Cooking crispy French fries.
It would seem that it is worth preparing the usual French fries. Sliced it, deep-fried it, salted it and it was ready.
But one nuance arises. remains crispy for the first two or three minutes after it is taken out of the fryer. And then, as it cools down, french fries It becomes limp and less tasty.
So our goal is deep fry potatoes so that it remains crispy even after it is served. Moreover, it remains relatively crispy even after cooling.
To make French fries you will need:
- Potato.
- Odorless vegetable oil for deep frying.
- Salt.
- Sugar. Approximately 2 heaped tablespoons per 2-2½ liters of water.
Making crispy French fries.
Peel the potatoes and cut into long strips. I usually cut straws with a cross-section of approximately 6x6 mm. Plus or minus bast shoes. In general, we don’t cut it too small, but we don’t cut it into logs either.
Place the chopped potatoes in a pan of cold water as soon as they are cut.
The meaning of this action:
Firstly, then the potatoes will not darken.
Secondly, it is necessary to wash off the starch, of which there is a lot in potatoes. The photo shows how cloudy the water became.
We wash the potatoes for about 20 minutes. Stir them a couple of times for the first five minutes, and then do not touch them so that the starch settles to the bottom.
We take the potatoes out of the water, trying not to disturb the contents of the pan too much, and rinse them under running water. Pour out all the starchy water from the pan, rinse the pan and place the washed potatoes in a clean pan.
Pour sugar into potatoes. At the rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per liter of water.
Pour cold water into the pan. A little, so that the potatoes are just covered with water. It is based on this amount of water that the amount of sugar is taken. Mix potatoes with sugar in water until the latter dissolves.
We leave the potatoes to take sweet baths for another 15 minutes.
During this time you can prepare for frying French fries.
Anyone who has a deep fryer uses it. I don’t have a deep fryer, because I don’t need it at all, so I’ll do it the old fashioned way, in a regular ladle.
Pour odorless vegetable oil into a ladle and put the ladle on fire. I use a small ladle because I don't cook on an industrial scale right away. So it takes me about 250-300 ml of oil. And I fry the French fries in parts.
Heat the oil properly. I check the degree of heating as follows. I throw a small piece of potato into the oil.
If this piece immediately begins to actively fry, it means the oil has warmed up properly.
If there is no active frying process, then we wait until the oil heats up and the piece begins to fry.
If a piece of potato immediately begins to darken and burn, it means the oil is overheated, set the ladle aside and let the oil cool slightly. Then return the ladle to the heat and check the temperature again with a new piece of potato.
Keep the heat under the ladle on medium so that the oil does not overheat or overheat.
Remove the chopped potatoes from the sweet water and dry with paper towels. We don’t take it all out at once, but in parts - as much as will be immediately put into the deep fryer.
Place the dried chopped potatoes into the heated oil.
You need to be careful here, because the moisture on the potato pieces instantly boils and can burn both itself and with small droplets of oil raised by the steam.
Deep fry the French fries until the potatoes begin to turn slightly golden in color.
And immediately take it out of the fryer onto paper towels so that they absorb excess oil.
Here the question quite legitimately arises: “And what did we get?” Something incomprehensible, completely different from the desired result. Where is the crispy crust, and what prevented us from finishing cooking it? French fries completely until ready?
Of course, you can finish frying it, as has always been done. But you won’t get a crispy crust on the potatoes. And even more so, the crust will not crunch after french fries will cool down.
So let's be patient. At this point, we gave the potatoes the opportunity to finish cooking inside. But we'll make the crust a little later.
In the same way, fry all the remaining potatoes in several stages to the same state. And also place on paper towels.
Let the potatoes cool completely! This is important, so don't rush it. and patiently wait for the potato slices to cool completely.
By the way, after this stage, you can freeze the potatoes and leave the resulting semi-finished product to wait in the wings.
When the potatoes have cooled, heat the oil again. The potatoes cool quite quickly, so I simply remove the ladle with oil from the heat while it cools, and when it’s time to fry, I return the ladle back to the heat.
