French Fries Recipe

Easy fast french fries made from scratch! These are the best fries you will ever have.
Season them to your taste - salt & pepper? Curry? Cayenne and chili powder. Fresh garlic. Grated parmesan. Spicy mustard. No matter how you trick out these chips, they're guaranteed delicious.

Step 1 Materials

• Potatoes - 1 per person is more than enough!
• 1qt/ltr cooking oil - peanut oil is best
• Seasonings - I just used salt, but this is where you can get creative!
• Knife for cutting
• Colander for rinsing
• Pot for frying

Comments

[karlmnz]

Hmmmm, can't wait to try it! What does the soaking/refrigerate in ice-water do? And what is better 30mins or 2 days soak?

[scoochmaroo]

The ice makes the sliced potatoes colder faster. Frying icy potatoes makes them crisper, but I have never been patient enough to wait 2 days to find out!

[SinAmos]

Peanut oil is the best. This must be emphasized.:)

[bgmiller]

Soaking them in water also helps removes some of the starch which also helps them crisp better (Supposedly). Here is some more info:
Potatoes and Ice Water

Many recipes for French Fries (as well as other potato recipes) recommend soaking the potatoes in cold water for thirty minutes. The rationale is that some of the starch is leached away and helps the texture of the potato, but this simply doesn't make any sense. The starch on the outside edges of the cut potatoes may wash away, but significant starch or nutrients are not likely to be changed. There may be some slight change in the moisture content of the potato, however.

It is more likely that the inside of the chilled potato takes longer to cook. Consequently, the outside will be crispy and the inside soft and moist. This recipe was tested both ways (with and without soaking the cut potatoes in ice water) and the soaked potatoes were lighter and fluffier on the inside and crispier on the outside. (From: http://www.drgourmet.com/recipes/extras/frenchfries.shtml)

[scoochmaroo]

Awesome tips!!

[macbutnot]

bgmiller:  about the starch, if you try this out, you'll actually see it happening.  I used to work in a restaurant which made around 800lbs (weight of the potatoes, not the finished product) of everyday by almost exactly this recipe.

We'd soak the potatoes whole for an hour or so and then slice them into fries and put them in new water where they'd rest for about 3 hours in a cool cellar.  After they were done here, we'd take them up to our big ol' sinks and rinse them off for a good 5 minutes.  Even in the last step, you can see the starch foaming in the water!

Aside from the soak/cut/soak/rinse method we used, the only major difference was that we only used suet (beef fat) for frying, and the old guys who had been running the place since they were teenagers insisted that the fries be cool before they were fried a second time.

Our fries were good enough to be rated best in the city for something like 10 years in a row by the readers of our local entertainment magazine.  People line up around the block, killing off their whole lunch hours to get at these things, even in the dead of winter!

Good job, schoochmaroo!

[WILL62]

Bags of FF you get at the store (Ore Idas) have already had the first "FRY" at the plant before they were packaged....... so I put my FFs on a cookie sheet after the 1st fry at 325 and put them in the freezer til frosty then I deep fry a 2nd time at 360 makes for super crunchers....be careful with the hot grease and frozen anything it may bubble up and burn ya....

[vincent7520]

Perfect.
Double fry is the secret. That's how my grand mother cooked them and I can tell you for sure that it's not a trick from bad memory as this was the only thing that she cooked right (she was such a terrible cook ! …)
Love them ! …

[TheCritic]

Nice job, I also liked the comment about the beef fat. A lot of steak house restaurants use the same method using beef fat in the fryer. Gives them a GREAT taste. The only thing I do different is to par boil the fries till outside starts to get rough keeping the inside uncooked then freeze for twenty minutes to remove excess moisture from the potato. It makes for a much more crispy fry and it STAYS crispy longer. Then I do your Double fry method but the second temp I use is 380 degrees. For a really crispy ext on the fry, Try corn starch lightly sprinkled on the outside of the fry. The science behind this is that starch in the potato moves to the outside and that is what makes for the crunchy outer layer. By soaking the potatoes, it allows moisture absorbed by the potatoes to push MORE starch to the outside of the potato, by adding starch to the exterior makes for the crispiest fries. BK uses this method in there restaurants now. Nice instructable.

