French Fries
French fries are served hot, either soft or crispy, and are generally eaten as part of lunch or dinner or by themselves as a snack, and they commonly appear on the menus of diners, fast food restaurants, pubs, and bars. Fries in America are generally salted and are almost always served with ketchup, but in many countries they have other condiments or toppings, like vinegar, mayonnaise, or other local specialties. Fries can be topped more heavily, as in the dishes of poutine and chili cheese fries. French fries can be made from sweet potatoes instead of potatoes. A baked variant of the French fry ("oven chips") uses less or even no oil.
Preparation
Pommes frites with a mayonnaise packet
French fries are prepared by first peeling and cutting the potato into even strips. These are then wiped off or soaked in cold water to remove the surface starch, and thoroughly dried. They may then be fried in one or two stages. Chefs generally agree that the two-bath technique produces better results. Potatoes fresh out of the ground can have too high a water content - resulting in soggy fries - so preference is for spuds that have been in storage for a while.
In the two-stage or two-bath method, the first bath, sometimes called blanching, is in hot fat (around 160 °C / 320 °F) to cook them through. This may be done in advance. Then they are more briefly fried in very hot fat (190 °C / 375 °F) to crisp the exterior. They are then placed in a colander or on a cloth to drain, salted, and served. The exact times of the two baths depend on the size of the potatoes. For example, for 2–3mm strips, the first bath takes about 3 minutes, and the second bath takes only seconds. There are several common techniques to cook French Fries. Deep frying is a cooking method in which food is submerged in hot fat, most commonly oil. Vacuum fryers are fit to process low-quality potatoes that contain higher sugar levels than normal, as they frequently have to be processed in spring and early summer before the potatoes from the new harvest become available. In the UK, a Chip pan is a deep-sided cooking pan used for deep-frying. Chip pans are named for their traditional use in frying chips.
Most French fries are produced from frozen potatoes which have been blanched or at least air-dried industrially. Most chain that sell fresh cut fries rely on the Idaho Russet Burbank variety of potatoes. It has been the standard for French fries in the United States. The usual fat for making French fries is vegetable oil. In the past, beef suet was recommended as superior, with vegetable shortening as an alternative. In fact, McDonald's used a mixture of 93% beef tallow and 7% cottonseed oil until 1990, when they switched to vegetable oil with beef flavoring. Starting in the sixties, more fast food restaurants have been using frozen French fries.
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