And again, we also place these half-fried potatoes in hot oil in parts and only now fry them French fries until cooked - that is, until it turns golden brown.
Lyudmila Yakovenko
Chef of the Yunost cafe
French fries, also known as French fries or simply fries, are potatoes cut into cubes or slices, fried in hot fat of vegetable or animal origin.
Delicious French fries, when prepared with proper care, enhance the food around them. But a tasteless, industrial one in a decent place can ruin any impression. I always order fries and beef tartare in places that are new to me - this is the best way to decide whether I will come back here again.
What's wrong with frozen potatoes?
There is nothing wrong with frozen French fries. It can be prepared in two stages. On the first - boiled or cooked in oil at low temperature. At the second stage, it is brought to readiness in oil at high temperature. Between these stages it may be frozen.
It’s another matter if they use poor raw materials, or errors occur in the preparation technology. Then the potatoes may be oily or, conversely, dry, bitter, and will not crisp.
What kind of potatoes are suitable?
Moscow has big problems with raw materials. In the markets they know only about two types of potatoes - white and red. Finding out which specific variety is on the shelf, or buying potatoes of the same quality from the same supplier throughout the year is almost impossible.
French fries require a root vegetable that is high in starch and low in moisture. Red-skinned varieties often meet these requirements. The potatoes should be neither too wet nor too dry and in no case limp or flabby. Therefore, storage conditions are important. It is especially difficult to find suitable potatoes in the spring, before the new harvest.
Good potatoes produce fries with a golden crispy crust and aromatic, dense flesh.
Harmful?
They say that what goes into your mouth is good for you. , my mentor and teacher, in his book “Under the Apron” writes that “dividing food into healthy and unhealthy is a deeply discriminatory attitude, it always has the risk of being wrong.” I absolutely agree with this. Moreover, many ideas about what is harmful or useful are frankly contradictory.
Personally, I am for moderation and common sense. I don’t believe in diets and food prohibitions, especially if they are not supported by the recommendation of the attending physician. I believe in the healing properties of a healthy appetite and a delicious dinner after six in pleasant company. Do you want French fries with mayonnaise? Don't deny yourself! It’s stupid to deprive yourself of such great pleasure, which is still available and not prohibited (laughs). Modern man spends almost as much time and effort searching for and obtaining food as primitive man. And this is far from a matter of survival.
Is it difficult to cook?
Delicious French fries can be prepared in many ways, including at home (but why?).
First you need to have good potatoes. After this, you need to correctly build the technological process depending on the equipment you have and your task.
Cooking French fries in one step is almost impossible. It is important that the potatoes are cooked on the inside and not burnt on the outside. For this method, it needs to be cut into thin strips, washed to get rid of excess starch, dried and deep-fried. You'll need a high-power fryer with a lot of hot oil to keep the potatoes from cooking. There is a possibility that the finished fries will not be crunchy.
French fries in two stages
At Yunost we prepare French fries in two stages. First, we press the potatoes through a press, which carefully cuts them into cubes of equal thickness. We remove thin side trimmings; they are doomed to burn at the last stage and ruin everything. By the way, we use unpeeled potatoes - they have more flavor. Afterwards, deep-fry the chopped cubes at a temperature of 130 degrees for six minutes. Then dry and lightly sprinkle with a mixture of corn starch, powdered sugar and soda. Thanks to this, at the final stage the potatoes are fried more intensely and become browner.
The process of preparing French fries at the Yunost cafe
The potatoes are ready for final frying. Before this, it can either be shock-frozen or cooled and stored in the refrigerator. In both cases, the potatoes lose excess moisture. Before reaching the table, the prepared potatoes are fried at high temperature for about three minutes until golden brown and crunchy.
Do I need to add extra salt to my portion?
French fries should be well salted immediately after frying. It's a terrible disappointment to find unsalted fries. Like any other food, it should reach the guest’s table with a perfectly balanced taste so that the hand does not reach for the salt shaker.
