- It's got like the texture of Vaseline
and tastes of plastic.
(bright music)
Hello, everybody it's Barry here.
Hope you are doing well.
Welcome to my kitchen.
You might be able to hear,
the dogs are just having their breakfast.
But whilst Amy is finishing up,
she is the slowest eater of the two,
but she likes to savour her the flavour, if you will,
let's rewind to yesterday when I popped it too McDonald's.
- [Woman] How can I help?
- Hi there, can I get three portions of fries, please?
Large ones.
In case you haven't guessed it,
today's video is all about French fries.
Thank you, cheers.
You too, thank you.
Yes, there we go, the classic.
Might as well have one warm one,
'cause the others are gonna be cold.
So I'm enjoying my French fries.
Now, I will go in the shop
with a mask on,
get some ingredients.
Today I am making, actually,
one of the most requested videos
I have ever been asked to do
and I've put it off for ages,
homemade McDonald's French fries.
All right, so this was last night.
I did eat one portion 'cause I'm gonna need one of these
for my thumbnail,
but I bought two extra ones,
because as you know, when,
that's a stereotypical thing, isn't it,
when you look at the picture like, oh my gosh,
it looks amazing.
I know the photographer from McDonald's, by the way,
in the UK, he's amazing,
but it's never completely full,
so I needed to buy an extra set
to make it look nice and glorious
to compare it against with mine.
But don't eat cold chip, no.
And I put a video up here.
This is what I mentioned about the other day,
where I actually did a sponsor video for McDonald's.
This one isn't today,
where I basically learned how chicken nuggets were made,
and fries, and it was a really, really interesting day,
in the video, if you haven't seen it.
But on that day, when I went and learned
about how the potatoes were sort of harvested,
we got up on a tractor and it was just really cool.
And I grilled the farmer so so much,
so I got as much information as I could.
So based on what I was told, this is how I'm gonna do it.
And fingers crossed,
it's gonna work out rather stonking indeed.
Now, believe it or not, the first bombshell fact
I found out is that McDonald's fries
don't actually contain any potato.
They're made with real pug.
No, they're not.
They're actually made by a variety of different potatoes.
The farmer told me that.
He said they actually get them from all over the UK.
It depends like at the time of year
and how they've sort of grown and stuff.
They can sometimes be a medley.
But the most popular one is a russet potato,
because it's perfect for making a chip.
So this starch-filled blob is gonna hopefully become
a McDonald's French fry like that.
Now, it's a little bit sad, this one, 'cause it's cold,
but I can use this to get the dimensions right,
because they are fairly accurate.
I mean, they're just gonna chuck 'em through
a massive chip maker, which just get the fries
this exact same shape every single time.
I reviewed a gadget like that,
but we'll do it by hand.
Now, normally...
In fact, the...
Go.
What's that?
But the actual length of the fries,
I'm sure they used to be,
I mean, they've got shorter.
It doesn't matter, we can use this board,
we don't have to do this, I'm gonna measure them right now
to get 'em just right.
So, yes, a McDonald's fry is a quarter of an inch,
typically, square all the way round.
So that means we've gotta turn this
into this, lots of times.
So what I'll do is we'll peel this down
to give it as much opportunity as possible.
I personally, my favourite type of fries or chips,
whatever we wanna call them, are when the skin is on,
but I'm gonna just try and get rid
of all the nasty bits,
just so it's gonna be nice and smooth.
Barry Lewis peeler optional, by the way.
But there we go, it's nice and smooth.
Oh no, it's not, see?
Even these little blemishes like that,
you can just get those off if you want to.
And I can feel the starch in it as well.
We'll come onto that in a minute.
So we're just gonna try and give ourselves
a nice sort of flat disc to work with.
But then you have to go down the sides as well.
So you actually lose quite a lot of potato.
Okay, so now what I'm gonna do
is cut it down in those quarter inch dimensions,
into almost like credit card shapes,
which is still not perfect, all right.
We can tidy that up.
Now, this is completely overkill,
but I'm just trying to get them nice and symmetrical, okay.
So I've got pretty much a perfect square there.
apart from that little kink on the end.
That should give us some nice even sized fries.
If I line that up and go down,
and then down for the next quarter of an inch,
and you can see it's working.
Takes a long time, but it's worth it.
(upbeat music)
There we go. Looking rather stonking, indeed, aren't they?
Nice and consistent in size.
That was one potato.
So we've obviously got repeat this now,
but oh, not me.
My epic Friday night last night, I party hard.
I sliced two potatoes. This is two more potatoes.
So that's three in total.
And you can see that's at least two sizes
of large fries from McDonald's.
So that's three potatoes.
You can see why they're doing well for themselves.
All right, so this is a brownie tray
that I'm gonna fill up with some water.
That's me filling it up with water.
All right.
Now, this is good for any chip, okay.
This is basically getting rid of the starch.
We're gonna have to wash it out.
Look, if I just mix this around,
look how murky that water has gone.
That is the starch from the potatoes.
