When it comes to awesomely good French fries, the fried spuds at Five Guys are among the best.
Five Guys makes their fries from whole potatoes, so that's one reason why they taste so good.
Here's everything else you need to know about how Five Guys' fries get made.
Pretty much every fast food chain and famous restaurant out there has a calling card. That can
be one food or ingredient that they set out to do better than any other competitor in their region,
or a couple dishes that compliment each other. Chicken sandwiches at Popeye's, for example,
or Egg McMuffins and hashbrowns on the McDonald's breakfast menu.
For Five Guys, French fries have been a signature food at the chain from the very start.
As Chad Murrell, son of founder Jerry Murrell, explained to Food Republic,
"[Fries are] our passion. They are the hardest thing we have to do,
but people think that it's the easiest. If you don't do them right,
they're still kinda good and people don't complain. But that doesn't cut it with us!"
Perhaps that's why while other fast food burger spots put the emphasis in their
names squarely on the burgers, Five Guys put fries on an equal footing by calling it
Five Guys Burgers and Fries. And what would a fast food burger be without a side of fries?
"You can do a million things with potatoes, but French fries?
What's not to love about French fries?"
Potatoes are an amazingly versatile root. It's believed that they originally come from
Peru and have been a part of people's diet in the region for 8,000 years.
Today, the International Potato Center states that there are more than 4,000
types of potato — the vast majority of which are so regional that you will never taste them.
Some have more starch, while others are waxy and only grow at a certain altitude.
Only a very specific set of potatoes make it to the Five Guys restaurant locations, though.
"Hold the phone. These are not just any kind of potatoes we're talking about here."
In a Facebook post, the Five Guys marketing team explained that most of its potatoes come from
Idaho above the 42nd parallel. Potatoes are sourced from Washington in the few months of
the year that Idaho potatoes are too soft, according to Yahoo. In explaining how Five
Guys' chooses their potatoes, in an interview with Inc., Jerry Murrell had this to say:
"Potatoes are like oak trees — the slower they grow, the more solid they are.
We like northern potatoes, because they grow in the daytime when it is warm,
but then they stop at night when it cools down."
If you've ever walked into a Five Guys, then you're familiar with the sacks of
potatoes that are scattered around every location of the restaurant.
Those Five Guys branded sacks — which are all filled with whole potatoes — aren't just for
show. In fact, they're the very same potatoes that get fresh cut and made into French fries.
A Five Guys location can go through about 500 pounds of potatoes a day, one employee told
Destination America. That's a lot of whole potatoes that need to be cut down to size.
For that, employees use what's called the monster cutter.
It's essentially a crank that squeezes a potato through a grate with holes that
are the perfect French fry size. Workers pull the lever to hand cut each potato.
Other quality fast food chains have tried the fresh potato method to little
success. Shake Shack, for one, had a short fresh potato run before returning to pre-cut and frozen
crinkle cut fries. While it's not like Five Guys employees are sitting in the kitchen
with a knife and meticulously hand-chopping each French fry, this fresh cut method is much more
involved than ordering a bag of pre-cut frozen potatoes. It also keeps the fry line moving.
The Five Guys sourcing policy of sticking to farms above the 42nd parallel and the laborious
fresh cut process isn't the only thing that sets Five Guys French fries apart. There's a
number of other steps that employees have to take before over stuffing your bag with fries as well.
Chad Murrell told Food Republic that the chopped potatoes are blanched,
which means they're cooked in really hot water for three minutes. Doing so reduces the starchiness
on the outside of the potatoes and makes the cut up spuds cook more evenly. Then the fries
are pre-cooked before being fried when the customer orders. Water, it turns out, is an
important factor in cooking the ultimate Five Guys French fries. As Jerry Murrell explained to Inc.,
"We actually soak our fries in water. When we pre-fry them, the water boils,
forcing steam out of the fry, and a seal is formed so that when they get fried a second time,
they don't absorb any oil — and they're not greasy."
According to NBC, every location in the Five Guys chain has no timers in the kitchens because
"good cooks" learn to recognize when food's ready. This forces employees to learn how to cook by
sight and feel for every item on the menu — including the fries. While this is a lot
harder than, say, setting a timer and forgetting it until you hear beeping, the processes that Five
Guys put in place ensures employees learn to recognize a consistent fry texture and taste.
Still, it's not like the cooks are flying blind. The quality would be all over the
map if employees didn't have at least some sort of method to make sure each fry at each location
turns out the same. When Five Guys was featured on Destination America, an employee described the
"smush test" as the way to make sure the batch is good to go. After the first cook, if you
push down on the fry and it sticks together then that's a good cook. If it snaps, that's no good.