With what sauce?
French fries can be eaten in a million different ways. With mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, hot or cheese sauce, cold or hot. There's no wrong, "perverted" way to eat French fries - even with ice cream it's great if it makes your stomach rumble and salivate profusely. And don’t deny yourself the pleasure of eating with your hands!
French fries in large fast food chains are an incredibly complex technological product that deserves interest and delight when studying the issue in more detail. Plus it can be delicious. I love McDonald's potatoes, especially freshly fried and hot. I don't see anything shameful in this. It’s a pity that I didn’t catch the time when McDonald’s fries were cooked in rendered beef fat.
Is it a shame for a restaurant to have French fries on the menu?
There is no point in dividing food into what is worthy and what is not worthy of being on a restaurant menu. And you shouldn’t make a cult out of French fries. In essence, it differs little from a bowl of deliciously cooked rice.
French fries can become part of any other product and take on a new meaning and form, becoming an endless field for the chef’s creativity. And destroy the ossified clichés about food in restaurants and fast food.
French fries are a great snack to go with beer and vodka. Properly cooked French fries have a soft, tender center and a fairly tough, golden crust. Without knowing a few secrets, achieving a similar effect at home is not easy; you need to experiment a lot. The authors of the “Kartofan” website have developed the optimal recipe and are ready to tell you how to make French fries that taste just as good as those sold at McDonald’s.
Ingredients:
- potatoes – 3-4 pieces;
- vegetable oil – 300-500 ml;
- water – 1 liter;
- sugar – 1 tablespoon;
- salt – 0.5 tablespoon;
- pepper - to taste.
French fries cooking technology
1. Selection of ingredients. Use large to medium-sized, firm, dense potatoes as possible. Soft, loose potatoes that have lost a lot of moisture absorb a lot of oil when frying, resulting in fries that become greasy and tasteless. Small tubers are difficult to cut into slices of the required thickness.
Only refined (purified from harmful impurities) and preferably deodorized (does not emit an unpleasant odor when heated) vegetable oil is suitable for frying. The ideal option is olive, a little worse than sunflower.
It is believed that McDonald's fast food restaurants fry their fries in animal fat, but this is not true. It has been many years since the company switched from a blend of beef tallow and cottonseed oil to alternatives that do not contain trans fats. In the USA and Canada it is a mixture of rapeseed, corn and soybean oil; in Russia and Belarus it is specially developed refined sunflower oil.
2. Peeling and slicing. First, the potatoes should be washed and peeled. Then cut it correctly.
If the difference in the thickness (diameter) of the workpieces exceeds 2 mm, then when frying, small pieces will be overcooked, while large pieces will not be ready yet. The optimal thickness of sticks for French fries is 5-6 mm, length – 3-9 cm.
There are special kitchen devices for quickly cutting French fries, but the cost of these devices is unpleasantly surprising. It makes sense to buy them if you make homemade French fries all the time. Otherwise, I advise you to practice cutting by hand. After several attempts everything will work out.
3. Soaking. The authors of some recipes recommend soaking the preparations to remove excess starch. In fact, this is not required for deep frying; on the contrary, starch is often even added. In our case, soaking enhances the flavor and prepares the fries for the next important step - freezing.
For 1 liter of water, add 1 tablespoon of sugar and half a tablespoon of salt, mix. The water should become neutral: neither sweet nor salty. Adjust the proportions if necessary. Soak the french fries in water for 15-20 minutes, this will significantly improve the taste. There is no need to dry the pieces on a towel.
4. Freezing. If you fry French fries without freezing, then by the time a crispy crust forms on the surface, the inside of the stick will dry out and the flesh will become tough. After freezing, the ice crust that forms will prevent the core from drying out quickly, and the high temperature of the oil will evaporate moisture from the surface in 10-15 seconds.
Place the pieces in the freezer for 60-90 minutes until the pieces freeze and become hard.
