Monday, June 4, 2012

"Too Chicken Poop to Try" Part 2: DIY homemade French Fries

French fries, who doesn't love them? I can tell you whole heatedly the thought of making my own French fries scared the poop out of me. Frying... I hate it- I don't really want to mess anything up... I didn't have a clue how to make them. Seriously- it's so easy, once you do it-- you won't want to buy pre-made ones again.. in fact, if you're that much in the mood for fries, you'll WAIT until you can make them fresh again. They aren't hard to do- they just take some time to do.

Here's how I made them:

I used Russet Potatoes (they are firmer than Yellow Gold) and gosh, I cut them into match stick size (although last night I cut them and some looked like match sticks and others looked like steak fries... they all tasted good LOL)
After I cut them to desired shape, I put them in a bowl of cold water and left them in the fridge. Yesterday I did this after breakfast and just left them until a couple of hours BEFORE I wanted to make them. So, I would say about 4 hours before I wanted to serve them- I took the raw fries and put them on a cookie sheet wire cooling rack (not layered) to begin drying. I left them out for about an hour and then I took a bunch of paper towels and towel dried the fries as dry as I could and then left them out again before I started to try them.
So, it depends on how many fries you make and how big your pot is. Here is the key. You need to put a good quantity of a neutral oil in the pot (think vegetable oil- or another oil that doesn't have any strong flavor to it). I put mine on medium heat and fried the french fries in batches (you want your fries to be completely covered by oil) for about 6-9 minutes. You are basically cooking them, but they will appear raw still.. That's ok, remove the fries (they are actually safe to eat at this point, although quite mushy). Finish all your "pre-cooking" batches and then go back and re-fry them. This time you're going to make them crunchy. I turned up my heat to high at this point and it took me about 5 minutes per batch... you'll see them start to turn golden at this point. Cook until the desired color/crunchiness and I put my finished fries in a bowl with paper towels at the bottom (to catch any excess oil-- but usually there isn't much). If you want to toss some salt- do so WHEN THEY ARE HOT. Even if you don't want "salty" fries, I still recommend adding a pinch of salt over them.

Not, if they aren't sickeningly good enough when they are hot and freshly made-- keep your leftover fries--- THEY'RE STILL VERY TASTY THE NEXT DAY!!!

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