The Best Way To Make French Fries At Home (Restaurant-Quality) | Epicurious 101

i'm frank proto i'm a professional chef and a culinary instructor and today i'm going to show you how to make restaurant quality french fries frank style so much older we're talking golden brown french fries restaurant style not those sad little soggy things you get out of the freezer this is french fries 101 french fries aren't really french fries they're actually from belgium but in certain parts of belgium they speak french so the american gis that had them called them french fries anyone could cut up a potato and put it in the fryer but without the proper technique you're likely to get something that's soggy burnt overcooked we're gonna do these the right way my ideal french fry long and slender golden brown and crispy on the outside fluffy on the inside and really salty one of the most important steps to making a restaurant style fry is the prep let's get these fries ready for french fries choosing the right potato is really important i've chosen russet potatoes like a russet have a higher starch content which means less water less water content more starch equals crispier fries the first step to making our fries is cutting them i like to use a french mandolin it gives you nice even straight cuts but you got to be careful it could be dangerous first thing i'm going to do is set the depth of the fries and i have these big tines here that are going to cut the sides of the fries right i get my potato i grasp it firmly and then i do a quick swipe through when you hesitate this gets stuck get your hands out of the way your fingers out of the way hold it with the flat of your hand and push through once i get to halfway through i turn my potato on its side less surface area less sticking and i go and cut the rest of the potato when you get down to this little piece put a towel on top so you don't cut yourself and push the rest of the french fry through you're always going to have a little piece that isn't gonna be a french fry you can always just save that and fry it up and snack on it once my potatoes are cut make sure that there's no like rotten pieces and i'm gonna put them into a bowl of cold water and you'll see what happens right away when i add them to the water is we start to see some of that surface starch come off this is one of the key factors in getting nice crispy fries if you leave all the surface starch on the potatoes going to get brown and probably burn before it's even cooked in the middle what i'm gonna do here is i'm gonna give these one really good rinse and i'm gonna go into a clean bowl of water you can see how much starch came off of them and then i'm gonna let these soak in the fridge six to eight hours or overnight overnight is usually a little bit better through movie magic i already have a batch that's done and basically what happens to them is they get really crisp look at that right and that's what i'm looking for i want them to snap i like the potatoes to be cold because when you cook them you're going to get a really good cook throwing through without the browning on the outside the next thing we have to do is actually dry them we don't want to put wet potatoes into hot oil because that is dangerous oil and water don't mix the hot oil starts to kind of explode and erupt and it could cause a fire and you could get burned so you want to be very careful i get my towels on top and i'm just going to dab them off like this so that i get any excess moisture off the top all right potatoes are nice and dry time to fry i'm a poet and i didn't even know it when you fry you should use an oil that has a high smoke point we're not really ever going to go over 375 400 degrees but we don't want the oil to break down in the process we want to keep those nice flavors you can use vegetable oil canola oil peanut oil which is used less and less nowadays because people have peanut allergies but what i like to use is duck fat duck fat has a pretty good smoke point but it also uh gives us a ton of flavor so two pieces of equipment that are really great to have this is a spider a spider is called that because it looks like a spider web right we also have a candy thermometer or a frying thermometer they clip onto the side of your pot and it's really great tool to have in your home kitchen so we're going to put our fries in the oil it's at about 300 degrees fahrenheit this isn't enough to cook them all the way to a finished fry but what it is going to do is blanch them and basically blanching is cooking them through getting the potatoes totally cooked without any color right so then we eventually put it into the hot oil the 375 degree oil they can get super crispy and stay nice and light and fluffy in the middle so right when you put these in it's good to start to see some bubbling bubbling means that the water is coming out and the oil is not getting into our fries if you put it into the oil and you don't see bubbles that means that our fries are going to be nice and greasy and we don't want that i'm just stirring them a little so they don't stick together so what i'm looking at right now is that the water is still bubbling off if i lift them out of the oil i'm not really getting any color they're still nice and bright white depending on the size of the pot and how many potatoes you put in this blanching usually takes about three to five minutes and we're done second batch going in the reason i'm doing two batches is if i put all the fries in at once basically it's gonna bring the oil temperature down way too far and my fries will start to get soggy and oily when you take these out of the oil you want to try and keep them as flat as possible because these will continue to cook once you take them out you don't want a huge pile of fries on top of each other because the ones that are in the center are going to cook while the ones on the outside get cold you want to try and keep them in a single layer so the fries are fully blanched and what i'm looking for is this i take the fry out i give it a little snap it kind of just breaks apart and i can see that it's actually fully cooked in the middle now that our fries are blanched we're going to put them in the fridge and i'm gonna let these chill now the fries have been in the fridge for about three or four hours they're completely cool this ensures that the outside is crispy and the inside is super fluffy the oil is somewhere between 375 and 380. we're gonna do these in two batches just like we did the blanching just so that i don't splash i'm gonna put my fries into the spider and drop them in we're frying at a higher temperature than blanching because at this point we know that they're cooked all the way through so we're using that higher temperature to get them brown and crispy as quickly as possible just like with the blanching we want to see bubbles bubbles mean that oil is not getting in water is coming out when they start to get golden brown like this they're almost there i think we're good i'm going to take them out drain them off really good like this with the spider give them a little tap they go right into my bowl look at that i like to season them right when they get out of the fryer so they're super piping hot and we get them on the plate while they're nice and crisp for my fries i like to use a fine sea salt i think fine sea salt sticks to the fries a little better kosher tends to bounce off [Music] give it a toss i'm just gonna put a nice big pile on the plate for my sauce i like to do a little ketchup a little mayonnaise a little sriracha kind of like a spicy ketchup mayonnaise it's not exactly a secret sauce but it's my sauce here i have my restaurant quality fries and now it's time for the best part the eating let me get a nice one dip it they're crispy they're salty they're fluffy on the inside absolutely delicious you shouldn't have to go to a restaurant for this simple american favorite i hope this makes all your french fried dreams come true i'm frank potato no no i mean proto and i approve these fries

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 5,341,528

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Id: I-mWa_GqIEg

Length: 7min 23sec (443 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 15 2022