Home › Vegetables › French Fried Potatoes
French Fried Potatoes
Choose small potatoes; peel them, and cut them lengthwise into quarters or eighths, like pieces of orange or the quarters of apples. Let them stand for half an hour in very cold water to extract the starch. Dry each piece carefully on cloth. Fry them in hot fat in a frying-basket for ten minutes. Do not fill the basket too full. Drain carefully from fat. Sprinkle with salt and serve hot.
A clear, workable method that predates thermometers, so the one thing it leaves out is the fat temperature. Everything else in the instructions is sound and still taught.
- Fat temperature"Hot fat" here means roughly 350-375F (175-190C). Below about 325F the wedges absorb grease and go limp; above 400F they colour before the interior cooks. A thermometer removes all guesswork; a cube of bread browning in roughly 40 to 60 seconds is the older test.
- Dry them properlyThis is the hinge of the recipe. Water on the surface turns instantly to steam, drives fat out of the pan and leaves the exterior soft. Blot each piece and let them sit uncovered a few minutes more before they go in.
- The cold soakHalf an hour in cold water rinses surface starch and helps the pieces stay separate and crisp. Longer is fine, and refrigerating the bowl does no harm. Change the water once if it clouds heavily.
- Ten minutesAccurate for thick orange-segment wedges at moderate heat. Cut into eighths from a small potato, they may be done in six to eight. Go by colour and by a wedge yielding easily to a skewer rather than the clock.
- Do not crowd the basketThe original is right to insist. A full basket drops the fat temperature sharply and the potatoes stew. Fry in batches no more than a third of the fat's volume, letting the fat recover between them.
- Choice of fatPeriod kitchens used beef drippings or lard, both of which still work and taste good. Any refined oil with a smoke point above 400F — peanut, sunflower, rice bran — behaves the same.
- Salting and holdingSalt the moment they leave the fat, while the surface is still hot enough to take it. Drain on a rack rather than a solid layer of paper so the undersides do not steam.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. As a rough guide, about 1 1/2 lb of potatoes will serve four as a side dish.