

How to make McDonalds french fries - dpatru
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/05/the-burger-lab-how-to-make-perfect-mcdonalds-style-french-fries.html

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danielle17
I worked at McDonalds long ago, and I am a huge fan. If you are interested in
understanding why they are so incredible, make sure to read "Grinding It Out"
which is the story of McDonalds told by Ray Croc, who turned a small local
store into one of the greatest franchises the world has ever known. He was in
his mid-50s when he stated, and the whole thing is just inspiring for
entrepreneurs no matter how many time you might have failed before. But I
digress...

The thing about working at McDonalds is that you learn exactly what everything
tastes like - and you notice all the little changes. For example, the
difference in quality between a quarter pound patty used in the quarter
pounder and double quarter pounder, and a "10" (1/10 pound) patty used in the
regular cheeseburger and double-cheeseburger. I have eaten everything on the
McDonalds menu, and can tell you what the most disgustingly unhealthy thing by
caloric density is (not the fries!).

So, the most important factor we noticed about the french fries was how old
the fry grease was. Each night 1 of three things happen to the fry grease:'

1) it is skimmed for any remnants of fries and left to simmer at a low warm
temperature for the next day

2) it is run through a cleaning machine (2-3 times per week)

3) it is completely replaced by a technician (every 1 or 2 weeks depending on
time of year)

New grease is very clear, like fresh motor oil you put into your car. As the
grease gets older turns more and more golden brown as it gets more carbon in
it from little bits of fries that break off and burn in the hot oil and
disintegrate. Eventually, right before it is replaced, the grease is very
brown and the fries will actually come out with tiny brownish bits on them.
Some people really liked the "dirty grease fries" but the majority of staff
knew when the best french fries were made - when the grease was about 4 days
old, right after the first cleaning. I can't tell you exactly why, but these
fries were the yummiest to the point where I would only eat them at this point
(gotta stay thin somehow working there!) and crew members would bring in their
kids on that day to eat.

Its also important to know that fries are never ever cooked in the same grease
used for chicken nuggets, fish filets, etc. I'd be curious to know what that
tastes like if anyone has every broken the rules and tried it, but that was a
religious issue at the McDonalds locations I worked at so we never did.

Anyway, if you're curious and have a regular McDonalds you can always ask them
when the last time the grease was cleaned or changed.

~~~
brianwillis
You really should have been filtering your oil ("run through a cleaning
machine") daily. The filtering process removes the carbon build up that causes
oil to degrade. The labour cost to doing this daily is far smaller that the
cost of the oil you save.

~~~
pan69
Since MacDonald's is the Ford assembly line of today I'm pretty sure they know
what they're doing. Especially with thousands of "restaurants" around the
world.

~~~
brianwillis
I worked for the company, and you're right - they do know what they're doing.
That's why stores are expected to filter daily.

~~~
adw
The one I worked in (in Scotland) did.

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micheljansen
For those who enjoyed reading this post, I have some recommendations:

* Anything by Hervé This (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hervé_This#Bibliography>)

* Nicholas Kurti's "But the Crackling is Superb: An Anthology on Food and Drink by Fellows and Foreign Members of The Royal Society of London" (ISBN 0-7503-0488-X)

* Stuff by Heston Blumenthal (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heston_Blumenthal>)

I first learned of the obsession with perfecting food through understanding
the chemistry behind it through Cook & Chemist
(<http://www.cookandchemist.com>). Unfortunately, the two books they have
published are in Dutch and there appear to be no translations yet.

~~~
davnola
May I add 'On Food and Cooking' by Harold McGee (ISBN 0684843285)? McGee also
writes at <http://curiouscook.com/>.

~~~
tptacek
_On Food And Cooking_ is an awesome, awesome book. It's on my bookshelf next
to my reading chair; I flip it open to a random page any time I get bored. The
charts and sidebars alone (for instance, breakdowns of the volatiles in
different herbs and spice) are worth the price of admission.

It's also written absurdly well.

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bryanh
This is an incredible site, I just read
[http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/cook-your-meat-in-a-
beer-...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/cook-your-meat-in-a-beer-cooler-
the-worlds-best-sous-vide-hack.html) on a whim and am trying it tonight.

Very cool.

~~~
lincolnq
I have done that twice now. It works amazingly well, especially if you have a
good grill to finish them on.

~~~
tptacek
Broken record: if you're liking the results you're getting from the beer
cooler, drop a couple hundred on a PID-controlled rice cooker setup. You don't
need to shell out for a Sous Vide Supreme appliance to get professional
results (in fact, a friend who wrote a review for the SVS was hard pressed to
come up with any advantage to the SVS over the "ghetto" setup, other than that
it doesn't make your kitchen look like a meth lab.)

~~~
jarek
With mix of professional and personal curiosity I'd like to ask: what control
do cheaper rice cookers use, and what does PID add? Super precise temperature
control with no oscillation is the only thing I can think of -- is it that
important?