Wow.
Look how different that is.
So I always do that even when I do,
we normally make oven chips
whenever we have homemade chips at home,
we don't tend to fry them,
but that really does make a difference.
So, this is what I was told by the farmer.
Apparently the fries are plunged into cold water,
so we've already got the cold water here,
with some sugar.
Now, I guess if you don't have sugar, what you should do,
everyone's got sugar, why wouldn't you?
As you can see, we just stir that in,
let it dissolve.
And we submerge these in this water,
in this brine, for an hour.
This, stick it in the,
for an hour, just to soak.
Whilst that's in the fridge,
my mother-in-law made me a homemade face mask.
I got this this morning. Look at that.
It actually colour coordinates with my T-shirt.
Please wear a mask.
All right, so that has nearly been an hour in there.
And we're now reverting back to where I feel comfortable.
This is how I normally make chips
without the sugary brine thing.
So first thing I'm doing is half filling
a saucepan with water.
So we're just bringing that up to a simmer.
Once it hits that point,
the potatoes are gonna go in there.
Those rectangles are gonna get softened.
Do not boil them for too long,
otherwise you'll end up with like mashed potato,
which is fine, but this video isn't mashed potato.
But the point is, we soften those rectangles.
We get them nice and delicate and soft,
so when we get that crispy outside,
you've still got that soft, fluffy cooked middle.
I'm excited.
All right, we have got a nice rolling simmer on there now.
And I have drained off the potatoes.
So I'm gonna just chuck them in
a little bit at a time.
So that's them in there.
And you can see, like I say,
that has shocked the water.
So where it was simmering before,
it will come up quite quickly.
But the coldness of these potatoes
will actually like make it cooler.
It's great.
So it gives us a bit more time to cook them
and keep our eye on it.
And also, the fact that there's no starch in there now,
it will stop them sticking together as well.
Pushing them around the pan like this
can be very therapeutic, but don't do it, okay.
Because they're so thin,
they're gonna soften very quickly, indeed.
So if you start pushing them too much, you will snap them,
and basically you just ruin all the progress.
So, we'll scoop one out from the middle,
make sure it's softened enough,
and then you can move on. I'm not sure if this is true,
but apparently if you go into McDonald's
and you want a fresh batch of cooked fries,
you can ask for them with no salt on.
But the process they do anyway,
which we'll talk about in a minute,
they kind of cook them fresh anyway.
I think maybe people mean that by doing that,
you get pretty much literally
you know it's just been put in a fryer
and not sat there for at least 30 seconds,
because I think that's the sort of turned around they have.
But look, this is the chips done now
You can see how it's got a slight bend in it.
For me, that is enough.
'Cause it's wobbling any more than that
and it will start to snap.
Oh, see, we've got a casualty.
Be careful. Once these were all in here,
there was a lot of steam coming off,
you can let it go to room temperature,
or just run it under a cold tap like I just did
and tip out as much water as you can.
There we go.
That's actually strengthened quite a bit already,
but now we strengthen them even more so.
We go onto the fridge process.
If you can imagine, it's kinda like when a cake,
when you freshly bake a cake and it's warm
and sort of loose, and as it chills and cools down,
it firms up.
That's exactly the same principle for these, okay.
Get some of the moisture out
and we'll shove these in the.
Gonna get used to this fridge.
This is basically what happens with a lot of restaurants,
not just fast food, to certain dishes,
they make it externally offsite
or other companies literally do that whole process for them,
so then when you go into the restaurant
or the drive-thru, or just walk in, whatever,
they just have to do flash fry, you know,
just very, very quickly.
Look at it when you go into a restaurant
and you see that authentic, slow-cooked pulled pork
for eight hours, and you get it in five minutes,
we've all been to one of those pubs.
Just how the world works.
People want fast food and this is it.
So they do all of this stage,
and the next bit we're gonna do
is that a bit that they would do in the factory too,
the first stage of frying. You know what I mean about
the pulled pork thing there, right?
It's like eight hours and it probably is cooked
that long in a huge vat off site.
But then it's just bunged in a microwave in the pub.
For the first fry, the softened rectangles
are gonna have a kind of sealed layer of oil around it
to encase the softness in
and give it that first batch of crispness.
Again, this bit is done offsite.
I'm using the same pan again
to save on washing up, basically.
And it's also the biggest pan I've got.
I did have a deep fat fryer, it is somewhere,
but I genuinely hate using it.
I just hate frying stuff.
And that temptation of having it there,
I just wanted to remove that.
So I've hidden it well.
These are out of the fridge then.
They are actually quite nice to touch,
they're kinda like little ice lollies
'cause they're so cold.
Make sure they're nice and dry.
The oil, I think is ready.
We're gonna take our time with it.
And I've also got another chopping board here
with a kitchen towel to drain it off once they're done.
(upbeat music)
So these are frying away lovely.
I'm being very careful, but they are not done yet.
You can't see any tinges, any sort of indication
that they're crisping up yet. And that is what you want.
