Transcription
What's up, dude? Now, I can tell you from my 15 years of experience working in restaurants that the way we make great French fries probably isn't the way you want to do it at home. Because in most restaurants, they are double frying your French fries in a huge big vat of oil. And while that is probably one of the best ways you could cook a French fry, it's not the best way to do it at home. Too much mess, too much money, not healthy, too much work.
Well, it's a good thing you got me, my friends, because today I'm going to show you the absolute best way to make homemade French fries at home in the oven or in the air fryer. Now, let's go.
Now, for starters, before we get into any of the techniques today, we want to talk about choosing the right potato for the job. When it comes to French fries, I'm almost always going for rusted potatoes. That's just sort of your standard M16 for French fried potatoes. And another tip I can give you is when you're choosing a potato in the supermarket, choose the ones that feel hard to the touch. It needs to feel dense and hard like a rock. And trust me, those potatoes are going to work out better no matter what you do with them. Could be mashed, French fries, roasted potatoes, they're always better.
And as a follow-up tip, if your potatoes aren't super hard, sometimes you can't find those. Like these ones weren't super hard. I soak them in cold water as soon as I get home. I stick it in the fridge and the next day when I go to use them, they are literally hard as a rock. That cold water just breathes life into them. It really works.
Now, the very first method I'm going to show you today, I absolutely would not recommend to anyone. Please don't do this, but I am going to do it as a demonstration. This is the worst way you could ever make a French fry at home. What's funny is this is probably the most common way people make fries at home.
Now, for this, I'm just going to make a little slice here so the potato can rest easily. That's for safety. I'm going to show you how to use a mandolin a little bit later, but for now, we're just going to do this by hand because you can. And what I recommend doing is making about three slices French fry size. I'll cut that one separately. And from here, we're just going to slice across into our little French fry shape. Just really do your best to try to keep them consistent, but something just like this is absolutely fine. You could do them a little bigger, a little smaller if you like.
Drop them straight onto a baking tray. Pin them with a little bit of oil and some salt. Toss them up. I mean, we'll do our best to make these as good as we can, but I'll explain to you when they come out of the oven why I don't like this method. There we are.
Now, let's do our best to spread these out a little bit. If they're not touching each other, they're always going to cook better. When they're touching, they're going to steam more. When they're spread out, they're going to brown more. And straight into a 400° oven.
And the reason why myself as well as a thousand other chefs don't like this method is because when you cut fresh potatoes like that, they're just full of starch and sugars. And if you don't rinse off those starch and sugars and you just cook them right in the oven like that, they tend to cook really unevenly and burn way faster than they should.
These potatoes have been going for 15 minutes at this point. I highly recommend you pull out the potatoes, no matter what method you're doing today, and turn this spatula around. Now, because all those sugars and starches were not rinsed away, you can see how terribly these are sticking. This is not normal. I hate this so much. And uh but I'm going to do my best just to toss these up. Of course, you could probably put parchment down or something, but you're not going to get that same sort of crispiness. I really think it's better on the steel. This makes me angry, my friends. But I'm going to do my best to make these as good as they can be. And once they're tossed, get them straight back in the oven.
And there's our first unwashed fries after 30 minutes. And I would say these are absolutely done. They're a little less stuck now after that original unsticking. And this fry right here is a perfect example of why you shouldn't do this. Not rinsing off that excess starch and sugar. You can see this uneven browning. Like right here, it's just a little bit here. It's too dark brown. And here's another one where you can clearly see that unevenness. And while some of these may have some even coloring, they are few and far between. And that sticking is the worst part about this whole thing. The cleanup is going to suck. Uh just not fun.
By far the worst part about making fries this way without any rinsing is the fact that they stay crunchy for about 10 seconds and then they just flop and turn into just absolute mush. They just do not stay crunchy. And the whole point of French fries is literal crunch followed by soft, creamy, pillowy, cloudy middle. This is not it. There's a little crunch on some, but it is 95% just flaccid. I mean, they taste okay, but it's not a French fry and it shouldn't be considered one.
Now, for this second method, we're going to do the exact same thing, except we are going to quickly rinse these fries out in cold water about three times. So, same exact deal with the slicing here. Try to keep them all the same size.
Now, we'll throw these in a container. And I'll simply run some cold water over these potatoes while mixing them just a little bit. And you can already see this cloudy, dirty sort of water that's coming off the potatoes. Well, not dirty, but it's all that starch. And so, simply by rinsing them out like this, we're getting rid of a lot of that starch. And so all I'll do is repeat this process three times. And already on that third rinse, you can see just how much more clear this water is. That's what we want.