~~~
tptacek
Rice cookers don't include PID controls. They have "hot" and "warm". You can
cook with them (Roger Ebert had a great blog post about his one-pot wonder
dishes), but that's essentially a gentle form of crock pot cooking.

Super precise temperature control is one of the most important developments in
all of cooking. If you have it, you can take almost any protein or almost any
vegetable, select a final cooked state out of a (tiny) book, punch it into the
control, and walk away for an hour, an afternoon, or a fortnight and come back
to a 100% guaranteed perfect product.

Three example implications:

* You can buy $30 steaks, bag them, throw them in a rice cooker in the morning, go to work, come home, and have them perfectly rare-medium-rare all the way through. I'd say "better than at a steakhouse" if so many steakhouses weren't apparently switching up to cook steaks this way.

* You can take a tough braise cut (short ribs, octopus), bag it, stick it in the rice cooker for a couple days, and pull it out medium rare and tender. Tender medium rare short ribs are a novel product of precise temperature control; you can't do them on a grill.

* You can take a vegetable and cook it at a target temperature that breaks down starches but not pectin and get unique textures out of them. Keller, who has obviously better equipment than we do, combines this with compression to get steak-like textures out of things like melons.

~~~
redcap
What are you bagging your steaks in? Paper bag?

What setting are you using? Cook or Warm?

~~~
tptacek
Seal-a-meal. Paper, water, and hours: not a good recipe.

I'm not using "Cook" or "Warm". I'm using a small box with a PID controller,
into which is plugged my rice cooker, and which is itself plugged into the
wall. A small digital thermometer checks the temperature of the water that
fills the rice cooker and modulates the power to keep it within a degree or
two of the set temperature I want.

Right now, a pair of rib eyes and some tilapia filets are being held in there
at 129f. In a couple minutes, I'll pull the fish and stick it in a smoker for
a couple minutes, then sear both sides of the steak for 10 seconds or so, then
plate and serve.

~~~
tptacek
(Tilapia SV at 129f for 2 hours, then 10 minutes in a smoker? _Beautiful_.
Like bacon fish. Kids ate it up.)

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KC8ZKF
McDonald's main problem is that they sacrifice quality for consistency. I can
understand why a chain restaurant would want that. I can even understand why a
customer would want that. What I can't understand is why a home cook would
want that.

Pommes frites are fresh potatoes cooked in animal fat, and seasoned with salt
and rosemary. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart_spivack/4205683848/>

~~~
rue
Some people - me included, rarely as I eat them - _prefer_ McDonald's fries to
most others.

~~~
philwelch
I used to prefer McDonald's fries, and I still prefer them over other fast
food, but most bars and sit-down restaurants seem to have better fries to me
now. (And, unlike McDonald's, they will give you barbecue sauce.)

~~~
danudey
I've never had a McDonald's refuse me barbecue sauce, mcchicken sauce, etc.
whenever I ask for it, regardless of what my order was.

~~~
pyre
More recently they will only give you one bbq sauce with their chicken
nuggets, and even asking for an extra one isn't free. Asking for bbq sauce w/
fries is an extra charge.

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arthurdent
The vinegar hack is brilliant. Cooking is chemistry and should be treated as
such.

~~~
ars
I wonder if cream of tartar would work. (I really hate vinegar, it smells like
rotten food to me.)

~~~
someone_here
Well, it is in a sense.

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jrnkntl
That is some serious reverse engineering

~~~
RevRal
You know you're awesome when you bust out the micrometer to systematize the
rendering of perfect french fries.

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joe_bleau
That's actually a dial caliper, not an outside micrometer.

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RevRal
Well wither me toes, I've been calling them micrometers my whole life. Thanks!

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Not only that, but it's a _Starrett_ caliper: the kind of pricey, high quality
tool that I drool over.

...and about the only interesting part of the article. I enjoy cooking and I
love potatoes; I even have a dozen or so potato plants/tubers/whatever growing
in the garden. But even I realized years ago that the key to good french fries
with low effort is to buy the OreIda "fast food" fries and cook them myself in
the fat of my choice.

I've tried all the methods I read about and still the premade ones are better.
Something I've never been able to say about any other food I cook.

~~~
joe_bleau
My dad the machinist prefers Brown & Sharpe or Fowler (depending on the
particular tool) to Starrett. Styling mostly; it seems like Starrett stuff has
the old fashioned look and typefaces, whereas the B&S has a more 60s clean and
simple hi-tech look.

I actually have the same model Starrett dial caliper pictured in the link.

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ivankirigin
It has been too long since I had a fry party. I think I'll try this.

A fry party is exactly what it sounds like. You make kilos of fries and dozens
of dips and get drunk on the power.

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dangrossman
The way McDonalds makes its fries isn't a secret. They let Food Network film
part of a documentary on fried food in one of their french fry factories, and
showed the entire process from potato to frozen product ready to ship. It was
basically cleaning and sizing (large potatoes cut in half), shot through pipes
by water pressure with a grate on the end of the pipe that cuts the potato
into fries, steamed to make the inside fluffy, then fried twice at two
temperatures.

