Cooking: Making French Fries at Home

June 11, 2010 3:21 pm Comments Off

We’re expanding from home renovation and gardening to include cooking! Now you can think of our blog as a lifestyle blog instead of just a home renovation blog. But don’t worry – we’re not even close to being done with the renovation, so there will still be plenty of updates on that front.

Here is a simple recipe for making homemade French fries. This is something really worth trying. Finding fries that haven’t been prepared in a factory and frozen is tough to find. Even at restaurants fries come in giant frozen bags, so you can’t get the real authentic French fry experience.

List of things you’ll need from the grocery store:

Russet potatoes. Get the five pound bag.
Canola oil. Canola oil has a high temperature point and works good for frying.
Salt or Tony’s Seasoning.

That’s all you need. It is really simple.

Start off by peeling the potatoes and slicing them up in to French fry sized pieces. Put the pieces in a bowl under the faucet (use cold water). When the water runs clear you are good to go.

Ready for the frier

Get yourself a large pot and fill it with canola oil. A couple inches of oil is enough, and you can adjust the depth depending how many fries you are making.

Turn on the heat. You want to wait until the oil is hot before dropping in the fries. I usually turn the knob on my gas stove up a little over half way. You’re going to turn the heat up later in the recipe.

The goal of this first round is to get the potatoes to be soggy. When you pick one up it should be floppy. If it isn’t floppy you need more time. Stir them around occasionally so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pot.

Fry time

Pull the fries out of the oil and set them aside in a bowl lined with a paper towel. This will help absorb some of the oil.

Waiting for round two

Crank up the heat on the stove. You want the oil to get HOT! If the oil starts to smoke it is too hot. Here comes the secret to great homemade fries – you are going to double fry them. The first round of frying softened them up. This second round is going to crisp up the outside.

Second fry

Drop the fries in and when they start to look golden brown they are ready! Again, stick them in a bowl with a paper towel to absorb some of the oil, and then transfer them to a clean bowl. Season them with Tony’s Seasoning or just salt and ENJOY!