Thread: how to make homemade fries crispy??

Originally Posted by UTFAN

I have purchased a industrial sized french fry cutter....now what? From everything I see if you just throw them in the fryer, you get soggy/oily fries. I have been told to soak them in cold water before frying to prevent them from browning prematurely. Any help is appreciated.

To get fresh and crispy fries try this.

-Wash spuds(taters) and cut up.
-Rinse in fresh water repeatedly , until you get most of the excess starch out.
- Par-fry (half cook)all your potatoes, Place in a big bowl with paper in bottom to soak up oil and moisture, you can hold the fries several hours liek this.
-fry them up till golden brown and your fries will get crisp and stay crispy!
I guess removing the excess moisture helps keep em crispy!
Good luck and don't eat more than u can lift!!

I cut mine into smaller slices. This may not be the shape that you're after. I cross cut smaller potatoes, and half the bigger ones lengthwise. Fry in veg. oil at 360 until brown. I can make "chips" like that without burning.

Between Shiloh Red and Allen they have nailed it...The key is frying twice! I would stick to Allen's recipe and you will nail it too!

I used Allen's suggestion last night for fries when we were making a fish dinner - potatoes came out great! Thanks for the detailed instructions...

well there is a couple things you can do to make them like what you get in the store. first you can cut your fries always keep them in water and a bit of an acid like lemon juice wine or anything with an acid so they don't brown. when you are ready to cook these things you bake them or boil them first that gets them half cooked. i like to boil mine then i put them out on let them dry off a bit. then you deep fry them this will keep them from being soggy. baking them first does the same thing. some people say fry them twice but they seem to be saturated then.

once again I am hitting an old post... here is how I always make my stake frys...I clean rinse and cut my tators.. then I spread them on a paper plate and nuke em for 3 min then strait to the fryer.. works every time...

You have to blanch them and then fry them again

Back in the day when McDonalds had good fries, at least when they were hot, they cut the fries on site. The potatoes came in in 100# gunny sacks. We ran them through the peeler after cutting out bad spots, cut them and then washed the soluble starch out in cold water. That is the white stuff you see, when the raw cut fry was brittle enouh to snap in your fingers it went on to the precooker and then was hung against dropping fresh into hotter grease at rush hour; so the fries would always be hot when handed to the customer and finishing didn't take but a very short time. They were superb then but not so much when cold. Originally McDonalds used beef tallow for the deep frying. It may not be heart healthy, but then what deep fried foods really are anyway, but it is the best for taste and crispiness for deep fried foods.

One of the real keys no matter how you do it is to have the grease at the right temperature to sear the surface or you are almost guaranteed greasy deep fried foods, but not too hot to burn the surface before the insides cook. You want it just coming to start to smoke and then you don't overload it so that it cools too much. You don't cook deep fried foods done in the grease either, because like bacon they continue to cook a bit when they are taken out as they cool.

It pays to remember that McDonalds was a system that was supposed to turn out the same exact product everywhere. It is no big secret how they did it, but the procedures had to be followed everywhere the same; so it couldn't be all that mysterious in the first place.
McDonalds fries haven't been the same since they changed the oil and quit cutting them on the property, but back in those days, the franchises weren't allowed to hire women either, only young men. So those aren't the only things that have changed.

no1son hit it on the head, the reason McDonalds fries are always crispy is because they receive them in a precooked state, saw this on unwrapped on the food network one time, they precook them for 2 minutes then flash freeze them, thats why they are always crispy.

You cannot skip the step of washing out the soluble starch from the raw cuts and that works best on the smaller sizes and in the cold water bath already recommended by others. When properly done the cut fry will snap between your fingers and then it is ready for pre-cooking. You can bet that the frozen ones that McDonald's always gets from the approved suppliers which is all they are allowed to buy from do not skip this step. You can repeat this at home; years ago after I left McDonald's I demonstrated that to my skeptical mother right in her own kitchen. Now some 40 years later she still comments on it. This works best with bakers by the way.

The pre cooking part also helps produce the best hash browns and fried potatoes too. All you have to do is boil the spuds until almost but not quite done, refrigerate them until needed and then grate or slice them into the preheated pan. It has to be preheated or the potatoes will absorb the grease rather than cooking in it.

One of the other keys to crispy rather than soggy deep fried or pan fried foods to keep the heat of your grease up. Preheat it before adding anything and do not overload the grease, if you want crispy without grease-soggy interiors.

Another potato hint for those of you who do not want the potato chunks in your potato salad to disintegrate or be mushy is to use red potatoes and cook them to just barely done enough to change the starch but not soften them. Then cool them quick under running cold water. They will hold their shape and texture better in the salad. The fast cool of blanched vegetables will also give you much higher quality frozen outcome for those of you who preserve garden production in the freezer. Once cooled drain off the water, too.

Gotta love them spuds. I grew up with home grown potatoes in every meal, except occasionally breakfast. Just can't change that either. I still grow a few every year.