Pre-freezing improves taste 5. Roasting. Any deep dish will do: a saucepan, a large frying pan, a multicooker bowl.
Wipe the dishes dry so that not a drop of moisture remains in it, which, when heated, will turn into steam and hot oil will splash into your face.
Heat the oil in the container of your choice. Vegetable oil boils at 200°C and begins to smoke, but this is too much. The optimal oil temperature for frying French fries is 168°C. To check readiness, simply dip a piece of potato or peel into the oil; if it begins to boil, you can start frying.
Place semi-finished products in small portions on the deep fryer and lower into hot oil. You can fry without deep frying, simply throwing in the pieces and then removing them with a slotted spoon. There is no fundamental difference, but deep frying is more convenient.
Fry until fries are golden brown, 5 to 8 minutes on average. I don’t recommend overcooking; the longer the potatoes are fried, the more oil they absorb.
6. Serve. Place the finished fries on a paper towel to remove any remaining oil. You can sprinkle with salt and pepper. Eat while it's hot. The dish goes well with ketchup and other hot sauces.
What to cook for a side dish
2 hours
170 kcal
5/5 (3)
Do you know at least one person who could refuse golden crispy French fries? I can't believe that they even exist! French fries are one of my family's favorite snack foods.
How to make French fries at home
Kitchenware
- you will need a knife and a wooden board for peeling vegetables and slicing potatoes;
- a special device for cutting potatoes into cubes - a potato cutter. If there is none, chop the potatoes the old “old-fashioned way” - using a sharp knife;
- a saucepan is necessary for frying potato blocks; a saucepan or frying pan with high edges is also suitable;
- of course, we will definitely need paper or terry towels;
- deep dishes will be needed for soaking potatoes;
- a wooden spoon or spatula is useful for turning the potatoes while frying;
- I also advise you to prepare a dish in advance for serving French fries on the table, since this dish must be eaten exclusively hot.
We need these ingredients
How to choose the right ingredients
When choosing potatoes, pay close attention to their firmness - Our dish requires a dense, firm medium or large vegetable. The fact is that the tubers of soft and loose potatoes absorb too much vegetable oil when fried, resulting in a greasy and tasteless dish, without a crispy crust. 
Also, if you use small tubers, the french fries may disintegrate and turn into mush when frying.
Take your choice of vegetable oil seriously. To prepare truly delicious French fries, purchase refined and deodorized vegetable oil, since it is thoroughly purified from harmful impurities and does not emit an unpleasant odor when heated. The ideal option for French fries is olive oil., however, with it the dish will cost a pretty penny.
Step-by-step preparation of French fries
How to prepare potatoes for frying
- First of all, thoroughly wash the unpeeled potatoes under running water. After this, we dry the tubers a little and only then begin to cut off the peel of the fruit.
- Now it is important to properly cut the potatoes into cubes: the ideal thickness should be 1 cm, and the length should be 5-9 cm. We put the pieces that do not correspond to the above dimensions aside, and then use them in other dishes.
- In order to give the potatoes a richer taste, marinate them like this: pour water into a deep bowl.
- Then add sugar and salt and mix the liquid thoroughly until the grains are completely dissolved.
- After that, put the chopped French fries there and leave them to marinate for 15-20 minutes.
- Place the pickled product on paper towels and dry completely.
- Then we put the dry potatoes in a plastic bag or container and put them in the freezer for 60-90 minutes.
How to fry French fries at home
Final stage
What are fries served with?
- with ketchup;
- with tomato sauce;
- with sour cream sauce;
- with fresh vegetable salad;
- ideal with steak or chicken wings;
- with the thinnest slices of cheese;
- with homemade hamburgers.
Video recipe: how to make French fries at McDonald's
Check out the video below to learn how to make real French fries without a deep fryer and how to properly cook frozen French fries at home. You also have an excellent opportunity to personally verify that potatoes prepared according to the recipe described above really turn out as tasty as those at McDonald's.
