Home › Seven Weeks' Menus › French Fried Potatoes
French Fried Potatoes
Pare potatoes and let stand in cold water an hour. Cut in slices, blocks, strips, balls or any fancy shape. Dry on towel. Drop quickly into hot, deep fat, hot enough to bring them quickly to the surface. When they float, remove, drain on soft paper, sprinkle with salt and serve hot.
A compact single-fry method from a period when deep fat was judged by eye rather than thermometer. The soaking and drying steps are the ones that matter.
- Fat temperature"Hot enough to bring them quickly to the surface" points to somewhere in the usual deep-frying range, roughly 350-375F. Cooler than that and the strips absorb fat and go limp; hotter and the outside colours before the centre cooks.
- The soakAn hour in cold water rinses surface starch, which is what keeps the strips from gluing together and helps them crisp. Longer is harmless; skipping it is not.
- Dry them completelyThis is the hinge. Wet potatoes make hot fat erupt and steam the surface instead of crisping it. Pat dry with a towel and let them sit a few minutes in air before frying.
- Floating is not quite doneThin strips float when cooked through but still pale. If you want the familiar crisp brown exterior, hold them until they are golden, or fry twice: once at about 325F to cook through, then again at 375F to colour.
- Shape changes the timingMatchstick strips cook in a few minutes; thick blocks or balls take appreciably longer. Fry one shape per batch and keep batches small so the fat temperature does not crash.
- FatThe original says only "hot, deep fat"; period kitchens might have used lard, beef suet or a vegetable shortening. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works; use enough that the potatoes swim freely.
- Salt and timingSalt while still glistening so it sticks, and serve at once. These do not hold; reheating gives you a soft potato with a tough skin.
- QuantityFigure one medium potato per person as a side dish, more if the shapes are fanciful and much is trimmed away.
Fried potatoes came into American cookbooks from French practice over the second half of the nineteenth century, though the origin of the name is disputed -- it may refer to the French manner of cooking or simply to "frenching," the cutting of vegetables into strips. The invitation to cut them into "slices, blocks, strips, balls or any fancy shape" reflects the era's taste for shaped garnishes: pommes gaufrettes, pommes noisettes and the like were standard hotel-kitchen vocabulary, and household books passed the idea along to cooks working with a single deep kettle.