Now, the next thing you need to do is really dry these off because that moisture is the enemy to the color you want. And so I'm actually just going to throw them into this salad spinner just to get off that sort of initial layer of water. I salad spin all kinds of stuff. Like who says it's just for salad, dude? I'm a little rule breaker, dude. That's why my wife That's why she fell for me. Lady sees you do stuff like this. And then I like to get them onto this little towel here. Just a kitchen towel. You could use paper towel, but just waste so much, right? I like using these reusable ones. Just dry them up the best you can.
And same exact deal as our first method. Good sprinkle of salt or seasoning. And a good toss, my friends. You know the deal. And again, straight into a 400° oven.
And now here's our quick rinsed fries after 15 minutes of roasting. And you can see there's a little stickage, but it is nothing like the ones we didn't wash. I mean, these are coming loose right away. Some one or two have been slightly stuck, but these are absolutely night and day difference. So, just like the first guys, I'm going to go ahead and give these a toss and then return them to the oven. About 35 minutes for this batch here, and they're done.
And you can see these definitely have a more even browning, but they're also pretty spotty. Although, with these, I am using this grooved sheet pan, which is almost giving them this grill mark effect. So, that's contributing to that unevenness. But let's give them a taste and see how they live up to the first ones. They definitely look browner in a better way. Just more even all around. More crunch, but still pretty soggy. I mean, they're definitely a little better than the first one. Although, these are still single cook fried. All the best fries in the world have been cooked at least twice. And I'm going to explain that more in a second.
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Now, let's get back to the video.
Now, for the next four methods, I'm going to show you my personal favorite way to make French fries at home. I really think this is the best way you could do it. And while of course you can cut potatoes by hand like I showed you, I'm going to be using a mandolin today just for consistency, it really is almost like cheating when it comes to cooking in the kitchen because you get professional sort of cuts without having to be a professional, if that makes sense. Every restaurant I've ever worked in has had a mandolin and specifically this brand called Ben Rener. You simply just install this little French fry attachment and then adjust the knob on the back to your desired thickness. Pop a potato on there. I like using the guard. I'm not insane. Stab that in. And we're just going to simply push through. And look at that. In real time, just perfect French fries, right? Just absolutely love this mandolin. I will put a link to this exact one in the description if you want one.
Now, don't let those potatoes sit on your board. Immediately drop those into some cold water and start that destarching process while we slice the rest of our potatoes. And now, same exact deal as before. We're going to change this water and rinse them out three times. And there we are, my friends. All we need to do now is pop these in the fridge for about an hour. Because while rinsing them does get off a lot of those starch and sugars, soaking them in cold water in your fridge for an extended period of time really draws out a lot more starch. And not only that, but it's hardening that potato on a cellular level like I showed you in the beginning when you're soaking the whole potatoes, except this time it's doing it into these individual fries. And they just get so much harder and denser. And they always cook better no matter what you do with them. I mean, any restaurant in the world with a chef who has half a brain is soaking his fries in cold water overnight before cooking them. And I'm only going to do these for an hour, but I have another special batch in the fridge that's been soaking for 12 hours. So, we're going to see what the difference is there as well.
All right, my friends. Now is where we begin to separate ourselves from the amateurs because we are starting with our double cooked methods. Like I said in the very beginning of this video, restaurants are always double cooking their fries using oil and sometimes water. But when you're cooking at home, I always like to go for water for health reasons and just for the ease of just not having a giant vat of oil around. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants that unless you're super southern and that's like part of your heritage and that's cool, but like most people aren't doing that and I get it and it's super easy.
Here I have four quarts of boiling water. I'm adding in a tablespoon of kosher salt and two tablespoons of white vinegar. This is just cheap white vinegar. And the salt is really going to give those fries this nice rounded deep seasoning, right? It's just like a nice mellow seasoning throughout the whole fry. And a few years ago, I started adding vinegar and we always found this just give us the best crunch and flavor. I don't know what happens scientifically, but that vinegar for me is clutch. It makes it just so much better. I don't know why though, but it does.
Now, before moving on, I wanted to quickly analyze the difference between a 1-hour soak and a 12-hour soak. With the 12-hour, I can see that that water has changed almost like this light sort of brown color. And the difference I feel is that these are absolutely rock hard and they're starting to curl up a little bit, too. Whereas these ones are still really hard, but not like these. And my conclusion with that is a harder potato always seems to work out better in my own observation. So, I would say these win based on that fact, but we'll see after they're done.
