Home › Cookery › To Fry Sliced Potatoes
To Fry Sliced Potatoes
Peel and slice thin. Dry well in a cloth. Fry in lard, stirring till crisp. Take up and lay on a sieve to drain. Sprinkle a little salt over them.--Mrs. R.
A four-line formula for what we now call chips or crisps, and the terseness hides the two things that decide whether they succeed: how dry the slices are and how hot the fat is.
- Dry the slices seriouslyRinse the cut slices to wash off surface starch, then press them between towels until they no longer feel damp. Water in the fat means steam, spitting, and slices that go limp rather than crisp.
- Slice thin and evenAbout 1/16 inch, or the thinnest setting on a mandoline. Uneven slices finish at different moments and you will be picking out the scorched ones.
- Fat temperatureThe original gives no heat guidance because it assumes a cook watching the kettle. Lard at 350-360F is the working range; the slices should bubble vigorously the moment they go in without browning in the first few seconds.
- LardRendered lard fries hot and cleanly, and was the everyday Southern kitchen fat; the recipe specifies nothing more particular than 'lard'. Modern shelf lard is often hydrogenated and works, and refined peanut oil or beef tallow will behave much the same if you would rather.
- "Stirring till crisp"Work in small batches and keep the slices moving so they do not weld into sheets. Two to four minutes is usual; pull them when the bubbling slows and the edges are pale gold, since they darken after they leave the fat.
- DrainingA sieve keeps air moving under the slices, which paper on a plate does not. A wire rack over a sheet pan is the modern equivalent.
- Salt while hotSalt clings best while the slices are still hot and filmed with fat, so season them as they come out of the pan. Fine salt, sprinkled from a height.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities. As a working batch, about 1 lb of potatoes, or two large russets, fills a snack bowl for four. Waxy potatoes hold together but brown less; a dry, starchy potato gives the better crisp.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), edited by Marion Cabell Tyree, was assembled from contributions by ladies of Virginia and her sister states, which is why so many entries end with an initial rather than a name -- "Mrs. R." is one of that anonymous chorus. Thin fried potatoes appeared in nineteenth-century American cookbooks under names like Saratoga chips, after the resort town in New York where they are traditionally said to have been popularized in the 1850s; the origin story involving a chef and a fussy diner is folklore rather than documented fact. What is documented is that recipes of this kind spread quickly through household books in the 1870s and 1880s, generally turning on the same few instructions: slice thin, dry well, fry. The reliance on lard reflects the Southern hog economy, where rendered fat was a byproduct of every autumn's butchering.