[TheCritic]

Nice job, I also liked the comment about the beef fat. A lot of steak house restaurants use the same method using beef fat in the fryer. Gives them a GREAT taste. The only thing I do different is to par boil the fries till outside starts to get rough keeping the inside uncooked then freeze for twenty minutes to remove excess moisture from the potato. It makes for a much more crispy fry and it STAYS crispy longer. Then I do your Double fry method but the second temp I use is 380 degrees. Nice instructable.

[karancheema2010]

This is very tasty

[broman-1]

Potatoes in water is for nothing other than keeping them from oxidizing (browning.) Potatoes do this shockingly fast, so basically, as you're cutting your potatoes, you store them in cold water to keep them from getting black and gross (which can happen in about 4 minutes exposed to open air.) Nothing more, doesn't affect cooking, doesn't change starch content.

[JunkBot Bob]

Hm, that's funny, my other comment accusing scoochmaroo of plagiarizing Emeril's recipe is gone. Why would that be moderators? Please, tell me why you would pull my comment and not this unattributed and blatantly plagiarized instructable? Does copyright mean nothing to you?

[Foaly7]

You must have not read this instructable at all, or you wouldn't have missed the qualifier for plagiarism that is not there. She didn't claim that she came up with the recipe, but that she uses the recipe. I know for a fact that I have had many an idea myself that somebody else has already had, but I did not know at the time. You shouldn't accuse someone of something that they clearly haven't done without knowing the whole facts.

[NachoMahma]

.  Was the comment pulled or did it never appear? It may have gotten hung up in the filters. If that's the case, it may be Monday before it shows up.
.  From what I can tell, Robot does take copyright/plagiarism seriously.

[Syren06]

French fries doesn't come from France, they're from Belgium!

[Goodhart]

Indeed, but I "think" the name comes from the "french cut" of the potato, just as there are Frenched string beans (after the way they are cut).

[Doctor What]

Tasty.

[neverbeenkissed]

why are they called french

[Goodhart]

It is similar to the "French cut" of certain string beans, I think

[thegreat58]

Well If scoochmaroo plagerized Emeril then he plagerized me, I was making french fries that way before Emeril Lagasse was in three cornered pants. I make my fries now-a-days by boiling the potatoes for about 5 min in salted water, drain put in the fridge till dead cold, chip then fry, crisp on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside. Unofficial instructable.

[steveastrouk]

+1 I like that way too. We also cook them in low (<80C) oil, chill and fry.

[WILL62]

the British put "MALT VINEGAR" on their frys er chips, its a nice change but I am a Heinz catsup man.....

[albylovesscience]

awesome pics !  and tasty food!

[Taigatoradora]

I just washed them, I didnt feel like waiting I'm hungry

[ElvenChild]

 Heres what I do I take a few potatoes scrub em down good. dice them up wash em again and put em in the frier for 5-7 minutes.

[trf]

i usualy do them in a deep frier at 350 degrees

[Dr.Bang]

 But this is good because most people don't exactly have deep fryers easily accessible. Great instructable! love the crisp taste of good fries :P

[lilpepsikraker]

i love crunchy almost concrete fries. will try this sometime, bookmarked! 5*

[scoochmaroo]

Me too! Good luck :)

[knexsuperbuilderfreak]

Refrigerate at least 30 minutes and up to 2 days. i dont get this part

[scoochmaroo]

Means at least 30 minutes, no more than 2 days. So this is the step you can do up to 2 days in advance.

[ReCreate]

You should try oven baking them...Its probably healthier because it has less fat/grease/oil...and they end up almost perfect...you heat up the oven to like 340 degrees and you put them on a cookie sheet(metal) and they are good... Good i'ble, rated.

[Arshad115]

i havent tried the refrigerating and soaking thing....will give it a try soon!!...

[driesyo]

French Fries are bad realy bad the fries from belgium ar way much better

[shadow760]

yah well wer not in belgum so nu

[Wambotrot]

So?

[Doc Opa]

Just read Cook's Illustrated's article on cooking French fries starting with cold oil. I'm definitely going try the cold oil technique. Looks a lot easier and the fries absorbed less oil!

http://tiny.pl/37r8

[al145]

you have big potatoes i have small ones

[kitze]

Why do you need to refridgerate the fries before cooking?