Recommended other potato recipes
How to make French fries at home in a frying pan is no longer a problem for you. Now I suggest you learn how to cook - this dish has a unique taste, delicious aroma and attractive appearance. Why not please your loved ones with such an original potato? If you are always in a hurry to get somewhere or don’t want to spend a long time in the kitchen, then this is your option for preparing a hearty snack or a delicious side dish.
Those who appreciate an attractive appearance combined with amazing taste will definitely like it. Be sure to prepare it, famous for its delicious taste and wonderful aroma that cannot be forgotten.
We will end our conversation on this tasty note. Tell us what kind of potato dishes you prepare yourself? Maybe you know another way to prepare French fries? Write about all this in the comments, and as we chat, we’ll find the recipe for the perfect potato dish! Good luck in the kitchen!
French fries are what many people go to McDonalds for because they are so crispy and delicious that it seems impossible to replicate this dish at home. French fries are a hearty and appetizing dish with a very simple recipe. However, the preparation still has some nuances that must be taken into account, otherwise it will turn into ordinary fried potatoes.
The good thing about this dish is that it can be used both as a side dish and as an independent dish with various sauces. . Most popular, of course, is ketchup. However, you can use both cheese and garlic sauce.
How to make French fries at home? The classic recipe for preparing the dish is potatoes, vegetable oil and salt. For 500 g of potatoes you need a liter of oil, it will be enough for the pieces to get their amazing golden color and fry evenly, getting a crispy crust . When selecting products in a recipe It is important to consider the following:
- New potatoes are not suitable for cooking as they fall apart. There is information that fast food chains use special elite potatoes. At home, you can use any potato that is suitable for frying.
- Vegetable oil must be refined and deodorized, and must be of high quality. Some recipes allow the use of other types of vegetable oil - corn, canola and olive. It should be taken into account that the dish receives the smell of the oil used.
French fries in a frying pan
Many people believe that you can’t cook French fries without a deep fryer and a lot of oil, but this is not entirely true. If you have a good frying pan, you can cook the dish on it. The main thing is to cut the potatoes into equal pieces at least 1 cm wide, rinse them, and then place them on a paper towel. How much oil should be poured into the frying pan? so that the potatoes are fried evenly. Before putting it in the pan, you need to warm it up well. The frying pan must be deep with a thick bottom, cast iron or steel.
French fries at home in a frying pan
How to cook French fries at home in a frying pan? To do this you need to do the following actions:
How to make French fries at home
How to cook potatoes fries at home? The dish can be prepared at home, and it will be more healthy, since fast food restaurants add stabilizers and flavor enhancers to it. Most often, potatoes are cooked in a deep fryer and in the microwave.
Potatoes are prepared for the microwave in the same way as for a frying pan - they are washed, left in cold water for a while, and then laid out on a towel to dry. After this, the potatoes are placed on a plate, in which they are filled with vegetable oil and salt. It is important that the pieces do not touch each other, this is the only way they will bake evenly. Cook French fries in the microwave at maximum power in two stages. After the dish has been baked in the oven for 4-6 minutes, the pieces will need to be turned over to the other side and placed again for the same time.
The deep fryer makes french fries easier to prepare.. The main thing is that the potatoes are properly prepared and that they are lowered exactly at the moment when the deep fryer warms up to 170-190 degrees. Usually 10-15 minutes are enough for this. Deep frying should not boil, this means that the vegetable oil is very hot, and this can affect the final result. If the potatoes immediately begin to fry when dropped into the oil, the fryer is hot enough.
During frying, as before, you should never salt the potatoes. This is due to the fact that if you add salt during cooking , the pieces may begin to absorb excess moisture and soften. If you add salt to it, it will quickly lose its shape and you will end up with regular fried potatoes. Many people recommend adding animal fat to vegetable oil. This is permissible, but only before planting potatoes begins. Deep fry the potatoes for no more than 5 minutes.
Loading...