French Fries, Poutine, Pommes Frittes

[Skybird]

Years ago we had a thread about how to make pizza. And another thread how to make a real good steak. I confess I am very good at both, and then some other kitchen stuff as well.

You can imagine that for this reason it hurts my ego even more severely that I terribly fail in making something that most would claim to be an almost primitive dish, something so simple and easy that it is not even worth to be talked about: Pommes Frittes, French Fries, Poutine, Fritten - whatever you call it in your part of the world. I mean the fried potatoe thing in stick format, not the sauces and dips.

I love it, but I am desperate, for I just don't know in or out anymore.

In Germany, we serve Fritten (or Pommes, as we call them, pronounced not French but German) usually with nothing but white salt and then either mayonnaise or tomato ketchup or both. This is by far the most common format of French Fries over here, at best the Fritten get accompanied by Currywurst, and more ketchup and curry powder. I love it (the Pommes, not the Currywurst).

But I just dont get it done right in my own cuisine. The pommes get the proper colour and looks of being nicely fried, being crispy, soft in the inside but not soaking with oil, the outside harsher, crispy, like chips, the single stick not soft and wobbly, but stiff.

Mine are soft and like jelly, they have the right looks, but the consistency is terrible.

I tried various sorts of potatoes, floury and firm ones. I always fry twice. I tried longer times, and I tried shorter times. I varied the pause between both frying sessions. I controlled the temperature of the oil, that it indeed is what the thermometer says.

For exmaple, I may cut the potatoes into sticks and put them in water for hours, change the water several times. Then i dry them on a towel, I even tried to warm them up in the micro for a minute so that the drop in temperature in the deep fryer is not so huge when I put them in. I may do a first frying (blanching at 150-170°C, for 5-7 minutes), then take them out and rest for 5-8 minutes, and bringing the oil up to 190°C, then fyring them for another 3-4 minutes. After the blanching, the potatoe stick have turned slightly yellow, almost not visible, and after the second frying they are golden, brown, toasty, they look crispy, indeed they look almost perfect - but they are not perfect, they are like rubber foam, soft, wobbly, like jelly or soft rubber.

I use a Tefal Oleoclean 8040, which in America gets sold as T-Fal EZ Easyclean and some other names. A perfect device with inbuild oil-filtering, btw, if you are planning to get a deep fryer, definitely check this one out, it is great, I use it since one and a half year. The minimum oil is 2.8 liters, maximum 3.5 liters, I am usually at around 3.3. I change the oil after 6-9 frying sessions depending on the oil quality and the kind of food recently fried, the oil filtering allows to use it slightly longer than if you would not filter the oil ever. The recommended ammount of pommes used for one frying session is 600 gr, the possible maximum is given to be 1200 gr, what I put in usually is in the range around 700 gr.

Has anyone any idea what I do wrong, where I go amiss? Do you fry your own french fries at home, with fresh potatoes, not frozen industrially prepared stuff where the first blanching has been done in the factory already? If so, how do you do it, what is your recipe to get them done properly: dry and crispy and dark golden on the outside, soft and non-oily in the inside?

I really don't know what else to try, I just don't get it.

And it really means a big blow to my chef-ego to ask this. Its my culinaric Waterloo, my proof of defeat, my ultimate failing dans la cousine.

I mean: helphelphelphelphelp!

[Commander Wallace]

I make my own pizza and spaghetti sauce which is authentic Italian. I start by slicing fresh garlic very, very thin and saute' them in olive oil. Using that as a base, I build the sauce from there. I let the sauce simmer all day on relatively low heat. I make a lot of it and freeze everything in serving size containers.

I have fried sliced fresh potato's and fried them but generally, this is unhealthy. You might want to consider a oil-less air fryer. It uses little to no oil and can fry food like chicken, fries or fish as well as a grease fryer. They come in different sizes and configurations and a number of them have adjustable heat ranges for a slower cook. This method generally gives you a more thorough cooking job and consistency. The best part is you can indulge in your favorite fried food recipes without the calories and artery clogging fats.

You can cook other things in the oil-less fryer including steak. It generally cook everything pretty fast depending on the settings. Give it a try and see if this doesn't make you a kitchen, culinary hero.