Make sure that water is boiling rapidly. And then we're going to drop in some of our fries. The worst thing you could do right now is overload it too much. I'm just going like about two handfuls and that's it. If you put too much in the pot, you're going to drop the heat of that water too far down and they're not going to cook right. So, small batches and we're cooking these for about four or five minutes. It depends on the size of your fry. You want them to be holding your shape but be completely cooked through. I will show you what that looks like when they come out.
And here we are just a touch over 5 minutes. And when I squeeze these fries, I can feel it giving just pressing together. But you'll see if I just squeeze through, it's completely cooked. That is what we want. At this point, I'm getting them out into this strainer that's just sitting in a bowl over here. Because the next thing I do is let these steam for about 90 seconds, 2 minutes, something like that. And during this last steaming process, they're actually drying out. That's right. Steam is drying them. And after the time has elapsed, you can really feel and actually even see that these are no longer super wet, which is great.
Now, at this point, I get them out of that little strainer and onto a tray because if I leave them in the strainer, they are going to continue to steam and possibly overcook. So, now we need to release that heat. And you want to repeat this process with all your potatoes. I'm finding that these soaked ones are taking about 7 minutes of blanch time, a little longer than the usual five. On another note, when you're doing this blanching process, it always is beneficial to soak them first. But you can always do that triple rinse and then just immediately blanch them. And those are going to work out great, too. So, if you're pinched for time, you can definitely follow that method. But if you do, just know they're going to cook a little faster, closer to 5 minutes and not seven. Because these have soaked, they've just got a lot more life. They're a lot harder. They're taking longer to blanch. And what I like to do is just move these fries over that have cooled down. And then over here, I'll add the fresh fries that have just steamed. That way, I know the new batch isn't cooking the old batch, right? I have all the new ones over here.
For the next test, we are going to be taking our blanched fries and roasting some of them, as well as air frying some of them. This is my preferred method for cooking French fries, but we're going to see which wins, the oven or the air fryer. And with the air fryer, because it has that basket in the bottom, what I'm going to do is just add some hot oil to these fries. I'm going to give it a quick little toss to make sure they're all coated up. And now we're going to go ahead and get them onto our tray just to make sure they're completely coated cuz obviously I can't put oil on this grate. It's just going to fall through. So like that will work. Into the air fryer they go at 400°.
And here's our air fried French fries after 10 minutes. You can see they're perfectly golden brown. I just went in there and tossed them a little bit once. Now I'm getting them straight out onto a paper towel. Just drain off some excess oil. And once all that oil's off, I'm going to go ahead and get them out and just give them a little toss up with some more salt. That's Maldon salt. Nice, beautiful, flaky salt. Of course, you can do rosemary salt or anything else if you know, you know.
Now, these air fried fries are much closer to what you're going to get in a restaurant. They have this nice crunch followed by that creamy middle. Of course, if you want them crunchier, cook them a little longer. These are nicely balanced to me, but these definitely remind me more of restaurant fries that have been cooked in oil. They're really good.
Now, again, we're going to take a lightly oiled tray. And then, again, I'm just going to spread out these fries to make sure we're not really overcrowding too much. It would be a shame to ruin these. And now here's a brilliant trick you can use. This is hot oil, 350°. Because in the past for homemade fries, I would jam my sheet pan in a 400° oven for about 10 minutes. I would then take it out and add a good amount of oil in the sheet pan before returning to the oven for another sort of 5 minutes. And then I would take it out and add the French fries. And while that method does work, it's extremely dangerous. But when I take hot oil like this and just pour it over the fry, I've just eliminated the need to do any of that. Right? You do want to do this quickly. Everything's nice and hot now. This is going straight into a 400° oven. Oh, and by the way, you guys, the oil I've been using for all these French fries has been peanut oil. I love peanut oil for this purpose. If you want to use another one, you can, but I prefer peanut or avocado. Just make sure it's a high smoke point oil and neutral.
And after about 15 minutes, we're going to go ahead and just toss up our oven fries a little bit just when they're a little bit lightly golden brown. These are looking really good. I've got a good feeling about these ones. And then straight back into the oven. And just about 20 minutes for our baked fries. And they're absolutely done. You know the drill, my friends. Into a bowl with paper towel. And we're just going to go ahead and season these right away. You can do salt. You can do other seasonings. You can put pepper if you like, but those are absolutely done.