Just as nice outer layer.
When it comes to filming with oil,
I just do not wanna hurt myself.
But I don't know if you can see,
I've got a very slight outer skin on there now.
So I'm going to get them all out,
back onto the kitchen towel safely.
All right, so I'm patting them dry.
They've got this lovely little skin on them now,
and this is the stage where they would be frozen
and then ready to be shipped to the restaurants.
But in our case,
they're going back in a fridge.
All right, I've got some leftover
that were brined and haven't been fried at all.
So what we're gonna do,
we're gonna stick them in the oven
and I'm gonna bake them like I would normally
with oven chips.
Although, normally I blast them
and get like a nice charness on there.
I'm gonna try and get that golden colour
and we'll see if there's any comparison whatsoever.
Now, the only other thing I've done
is I took the oil from that pan,
passed it through a sieve into another pan,
just to give it a good old clean.
And I was also told that for the fry
they do in the restaurants,
they do have a little extra special ingredient.
Yes, that ingredient is dripping beef,
dripping or lard,
basically like just the slab of fat,
a fat, this came from up North.
I'll have some bread and dripping on me toast, please.
But it's like this.
This is like a big slab.
No, this has got like the texture
of Vaseline and tastes of plastic.
But apparently, this going in the oil,
which will just melt through as we're frying.
It's a fat that will probably cling and flavour the fries.
But just let that mix in.
And apparently that does help flavour the fries.
A little bit overkill, but that's what I've been told.
All right then, folks, so they're out the fridge, waiting.
I've got a little mini phone basket there,
but I actually do have two of them.
So here we go.
I'm gonna just plunge them in.
And I'm doing these in very small batches,
just so I've got a bit more control.
Am I gonna fry these until we've got
that lovely golden brown colour.
I think it's done.
This little basket has been amazing.
It's my bodged fryer, but I really,
really didn't wanna use a real one.
If you haven't got one of those,
you could probably use a sieve as well.
Can you see that?
We have nailed the colour.
That is
Barry good.
Before cooking.
Look, look at them,
yes, just enough colour.
Right, we've gotta get these done.
So they stay warm for the fun salting.
Yep.
Just did it with the sieve and that works just as well.
Okay, so this is some fine salt.
So I'm going for about, well, a tablespoon.
(joyful music)
It's actually really fun.
So they're nice and coated.
We're done. The kids have just got back.
All right, Mrs. B.
- [Rebecca] Hello.
- Oh (laughs)
- Stinks of McDonald's.
- Well, that's a good thing.
- Is it?
Right.
I was about to show you that I've done the homemade ones.
That's all the, that's with the two potatoes that I used.
Just two potatoes.
And that's two portions of large fries from McDonald's
to try and make it look like it does
in the posters and stuff like that.
Sorry, Miles, if you watching.
Quite a different style.
Obviously, these are stone cold
and I don't want to eat 'em again.
Do you wanna try cold McDonald's?
- [Chloe] No. - No?
- [Rebecca] No. - [Phoebe] No.
- There is a slightly paler, a little tingy colour.
They do smell rather stonking, indeed.
Welcome to McBarry's, can take your order please?
- Please may we have some McBarry's fries?
- Yes. - Large fries, please.
- That's 'cause all we do,
that's what we do.
And eat those, not those.
Trust me.
A one word review from Phoebe.
- Delicious.
- Stonking.
(Barry laughing)
- Going in for more.
Is there like any texture there or anything?
Oh. - In fact--
- They're very thin.
- Very crunchy. - Which is good.
- They're soft in the middle still, right?
- You know, Barry, I think it's better than McDonald's.
- They are actually nice.
- There is real crispness there, real softness.
And if you wanna see me do some more McDonald's recipes,
I've done a few, like an Egg McMuffin and a McRib,
which is probably one of my favourite teams ever.
- McChicken sandwich.
- Thanks for watching, folks.
Don't forget to subscribe for regular videos,
follow me on social media
for behind the scenes bits and bobs.
Let me know down below what you wanna see next.
And...
- They've eaten them all.
- Have you eaten them all?
You rats.
Right, as a punishment, have a cold one.
Go on. - Oh, no no no no no no.
- [Barry] Go on, I know you would.
Oh, I know, go on then.
- Very hard.
- Don't have to keep me eating it.
You can just take one bite, you know.
- They're quite hard to bite into.
- They're like, yeah.
It's basically edible starch.
- Did you want any?
- I didn't want any, no, to be honest,
it's just such an effort to make them.
See you next time, bye.
- [Rebecca, Phoebe and Chloe] Bye.
♪ Check your level, player ♪
♪ No matter what your style ♪ ♪ The kitchen's for me ♪
♪ Sideburns, moustache, goatee, ♪
♪ Maybe all three ♪
Oh and for reference, these are the oven chip ones.
I took my eye off them while I was frying,
but this is the colour that I normally make my oven chips to.
Really crispy with that soft centre,
but a completely different taste
of what this is gonna be.