Then, for the final cooking section, which takes between two and two and a half minutes,
workers know the French fries are ready to take out of the oil when the fries
float to the top of the basket and the bubbles go away. In the end,
each fry has a golden crunchy outside and the texture of a baked potato on the inside.
Other than the sacks of potatoes all over each Five Guys location, one of the most noticeable
things a customer interacts with are the free peanuts. By some accounts, those peanuts are
there to distract customers as the food cooks since making food from scratch takes a little
longer than your typical fast food joint. Yet those aren't the only place you'll find a peanut
product. It turns out the fries rely on peanuts as well. In September 2014, Five guys tweeted this:
"We use 100% refined peanut oil because it does a great job of sealing in flavor."
This sounds like a bummer for the millions of people in the United States who are allergic
to peanuts, but peanut oil is on the safer side because of how it's processed.
Essentially, refined peanut oil lacks the stuff that gives people an allergic reaction.
There's nothing to be done about all those free peanuts, however,
so maybe having someone go in to order take out for you is the best option.
Five Guys is famous for topping off every order of fries with more fries.
"Whenever you get an order of Five Guys' famous fries, you always get a topper."
It doesn't matter which size you get,
there will be one full container and then a bunch of fries outside of the container, too.
Perhaps you've heard them called "bag fries." All the extras may make you feel like you're
getting a bargain on fries that clearly take a fair amount of work to cook. But it's really
all part of a clever marketing plan. In a Reddit AMA, one Five Guys employee wrote,
"When you order a small fry (for example, but they do this for all sizes) you are paying
for all of the fries that go into the bag. That 'extra' scoop is kind of an illusion,
they told us during training that it's to make customers think they're getting a big bargain."
The psychology behind the extra fries is simple. People love feeling like they're getting more than
they paid for, so giving more fries breeds good will. The blog The Self Employed explains that
the cost of the extra fries is already built into the menu price the customer is charged.
So while it may seem like you're getting a bunch of freebies, you're actually getting
exactly what you paid for. That doesn't stop the good vibes from extra fries, though.
After reading about how precise every single step has to be for
workers to deliver consistent fries at every location day in and day out,
you'd be forgiven for thinking that there's only one way to eat said fries. But you'd be wrong.
To start with, there is the condiment bar. Every Five Guys location keeps the condiment
selection stocked with the usual ketchup and mustard, along with barbecue sauce,
hot sauce, A.1. sauce, mayonnaise, and Heinz Malt Vinegar. Then there are some
secret menu style customizations you can make outside of the basic sauce selection.
In a Reddit thread, a Five Guys employee listed two of the best ways to customize the fries.
All you have to do is ask for them the right way. The first takes advantage of the double
cooking process. Rather than let the fries go through both, you can have a bunch of crunchy
fries if you ask the employees to instead cut them in half and cook them well done.
The other option is to make what the employee calls "Confetti fries." First,
mix barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, and Cajun seasoning together,
and then dump the sauce into the bag with the fries and shake it all together.
According to Taste of Home, Five Guys fries are the most unhealthy fries in America. Case
in point: a small fry has 528 calories and a large has 1,314. As Taste of Home points out,
that's as many calories as a Five Guys hamburger patty, bun and milkshake
combined. And then there's the fat and salt: 57 grams of fat and 1,327 milligrams of sodium.
That's not to say that the fries are necessarily worse for you than your average fry.
It's more about the amount of fries you get every time you receive an order.
The people in charge of Five Guys are well aware of how the extra fries
impact the restaurant's healthiness rating. Here's what Jerry Murell had to say to Food Republic,
"Every time they do a calorie count on us, it looks pretty bad."
For many people, thin and crispy fries are the most familiar. It's the style that you'll find
at McDonald's, Burger King, and other fast food spots. Yet crispy fries aren't what you'll find
at Five Guys, and that's kind of the point. Instead, you'll find boardwalk style fries
styles after one very specific restaurant on one very specific boardwalk. As Chad Murrell explained
to Food Republic, there was one local chain, started in 1929, that he and his family loved:
"We grew up going to Ocean City [Maryland], where there were all sorts of stands that sold
boardwalk fries. But we loved Thrasher's the best. We decided that we had to do it like Thrasher's."
Boardwalk fries, according to a Food Network recipe, use peanut oil. They also have that
mashed potato like center rather than being all crunch. Think of them as similar to the frites
that are served all over France and Belgium. Of course, not everyone is a fan. On a Reddit AMA
with a Five Guys manager, one regular said that their primary complaint with Five Guys
is that the restaurant doesn't cook their fries long enough. The manager responded by writing,
"Technically we're not supposed to cook 'crispy' fries, although we've done that
multiple times at my store before. Our fries are 'boardwalk' style,
which means that they're typically firm on the outside with a mashed potato interior."
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Mashed videos about your favorite fast casual chains are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.