~~~
tptacek
That's kind of like saying that the way Google processes mail for Google Mail
isn't a secret. It's not, but knowing how "it's done" and knowing how they
"actually do it" are two different things.

~~~
morphir
prove that algorithmically, thank you.

~~~
mseebach
9 ! = 362 880

vs.

(define (factorial n) (let fact ([i n] [acc 1]) (if (zero? i) acc (fact (- i
1) (* acc i)))))

~~~
spicyj
Incidentally, 9 != 362 880 is also true.

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soyelmango
With a bit of social engineering... aka "asking someone who works in a McD
kitchen"... he could have got the oil cooker temperature and timings.

The McD website, or a pamphlet you can get instore, would list the
ingredients.

Anyway, kudos to the writer for doing it the hard way.

Finally, telling a McD fry lover (I put my hand up to that!) that the fries
are rubbish is like telling a smoker that cigarettes are bad for them. We
know.

~~~
Splines
> asking someone who works in a McD kitchen

While that may have answered the "how", only through this type of process
could the author have answered the "why".

~~~
soyelmango
...as well as discovering how/why _not_ to do it, which can be more valuable
knowledge.

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malkia
Okay, I'm just not used their taste.

Nothing is better than fresh potatoes, made by my wife with feta cheese on top
of them and beer. I like them to have some meat in them.

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code_duck
I really don't like fries of this style. I'll take a real, honest fench fry
where one can tell it is made from a sliced potato. Five Guys, for instance,
makes excellent fries. They appear to do so by cutting up a potato and
immersing it in boiling oil. Imagine that!

I have absolutely no desire to eat processed, partially synthesized corporate
potato product.

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tszming
Some interesting stuffs - Patents related to French fries.

[http://www.google.com/patents?lr=&q=french+fries&btn...](http://www.google.com/patents?lr=&q=french+fries&btnG=Search+Patents)

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sushi
I have the RSS feed of this site for quite some time and this site delivers
every single time with amazing recipes.

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stefanp
tl;dr but this reminds me _a lot_ of "The Quest For French Fry Supremacy", a
two part article on Cooking Issues.

[http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/04/27/the-quest-for-
french...](http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/04/27/the-quest-for-french-fry-
supremacy-part-1/)

~~~
stfp
Hmm, I'm not sure I get the downvotes - is it the "tl-dr" part ?

No biggie, but it'd be a shame, the article I linked to is as impressive, it
not more in terms of cooking-engineeringness.

~~~
ryanelkins
Yeah, I would guess people don't like "Hey, I didn't actually read this, but
here is something that I imagine must be related." (Even if it does turn out
to be relevant and worthwhile.)

~~~
pyre
True, but I can also see it from the other side: "I feel that I have something
worthwhile to contribute, but I don't have time to read the entire article, so
I'll just post it here in the hopes that someone finds it
interesting/relevant."

I think that it would be somewhat of a stifling approach to just make a
blanket proclamation that no one can enter the discussion unless they have
full read the article.

~~~
ars
Just leave out the tl;dr part. You don't need to justify your posting of a
link. Just post it and say what it's about.

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Aegean
I am curious to know - do they use preservatives or unnatural additives?

~~~
code_duck
They don't know how to make anything without preservatives and additives. They
don't care. Of course they're full of absolute death wax, not to mention all
the petro/organochlorines the potatoes, canola, corn and soybeans were
probably soaked in while being grown (highly likely to be genetically
engineered, too)

here you go, from
[http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/ingredients...](http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/ingredientslist.pdf)

Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef
flavor [wheat and milk derivatives], citric acid [preservative]), dextrose,
sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil
(Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and
citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an
antifoaming agent.

CONTAINS: WHEAT AND MILK *(Natural beef flavor contains hydrolyzed wheat and
hydrolyzed milk as starting ingredients)

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cacaolat
This is one of best blog posts I have ever read!

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Raphael
I prefer darker, unblanched fries.

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wazoox
The premise is wrong. I mean, McDonald's fries are about OK as far as
frankenfood goes, but they are really horrible compared to anything home-made
with fresh potatoes, no question about it. They're too small, they have
absolutely zero taste, they're greasy... This is supposed to be a model to
follow? Gimme a break.

~~~
JimmyL
This guys picked something he likes - McDonald's fries - and did some
impressive food-hacking to revere-engineer and improve them. Regardless of
your thoughts on the thing he's imitating, surely you can respect the rigor
and discipline the author applied to the problem.

He's not saying "this is how you make the world's best fries" - he's saying
"if you really like McDonald's fries (like I do), here's how to replicate
them". If you don't like that type of fry, then don't make them.

~~~
wazoox
I'm all for the food hacking and the article was quite interesting, however I
shivers to the idea of McDonald's as a cooking reference.

