I'm going back to grad school, and you're coming with me.
Part 2: Homemade French Fries
So we took help again from Mr. Bittman as well as everyone’s favorite nerdy cook, Alton Brown. Between the two of them, we were in good shape. Our philosophy going into this comes from another extremely smart food authority, Michael Pollan. Food Rule #58: “Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.” So we did!
To start, you gotta get some good, starchy potatoes. Alton recommends Russets, which I am fairly sure are synonymous with Idaho potatoes. We peeled the potatoes, but you don’t have to. Once you have them in the size and shape you want - ours were fairly standard thin-cut, not shoestring, not gigantic - Alton says you should soak them in cold water to get some of the starch off. This helps during the frying process. I used my handy-dandy salad spinner to get as much excess water off of the fries before putting them in the oil. As you know, oil and water don’t mix.
For optimal crispy-outside-soft-inside crunch, we fried twice. After the first time at 300 degrees for about 7 minutes, the fries are sort of blond but not ready to eat yet. We let them cool slightly and drain on a wire rack/newspaper contraption and then did a second fry for just about a minute, until they were golden brown and delicious. Thanks to my first job at Mickey D’s, I knew to salt the fries immediately after they come out of the oil, so the salt sticks.
After all that, the fries were done and ready to eat. And they were GOOD, if I do say so myself! Actually, they tasted just like fries you’d get in a restaurant. But better, because we made them ourselves!
