
How to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries (2010) - shawndumas
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/05/the-burger-lab-how-to-make-perfect-mcdonalds-style-french-fries.html?daysago=1300
======
tptacek
If you like this but want to see how you might take it a step further:

[http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/05/12/the-quest-for-
french...](http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/05/12/the-quest-for-french-fry-
supremacy-2-blanching-armageddon/)

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).

~~~
batbomb
did you order your searzall?

~~~
stephen
Gah! I am just now seeing this...looks really awesome.

~~~
tptacek
We're not getting them until June (I didn't order early-access; I opted for
the 30 minute Dave Arnold phone call instead, which in retrospect seems silly
because I can probably get that on any given Tuesday when he does his podcast)
--- I imagine that by the time the Kickstarter units ship, people who order
normal Searzalls will have much less time to wait.

------
DigitalTurk
> McDonald's french fries are great. At their best, they are everything a
> french fry should be: salty, crisp, light, and not greasy.

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.

~~~
chestnut-tree
_" Then again, I'm Belgian."_

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](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sqkgb)
(segment starts at 18:33 seconds)

~~~
reirob
Maybe it was some French-speaking Belgians who invented the French fries ;-)

Just a wink to the ridiculous conflict that goes on between French-speaking-
Belgians and the Dutch-speaking-Belgians, now for years.

~~~
DigitalTurk
Interestingly, in the Netherlands they often call them Flemish fries. Flanders
being the Dutch-language region in Belgium.

If you called them that in Belgium I bet you would cause a riot. ;-)

~~~
waxjar
In the Netherlands the thin fries McDonalds sells are referred to as French
fries (franse frietjes):
[http://i.imgur.com/n0F248C.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/n0F248C.jpg).

Slightly thicker (square) fries are just called fries (patat):
[http://i.imgur.com/tui5FDe.jpg](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](http://i.imgur.com/QDwv9IA.jpg).

------
zaroth
Gotta love a) this guy's passion for fries, b) that McDonalds gave away their
secret recipe (blanching) without which Kenji seemed to be totally stuck, and
c) the vinegar trick to make it easier for us to do back at home.

He doesn't mention what's he using to cut the fries?

~~~
sjtrny
It's hardly a secret. In fact one of the worlds most renowned chefs, Heston
Blumenthal, openly describes the practice.

~~~
bostik
I'm actually in the middle of The Fat Duck Cookbook. Blumenthal's recipe for
top-notch pub chips (large and slightly bulky, not thin like fries) even goes
by the name "triple-cooked chips".

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.

~~~
gjm11
Pretty much _everyone_ parboils potatoes before roasting them in the oven.
(About 10 minutes in lightly salted water. After boiling them and draining the
cooking water, put the lid back on the pan briefly and give it a good shake to
roughen the surface of the potatoes. You'll get better crunchy outsides that
way.)

Is that what Jamie Oliver recommends, or is it some further less standard
trick?

~~~
bostik
> _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.

~~~
sanityinc
Yes, and tossing them around gently in the colander is the ideal way to
roughen the surface. This is also Raymond Blanc's method. If the water can be
kept vigorously boiling, it's usually only necessary to parboil the potatoes
for a few minutes: just enough to soften the outer 5mm or so.

------
nicklovescode
Two other recipes by the awesome chefs at ChefSteps

Thick: [http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/thick-cut-french-
fries](http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/thick-cut-french-fries)

Thin: [http://www.chefsteps.com/classes/science-of-
poutine/#/thin-c...](http://www.chefsteps.com/classes/science-of-
poutine/#/thin-cut-french-fries)

disclaimer: I'm working on a project with ChefSteps

------
apunic
> I find it remarkable that the bigwigs have discovered a way to create a
> frozen fry that even a one armed eyeless chimp has trouble screwing up.

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.

~~~
venomsnake
Obligatory joel article.

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000024.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000024.html)

~~~
darkxanthos
Now that I've had personal experience with FogBugz (from FogCreek) I heavily
discount Joel's wisdom.

~~~
selimthegrim
What was wrong with it?

~~~
darkxanthos
It was slow, full text searching didn't work (literally), when using their API
to delete repos and recreate them there would be race conditions that would
leave us in a state where their support would have to go data spelunking on
their end to correct them.

I could nitpick the GUI and such but the real issues were these fundamental
problems. I was shocked. This happened for years.

------
sampo
Here are Heston Blumenthal's triple-cooked chips:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIiQbeVHgX0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIiQbeVHgX0)

~~~
dhughes
I watch all Heston's videos he seems like he makes fantastic food, I think he
shows how to make really good food sometimes in a different way not
pretentious but fun.

------
jonnathanson
To me, the most interesting part of this article was the quest to obtain the
frozen fries in the first place. I'm amazed a McDonald's manager gave them
out.

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.

~~~
yetanotherphd
I doubt McDonalds really cares that much about their trade secrets.

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.

~~~
jonnathanson
They have about $1.7 billion in intangible assets on their balance sheet, of
which trade secrets are not necessarily delineated but are a significant
component.

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](http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/investors/sec_filings.html)

------
DanBC
This article takes a while to get to the good bits, which are:

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.

------
tombrossman
For anyone interested in a broader look at the science of cooking I strongly
recommend 'How to read a french fry' by Russ Parsons. It explains equally
important factors like the need for natural soaps (surfactants) in the oil as
it breaks down, for that perfect color. If you've ever tried to fry something
until golden brown in a perfectly clean pot using new oil you've run up
against this. The food is still white when it's done and cooking it until
brown means overcooking it. You have to save a bit of the old oil to mix in
with the new stuff.

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.

------
treenyc
Now can someone PLEASE post the recipe for KFC batter.

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???

~~~
chestnut-tree
_" Now can someone PLEASE post the recipe for KFC batter."_

[http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2009/jul...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2009/jul/24/kfc-
secret-recipe-revealed)

~~~
treenyc
oh chestnut-tree, I love you! I will look to make this in Denmark at some
point.

------
beedogs
Really weird; I just made these last night and the post shows up here today.
They're delicious, by the way.

------
Theodores
One thing that McDonalds do is add the salt to the fries for you. This seems a
little bit odd if you have been used to buying 'chips' from a British Fish and
Chip shop.

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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Urban legend, I believe.

~~~
Theodores
Cite sources?

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!

~~~
min_wage_slave
As someone recently employed by a Golden Arches franchise, I will attest to
using only "table salt" to salt french fries. More specifically, I'd load the
fry salting device from a 4-lb paper box of commercial non-iodized table salt
[1].

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...](http://www.webstaurantstore.com/bulk-iodized-table-salt-4-lb-
box/102SALT4.html)

~~~
Theodores
Love your nom-de-plume!

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.

------
dylnclrk
I'll concede that Kenji (the food lab author) definitely has a hacker-ish
point of view when it comes to cooking, but I feel like we may be diluting the
content of HN with a french fry recipe. Maybe everyone just loves fries?

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...](http://deep-fried.food.com/recipe/easier-french-fries-
cold-oil-method-cooks-illustrated-415262)

