Hi a big welcome to Steve's kitchen. What makes the best french fries? Well
generally the answer to that should be somebody else but if you've got to make
them, you've got to make sure you've got the right potato.
Now obviously the potato can make some difference, I know russets are very good
for french fries but really it's about moisture content and so I'm going to
show you how you can get the best out of almost any potato at home. Now this is a
good all-rounder potato and actually we're going to be using this for a
delicious Canadian poutine recipe which has either just gone up or going up very
shortly on the channel. We actually made some really fantastic cheese curds as
well so I think you ought to check that out those cheese curds,
they were squeaky. Now I'd appreciate if you let me know how you like your french
fries, I'm going to do these in a fairly simple chip style, French fry style. You
could do Stringfellow's very fine, you could do big wedges it's really up to
you but one of the things we have to do to start with is get some of the
moisture out of these potatoes. So I'm going to cut these up. Now for the purpose
of science and for this experiment I'm going to use about a couple of pounds or
a kilo of potatoes and explain to you why in a moment.
So you may have seen when I was cutting those up there's a lot of moisture in
the potatoes. How are we going to get moisture out of them? Well actually we're
going to boil them in water to draw some of the moisture out, we're going to put salt
in there. So in a pot I've got about two liters of water, that's about 8 cups. Then
we can drop our French fries into the water, a little like a pasta water. I'm
going to put a tablespoon of salt in with there and that's going to help season the
potatoes but it's also going to draw some of the moisture out this is optional but
I'm also going to put a tablespoon of sugar. The sugar actually very microscopically
coats the French fry so you could leave this out, a little bit of honey would
work as well it just gives us some color when we come to actually fry our french
fries. The last thing I'm going to put in there is a tablespoon of vinegar just to
help break down the starches. Now take this over to the stove, now we don't want
to fully cook the potatoes and depending on the amount you do the time will vary
but we bring that water up until it starts to boil and then we are
just going to cook it for five minutes, no longer than that, we don't want to end up
with a sort of potato soup. They want to still be fairly strong in structure. Now
set yourself an alarm make sure you don't go over the five minutes when it
comes to that boil. We've had five minutes of cooking, we're going to take
it off of the stove and we're going to pour it into a colander and drain off
all the moisture. Now you can decide if you want to leave them in the colander
to completely dry, I prefer just to spread them out on a countertop or on to
a nice clean kitchen towel and there we're going to leave the French fries
until they've completely dried and cool down. Now the potatoes have cooled down
and I'm going to hazard a guess we've actually, by boiling them in salt water,
drawn out 10% of the moisture. What do you think? Well I'm going to weigh them with
you now so we can see for sure. Now I hope you can see that there, there is a
French fry that I've actually boiled in the salt water, there's one I've just cut
straight from the potato and by reducing that moisture content down so far we're
going to get a lovely crisp french fry rather than the limp French fry you
normally get. Now I'm going to actually freeze up half of these, they freeze
really well by the way. You can just put them straight in the freezer keep the
air out so they preserve for as long as possible. I'm going to freeze these because
I'm going to use half of these for the poutine recipe that's coming up very
shortly and I'll fry some now just to show you how gorgeous they come out. Now
the beauty of freezing these by the way and I did allude to this in an earlier
video where I showed the perfect McDonald's style french fry, is that by
actually freezing and the ice crystals, basically we need the little ice
crystals to mash the inside of the potato otherwise we'll have a fudgy
interior and they won't get that lovely light crispy Mcdonald french fry giving
you a sort of mashed potato inside, which is really quite nice almost perfect and
why so many of those commercial french fries feel like they've not been made
with real potatoes. I'm going to fry about a pound of, 500 grams of these french fries
and it doesn't matter whether you went for a thinner Stringfellow or something
a bit chunkier, the cooking method remains the same. I've got some rice bran
oil, any oil will do but something with a high smoke point is ideal. I've preheated
it to 150 degrees Celsius, that's about 300 degrees
Fahrenheit and we're going to cook these for about five minutes and that will get
them lovely and golden brown on the outside. I'm then going to lift them out of
the oil and I'm going to let that oil come up to a higher temperature. We're going
now for 190 degrees Celsius about 375 Fahrenheit. When it comes up to
temperature I want to blanch the french fries into
the oil for another two minutes to three minutes maximum. They're going to go a
gorgeous dark brown and they're going to remain lovely and crispy when we take
them out of the oil. It's at that point that you want to add the seasoning to
your french fries, so we're going to sprinkle them over with a little bit of
salt and pepper, maybe some Italian herbs and there you have it perfectly crispy
french fries, gorgeous looking, hot. I'm going to give them a try while they're hot
probably burn myself but here goes. They are delicious, so hot. This is a great
method for getting lovely crispy french fries, they taste good and you can do the
boiling part in batches if you like so you can make up groups of these and
freeze them. As I said they work out just good. I hope you've enjoyed the video,
share the love, give it thumbs up, share it with anybody out there, any friends or
family and I'll see you for poutine very shortly and don't forget the squeaky
curds. Take care