Homemade Fair Fries!

"He Said"...

I've never been happy with the way home made french fries turned out. Soggy, burnt before they got crispy, something always happened that made me just want to throw them away and stick with Ore-ida. G and I went to Penn Station Subs a while back and their fries reset my standards for fries. Most restaurants serve the frozen pre-cooked fries that they just throw in the fryer and thaw/brown. Those usually are very crisp and crunchy but light on flavor. Penn Station makes "homemade" style fries and I believe they even cut them in the stores. The flavor was awesome especially with malt vinegar so I thought heck I'll try again. That's my stick my nose up in the air a bit wanna-be-food connoisseur /wanna-be-chef reason for making fries. The real reason, I had 30-45 mins to get dinner ready and I didn't have any frozen fries!

I did a quick search of my mentor and friend (I watch his TV shows okay?!) Emeril Lagasse's french fry recipes and I decided on this one. Plain and simple. (About 2/3 the way down the page).

I've taken a knife skills class but my ability to get consistent size/shape fries by hand is non-existent and we don't have a real fry cutter so I improvised. G bought the Vidalia Chop Wizard from Amazon a while back and I thought hey, I could use the insert by itself without the base or handle to make consistent sized fries! So that's what I did. I took the little green insert out and pushed it down through my already washed potatoes. I left the skins on for that extra flavor. (I'm lying. I was lazy and time was short.) It worked like a charm!

Here are my variations to the recipe:

1. I left the skins on the russet potatoes.
2. I didn't have time to pack them in ice and let them sit for the full 30 mins. They got 15 if they were lucky.
3. I also didn't dry them very well. I would highly recommend following his advice on this one. Hot oil is HOT and it burns! G isn't a fan of oil splatters in her kitchen either. :(
4. I committed a mortal sin by skipping the Essence too.
5. I used vegetable oil instead of peanut oil.

My Notes:
This is the first time that I ever blanched (two step frying) potatoes first. I think this and maybe to a lesser degree the ice bath really made a huge difference in the way these fries turned out. I tried a few fries after the first trip in the oil at 320 degrees and they were cooked through but soft and a bit soggy (like all my other experiences had been) they also had really good flavor at this point. I put them on a cooling rack covered with paper towel and let them cool down. After 5-10 minutes they went back in the oil at 350 degrees and this time they came out with good color and bit of crunch. I hit them with the salt right after coming out of the oil while they were still wet. These fries were not like the frozen fry variety or fast food type but more like fair fries.

Results:
The fries were inhaled by my family of chicks! Everyone loved them and wished I had made more (or not eaten so many as I was cooking). Fantastic recipe that didn't take much time at all. This will likely replace frozen fries in our house (unless I am especially lazy!)