And here we are, my friends. I've got a really good feeling about these ones. And I'll tell you why. Immediate winner. I'm sorry. Now, comparing these against the air fried method, I'll tell you why I like them more. With the air fryer, they're on top of that grate. I would try it again removing that grate, but because they're on top of the grate, and because that air fryer is so powerful with the fans, it literally all the oil gets kind of like just off of them like right. I mean, that is the purpose of an air fryer. It's healthier. Having said that, I noticed right away when I took these baked fries out of the oven, I could see this sort of glassiness that was going on. As they were sitting and frying in that little bit of oil, and they just looked totally different. And now, biting into them, my god, the crunch is so much better. It's a harder crunch, it's a better crunch, and it's a more unified all-around crunch while retaining the creamy middle. I just don't see it getting any better than this. I don't know how it can get better.
Having said all that, we do need to try the fries that soaked for 12 hours instead of 1 hour. And our next and second to last test is the 12-hour soaked fries blanched in the salted vinegar water like the previous two, but we want to see if there's a difference now with a 12-hour soak or just an hour soak. Is there really a reason to let it soak for 12 hours or longer?
Same exact deal, my friends. You just want to pour that hot oil over. And I know a lot of you may be wondering how I became the most handsome bald chef on YouTube. And that's a story for another day. But you also may be wondering, why am I using so much oil? You may be thinking to yourself, "Man, I don't want to do that." Here's the thing. They kind of need to almost shallow fry in the oven a little bit. Yes, you can do less oil. They're still going to be good, but they just won't have that incredible even golden brown crunch that more oil will give you. Although, you can experiment for yourself. Again, I take these out of the oil once they're done. Paper towel in a bowl. We'll drain off as much of that excess oil as we can. Bage, my friends, you know the deal. 400°. And for these fries, we just followed the exact same cooking process as before. But let's taste them side by side to the fries that were soaked for only 1 hour to see if there's a difference here. I got to go back to the originals. Almost completely identical with one key difference that I'm noticing right now. And that is that the interior of those potatoes are much more mashed potatoey than these. These are a little bit denser. These are like it's like a sauce in there or something. That is so interesting. Just a very creamy interior. Otherwise, exactly the same. I'll tell you what. I am digging that creamy interior. Damn. Keeps getting better, man.
Now, we do have a couple more methods, but let's get Marcus in here right now to at least give these a taste. All right, Marcus, that's a 1-hour soak in water before cooking. And that is a 12-hour soak. 1 hour soak. They're more like fries than any freezer bag fries you get at the store. Flavor is just perfect. These ones are better. You see that? The texture like it's crazy. I mean, look, guys. Look at the fries. Those are gone. That's how you know it wins. It's always how you know. I'm sorry, but if you got leftovers in your fridge and they've lasted more than a few days, it wasn't that good. Do whatever it was. It wasn't that good. If it was, it would be gone. These ones are better. These ones are still great. Still great. Both of them are way better than bagged frozen French fries. Yeah, make them.
And now, as a little side test here, I happen to have a bunch of extra beef fat lying around in my fridge. I never throw it away because I know it is actually liquid gold. The best fries in the world were always fried in beef fat, my friends. It's just really true. And I just wanted to do this so we can side by side it with regular peanut oil and see if there's a big difference. But I'm just following the same method as everything else. Hot oil, well in this case, hot beef fat over a fry and straight into a 400° oven.
And now here's our side test of the beef fat French fries. They cooked for about 20 minutes. Again, here a little bit of seasoning right on that fry. And we can go ahead and give them a taste. They certainly sound right. Tell you what, these beef fat fries look and smell incredible. Dude, I don't know how else to describe this, but I'm getting like a super nostalgic early McDonald's memory when I'm tasting these. I think McDonald's used to cook their fries in beef fat. I don't know if I'm old enough to have experienced that, but I'm talking like early '90s when I was eating McDonald's when I'm having these nostalgic memories. This just tastes so good. It tastes like a cheeseburger and I love it.