Here is a link to the oil-less fryer.

https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&ke...l_4xe184iyrr_e

[Skybird]

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.

---

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!

[Commander Wallace]

My fries came out well when I fried them. As with anything fried, I tend to put what I fried in a basket with paper towels to blot out and absorb excess oils. It may well just be a matter of longer cooking times. Experiment with it. As far as the taste of the oil-less fryer, I like them if you season the chicken or whatever else you cook in them.

You can always bake fries as well in a counter top convection oven as well, to the consistency you like. I sometimes bake mine and put the oven on broil the last minute or so to make them crispy.

[Skybird]

If you go to a quick-food stand by the side of the street and order french fries - do they do them like this? No. They put them into the oil, they take them out, and if they are good, they do this twice, and there you go. Golden crispy "Fritten", not dripping with oil.

Thats how it should be done, and many videos on Youtube show it like this, too, they only vary their timings. Point is - no matter what their timing is and how it varies - they always seem to get crispy pommes. Some blanch for 4 minutes, others for 10 minutes. Some say 150°, others say No, 180 from all beginning on. Some say normal potatoes, some say, no, red potatoes. One gets dizzy!

I was fearing that maybe my device does not work and the oil does not get hot enough. But I tested it with a thermometer. The fryer meets the set temperature quite well, and is also quite fast in heating it up when the oil temperatur dropped after putting food in.

[fireftr18]

Our friends in England are the experts on this. They call them chips, and they are the best I ever had. Maybe they can give us all some advice. I think beer or ale is involved.

[Gargamel]

I made fries tonight. Chopped up a couple potatoes, leaving the skin on, dumped them in the fryer at 350f for 6 minutes. Bammo. Fries. You can cut them thinner or thicker for crispiness, or cook them a little longer for a crisper shell. Let them drain for a few minutes, then salt as desired.

You mentioned poutine in the title, but no made no mention of it in the post. Poutine is not another name for fries, but a complete dish. It is a Canadian delicacy. In college we used to drive the 20 minutes to the Messina Bridge in New York and cross over the Seaway to a truck stop just for the Poutine and beer, Neither of which we could obtain legally in the US. Of course, customs never believed us that we just ran over the border on a friday night just for dinner, got searched for alcohol quite a few times, but we were smart enough not to have anything. Now the trips to Montreal.......

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by fireftr18

Our friends in England are the experts on this. They call them chips, and they are the best I ever had. Maybe they can give us all some advice. I think beer or ale is involved.

I never saw a difference between English Chips and a good hoem cut fry. They're just thick fries.

Spent a month in England many years ago, and took my girl out to a nice restaurant right off Piccadilly Circus. We were really weirded out as the hostess kept coming around, asking if we wanted more "complimentary French Fries". It was just a plate of standard shoe string fries.

I was also weirded out by the beds had no sheets, just duvets. No phones in the hotel rooms (and we were just across the river from Parliament). And that you need to look right when crossing the street.

[Reece]

Potato wedges are nice!!

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/...-potato-wedges

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/oven...4-a75d505472d0

[Obltn Strand]

Cook the potato pieces first in boiling water so that they become flaky. Take them outside/put in refrigerator/sink in cold water in open minigrip bag and allow to cool. This is to remove moisture and moisture is your enemy. Cut temperature by 20-30 degrees with both frying times and also cool them down after first frying time.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

I never saw a difference between English Chips and a good hoem cut fry. They're just thick fries.

Yep, same here. Easy to make those at home. But Skybird asked for the perfect »pommes frites«, and this seems to be an art form lol
No really, it is not easy. Best results yet were with frozen pre-fabricated ones, directly put into the oven.
I will try to follow Oltn Strand's tips next time.

OT

[...] was also weirded out by the beds had no sheets, just duvets. No phones in the hotel rooms (and we were just across the river from Parliament). And that you need to look right when crossing the street.

