://www.chefsteps.com/classes/science-of-poutine/#/thin-c...
disclaimer: I'm working on a project with ChefSteps
I find it in general remarkable that McDonalds' business processes seem to be so foolproof that any one armed eyeless chimp is able to create BigMacs, Hamburgers and any other McDonalds dish always and anywhere in the world with the same high quality.
I could nitpick the GUI and such but the real issues were these fundamental problems. I was shocked. This happened for years.
Corporations like McDonald's rely on trade secrets: things that can't necessarily be patented, or which might be placed in danger by being patented. (Applying for a patent makes a recipe public record, and the lifetime of the patent is finite.) The secret recipe for Coke, or in this case the secrets behind McD's fries, are worth billions of dollars.
For all the McD's manager knew, Grant might have been a rival doing some corporate espionage. Or he might have been a government inspector of some sort. It sounds farfetched. But many people in store management in retail and fast food are very aware of these possibilities, and they're trained to err on the side of extreme caution.
Kenji isn't lying when he says the employee/manager in question could get fired for having given these out. Trade secrets in multi-billion-dollar corporations are a fascinating subject: they're often tied to the most seemingly minute details, and they're guarded as carefully as gold.
Even though I love McDonalds fries (you can almost taste the oppression and cultural hegemony), perfectly emulating McDonald's fries is always going to be a tiny niche. No competitor is going to want their fries to be exactly the same as in McDonalds since brands want to position themselves as interesting and unique.
That said, I don't really like the deception he (and his agents) practiced, but it seems like a minor sin in the scheme of things.
I have no real idea if the fries are a trade secret; that much is pure speculation. But my point was more that I wouldn't be surprised if the fries were a trade secret, as such is the norm for large food companies. You'd be surprised at the level of granularity involved in food company trade secrets. It's not so much about protecting the quality of McDonald's fries; it's about protecting the properties of those fries that permit logistics at McDonalds-level scale: fries that are designed a certain way as to always cook consistently despite freezing, transportation across complex supply lines, inconsistent on-site storage and preparation, etc. It's not a huge stretch to call McD's fries a product of engineering as much as nature.
Source: http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/investors/sec_filings.html
triple cooking (blanch, cool fry, hot fry) and the sciencey stuff about sugars and starches.
I love the batches and notes about temperature. This is something I need to start doing so I can recreate the sucessful cooking I do.
What I'd have liked to see more of was a discussion of different types of potato, and different treatment of the oil.
It's an easy read with recipes for several dishes and the book can serve as a really solid base for understanding how to be a much better cook.
I walked into a KFC and ask to buy a bag of batter, it is how funny they turned very serious all the sudden and asked me to leave to store.
I mean I just want to use it on real organic chicken. Anyone???
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2009/jul...
However the 'salt' they add isn't just salt. It is a mix of sugar and salt. This does work wonders for making them taste really nice, it works well with regular 'chips' too. Yet it is tantamount to deception, unless you are in the know you would never imagine that McDonalds fries are sugar coated.
I have none either. However I asked a chef I worked with why his chips tasted so good. He said that it was the sugar in the salt that made the difference, a trick he learned at a British McDonalds. Hearsay true, however sugar in the salt does actually work, as it should given our tastes: sugar/salt/fat = yum!
If you'd like to verify this fact at your local McDonalds go ahead and order some fries "no salt" and do the salting yourself. As a bonus, you'll also most likely ensure you get fresh fries. Don't do this in the drive thru, as it's kind of an asshole move. 3:20 for fresh fries.
[1] looks just like this: http://www.webstaurantstore.com/bulk-iodized-table-salt-4-lb...
I had lived with the lie of sugar in salt for more than a decade, glad to have that settled.
I am actually thinking of getting some of the 'Diamond' salt they use in the US. It is not just granulated, it has a 'diamond' shape to the crystals so you get the taste but not the high quantity of sodium.
Oh and for the record, I'm a huge Food Lab fan and have been a regular reader for some time... But I think that this Cook's Illustrated recipe beats Kenji's fries (and it's way easier too): http://deep-fried.food.com/recipe/easier-french-fries-cold-o...