Now, building on everything we've already done, I knew I had to freeze some of these parcooked fries for a few days to see if that makes a difference. The freezer starts breaking down the potatoes on a cellular level, even more than it's already been done. And what I noticed right away is that these fries shrank so much less, and I don't know why. They just didn't need to shrink so much before they were crispy. Whereas the unfrozen ones shrunk so so much. So, let's give these a shot. Oh my god, dude. We got a new winner. The crunch is insane. They're nice and big. The inside is just as creamy and saucy and mashed potatoey as ever. Dude, this is an S tier fry if there ever was one. These have a different quality about them. Man, that's good. And what I think is so beneficial about this is you can pre-blanch bags and bags and bags of fries, have them in your freezer ready to go. And whenever you want some fries for dinner, simply bake them in the oven with a healthy oil and you're going to be good to go. I mean, it's a two birds, one stone situation. Great for meal prep and the best. Yes. Holy.
Now, this last method is a great one to know because it works for not just fries, but a variety of potato dishes, which I will explain more in a minute. All you do is wash some rusted potatoes, get them on a baking tray, cook them at 400° Fahrenheit for about 45 minutes to an hour or until fork tender. Let them cool down to room temp, then just throw them in the fridge overnight. And the next day, we have these cold baked potatoes, which we are going to be turning into steak fries. That's what this method is best for. And then what I'm going to do here is just slice these directly in half. And then I'll slice those halves in half and then into quarters like so. I like to just keep the thing whole like this. And that'll give us these nice little potato wedges.
Now, with this, I'm going to take a sheet pan and just spread this oil out a little bit, just so there's one layer. I'll go ahead and lay down some salt or whatever seasoning you happen to want. And then we're going to carefully place in these wedges. They're a little bit delicate, which is why I'm doing it this way. You could toss them in seasoning if you like, but you're going to have to be careful. And just like with our previous methods here, I'm going straight over with hot oil. It's about 350°, just like before. Really just want to make sure that these potatoes are not dry when they're going in the oven. It's really important. Need that oil covering them. And then again, we got the salt on the bottom. We're going to do a little more on top, just like this, keeping it nice and easy. Remember, you can always add more seasoning after these come out like we did with the previous versions as well. And straight into a 400° oven.
At this point, our steak fries have been roasting for 25 minutes. And what I want to do around this time is just have a look. That one maybe even slightly too brown, but it actually looks really good. What we want to do is start flipping these over. Wow, they feel so crispy and cool. So, you just want to check them like that could use some more color. I might leave that one. It looks like this whole row could use a few more minutes on that side. So, I'm just going to leave those. Some of these over here are ready to flip. I mean, it really is about how patient you are and like how much work you want to put into them. Not like they won't be good if they're a little less brown, but I'm going to give them a little more time. Why not? And back into the oven they go.
And there we are. After 45 minutes, our little steak fries are done. Now, you can see here there definitely is some unevenness in the browning. That's because these have not been rinsed. But they also just look like really good to me. And the skin feels like a really nice potato chip. But there's one more thing we need to do. I'm going to get them out of the oil. Don't want them just sitting in there. Don't want them to end up greasy. You could even put these on a paper towel. Would be a good idea. And I'm just going to hit them with a little more salt cuz they're hot out of the oven. The seasoning is going to stick really good. And I'm also doing a little bit of Sergeant Gilbert reporting for duty. Sergeant Gilbert, you are a legend, dude. And if you'll notice, the sound here is super important when you're making French fries. With the first ones, we're not getting this sound. Listen. Pretty hard. That tells me that they're crunchy, right? But let's give them a taste. Some of these are really dark brown. Some of them are a little bit lighter in color because that starch hasn't been rinsed away. But as you can see here, the crunch looks absolutely insane. And especially on that skin. Let's go ahead and give these a try. This one's about medium cooked. M. Oh man. Wow. Absolutely incredible crunch with that skin on there. And then you bite through and you just get this beautiful like almost mashed potato fluffy dreamy texture. It's absolutely delicious. M. And not only do I highly recommend this for steak fries, but this technique would also be amazing if you want to make any sort of just like breakfast style potatoes cubed up, home fry type situation. If you wanted to make hash browns, you could grate these up and make some incredible hash browns. They're just done in the fridge and they can be used for a variety of purposes. That's a great meal prep item.
Well, thanks for watching today, my friend. Get back to us in the comments and let us know how your homemade fries worked out. I'm super curious for your results. And if you're a fan of written recipes, definitely check out my Master in the Making ebook that will be linked down in the description under the video. You are the master in the making and I want to help you get there. And if you want to keep learning today, here are two more potato videos that I just know you're going to love. These are both two incredible recipes. Until next time, my friend. You know I love you and I'm out. [Music]