"Reisen bildet". We were always surprised about England
From 70-year old music apparatus 'machines' in the hotel apartment to the aforementioned sheets and duvets, to putting loads of Kardamon on a sweet continental(?) pudding. Prices were very high though, for dining as for hotel or "Bed and breakfast". Foreign restaurants were good and cheaper though (and indian ones always excellent). The smell that developed in the 1300 Triumph Herald we drove around was awful, but cannot be blamed on the english cuisine. No pork pie is being made with the expectation to last for ten or more weeks in warm and wet conditions under the driver's seat, obviously forgotten by its previous owner. And of course we had our share of near-misses on those pesky roundabouts when looking for the wrong direction
But it was always great, from nice people to interesting experiences of all kinds, very positive. I am sure we had some germn lunatic bonus though.

from a friend of mine: "I take it that after brexit, and when things go on, we will be able to visit England in say 15 years with an entry fee, to visit an island that has turned into being a museum"

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

I made fries tonight. Chopped up a couple potatoes, leaving the skin on, dumped them in the fryer at 350f for 6 minutes. Bammo. Fries. You can cut them thinner or thicker for crispiness, or cook them a little longer for a crisper shell. Let them drain for a few minutes, then salt as desired.

You mentioned poutine in the title, but no made no mention of it in the post. Poutine is not another name for fries, but a complete dish. It is a Canadian delicacy. In college we used to drive the 20 minutes to the Messina Bridge in New York and cross over the Seaway to a truck stop just for the Poutine and beer, Neither of which we could obtain legally in the US. Of course, customs never believed us that we just ran over the border on a friday night just for dinner, got searched for alcohol quite a few times, but we were smart enough not to have anything. Now the trips to Montreal.......

I learned about poutine in Cologne where I had some business dates in the past three m onths. There is one restaurant that specialises in poutine and they practically do not serve anythign else.

If you happen to be in Cologne or Düsseldorf or Aachen, and like poutine or fries, go there, the ambient atmosphere and looks of the place is very nice and if you like poutine, it should be heaven. Personally, these heavy sauces and cheese and plenty of ingredients over the fries - its not really my thing. Too hefty. I prefer the classic German way: white salt, and mayonnaise or ketchup, period.



Learn more:
http://frittenwerk.com/

In principle the classic base form of Poutine Quebec is fries, cubes of fresh (wet) Mozarella cheese on top of it, and then dark gravy. You either like it, or you don't. I hear that canadians are crazy for it, but I cannot understand that. Of course, plenty of variation possible. The link I gave shows some imiges of various poutines they serve in these restaurants. Looking they do good.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Obltn Strand

Cook the potato pieces first in boiling water so that they become flaky. Take them outside/put in refrigerator/sink in cold water in open minigrip bag and allow to cool. This is to remove moisture and moisture is your enemy. Cut temperature by 20-30 degrees with both frying times and also cool them down after first frying time.

You mean the second frying at LOWER temperature than the first blanching? Practically everybody says its right the other way around?!

Well, quite counter-intuitive, but I make a mental note of that.

[Jimbuna]

Chips, one of the easiest foods to cook but I suppose not if you're experiencing problems...

[Skybird]

If it would be working so reliably as in your videos, I would not ask in this thread, Jim. First video btw pretty much is like we would do "Bratkartoffeln" in Germany: pan, plenty of fat or oil, just at the very end maybe ad some cut onion and garlic, white salt and black pepper, I also add rosmary and thyme.

I did more research the past hour, and one thing I learned is that I base on a wrong asusmnption sicne 50 years , and obviously many understand it wrong as well: for some reason I always thought floury potatoes have lots of starch and firm potatoes have less. My mother also fell for this error, as well as my neighbour and friends of mine. It is exactly the other way around, and if I ever would have given it a second thought, this absolutely makes perfect sense. Where should the solid structure of firm ones come from, if not from more starch? But one tries hard to get starch out of it before frying, you wash the cut potatoes, you let them water some time, just to clean off the starch. So - I now go and get myself some soft, floury potatoes (which I usually avoid) with less starch.

I also read a tip that indeed you boil them before frying - and that you should use not just water, but also some vinegar in it. There is some chemistry magic going on with the vinegar, and the slices/cuts/sticks after 5-10 minutes should get cooled in cold water and then dried again before frying.

The experimenting monster has been awakened. I either succeed until I make perfect Fritten - or I vomit myself to death. This now is a fight for life and survival. Kocht sonst die tollsten Sachen, aber schafft keine simplen Fritten - ich blamier mich ja bis auf die Knochen...