I know these hot-air-blowers. They work but take much longer time, and the lack of oil means the taste of the food, especially potatoes, is different. Fat and oil are a strong carriers of taste and aromes, you cannot replace them.
Air-fried pommes are not the same like oil-fried pommes.
It must be possible to do good french fries in an classic deep fryer - I mean everybody does it, and even gets paid for it. Many even do it in fry-pots.
French Fries,
properly done, are much less oily than most people think, for the surface of the potato slice or stick has sealed off before oil can be soaked into the inside. That is the first of two purposes of blanching.
The bigger problem than fat is that the starch in the potatoes gets met by much higher heat than if you would just cook the complete, uncut potatoe. The chemical process turns the starch into a form of it that is far mroe hyper-glycaemic than starch treated at lower temperatures.
The debate on acrylamide I ignore, the original Swedish study triggering it in the 90s has been so ridiculous that they withdrew it from publications due to severe methodological flaws and errors. Of around 1000 follow-on studies trying to replicate the Swedish claims in the following 13 years or so, not a single study was able to replicate or verify the Swedish claims. Not one in almost one thousand! Instead, over half of these studies showed a funny
correlation: that people being aweare of acrylamide and running diat habits trying to avoid acrlyamide,
showed more cases of cancer.
Ecotrophology - the new religion today. And every week a new messiah shows up on the stage and announces his new gospel. - Be modest in your consummation habits, and maybe consider to not eat anything at all every fourth day or so, that is my habit. In the end, there is no point in dying healthy.
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I assume that my temperatures tried for blanching potatoes, or the times, are wrong.
However - recipes, guys, I want recipes. Timings. Temperatures. Whatever. Bring it on!