French Fries
- Total Time
- 1 hour, plus soaking
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
Yield:4 servings
- 6large Idaho potatoes
- Vegetable oil, for frying
- Salt
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (4 servings)
672 calories; 49 grams fat; 3 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 35 grams monounsaturated fat; 8 grams polyunsaturated fat; 56 grams carbohydrates; 7 grams dietary fiber; 2 grams sugars; 6 grams protein; 762 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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- Step 1
Peel potatoes and cut them lengthwise into slices, ⅜ to ½ inch thick, keeping the slices together. Give the sliced potato a quarter turn and cut slices into strips. Soak in cold water at least 30 minutes or overnight.
- Step 2
Drain potatoes and pat dry. Place them in a deep heavy pot and pour in vegetable oil to cover, plus an inch or two. Heat to a bare simmer and let potatoes cook slowly for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking, until very soft.
- Step 3
Raise the heat to medium. Line a large bowl with paper towels. Let potatoes fry in bubbling oil until golden and crisp, 10 to 15 minutes more.
- Step 4
Lift out potatoes and place in a paper towel-lined bowl. Shake to drain, remove paper towels, add salt, and shake again. Serve immediately!
Private Notes
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Cooking Notes
Mike in Asheville
Soaking the potatoes leaches excess starch; prevent/reduces fries from sticking together, AND, increases crispiness to the outside texture.
Max Neumeyer
Making french fries at home is deceivingly difficult. Let this be a warning to all non-expert home cooks: consider skipping this one!
philipj
Much preferred approach to putting cold potatoes into super hot oil. For those getting a soggy mass of potatoes during the initial simmer, it really is a bare simmer. Use a thermometer to make sure you don't go above 95 Celsius for this step, if you do your potatoes will start to fall apart. I have had good success with simmering at 90 C for 25-30 minutes, and then cranking the heat for the final fry (max heating on my old stove), an additional 5-10 minutes. Super crispy, delicious fries.
joseph
i can only agree what 'jan' writes..... frying real (belgian) fries have to be fried twice, we have tried, as 'good belgians' ms. moskins' recipe and we must say : the worst fries we have ever tasted.... so remember : never leave the patatoesin the water, just rinse them and fry at 300° f and the second time at 350° f and served with home made mayonaise..........bon appétit
twwren
Rather than soaking, rinse the potatoes three times in cold tap water, each time gently agitating the potatoes in the water with your hands to release the starch. After the first rinsing, the water will be cloudy. By the third time, the water should be clear. You're done, and it takes five minutes instead of thirty or overnight.
James Ross
Toss them in salt and minced garlic for a wonderful twist to this classic dish.
sjk
It seems that no one who is criticizing this method has actually tried it. My mother made great fries using the Belgian twice fried method. Sorry mom, but this cold oil technique makes PHENOMENAL fries - very light and crispy outside, soft and fluffy on the inside and lots of little extra crispy bits mixed in. I use large Yukon golds for the best flavor.
Joanne Peterson
Growing up we strained the oil, and reused it a few times. She used a double fold of cheesecloth lining a colander to remove the bits, or you could use a fine mesh strainer. Then she put the oil in a gallon sized glass jar and stored it in a cool, dark place. The oil is no longer reusable when it starts to look cloudy. You keep your oils separate, such as oils frying strong tasting foods, and sweets like doughnuts need to be separated.
Peter
You will overcome no nutrients once in a while.........:-)
Jean Pierre, Belgium
Horror! This way.
First you put them in oil at low temperature. They must not be crispy. Just enough (but it takes years of expreience to know the exact moment).
Let them cool.
And then in very hot oil, you see them coming lovely and crispy brown.
(Living parttime in Turkey: the potatoes there are amazing.)
Elissa Eckman
Fool proof crisp frites: as shown slice ,soak, shake dry in a colander ( I hate wasting paper towels) THEN: one layer them on any type of baking sheet or pan and add just enough olive oil to coat. Bake at 350 until crispy on the bottom- if you turn them before they are crispy they will break apart - flip the frites as best as possible and finish crossing. The whole process takes about 45 minutes and the frites stay crisper then those that are fried in deep oil .
Tessa
Oil can be reused; let it cool, then strain it through a coffee filter or something similar into a container to keep any bits of food out and refrigerate it. I use frying oil several times. (I wouldn't add a hunk of bacon or lump of lard.) When I do need to dispose of oil, I mix it with used cat litter which I would be throwing out anyway. Litter absorbs oil very well.
Vernonstwhiz
A french fry expert once suggested in their recipe that twice cooked fries are the best. They are fried the first time at a lower heat setting, placed in the freezer and then the frozen fries are cooked at high heat for the big finish. This is suppose to produce added crispiness.
lloyd Le Blanc`
When I soak the potatoes I add some sea salt and baking powder.
Works great !
Elissa Eckman
I still think my less oily time consuming method is the best: you do everything that's done in the video except you put the cut spuds in a large baking pan ,toss with olive oil to cover (not drown). Please each slice so that it has its own space in the pan and cook at 350 checking after about 30-35 minutes for crisping. Using a spatula flip them as best you can.. keep a little watch on them until you get the desired crispiness and then you got your frites. Ps Frites ala Belgique rule!
tania
Maybe it’s because I used cowboy potatoes, but the fries completely fell apart within the first 15 minutes. Total disaster. Nothing edible after the entire time.
Katy Balagopal
Side note: on my stove I just crank up the heat to high at the beginning - takes about 30min for the oil to come to crisping temps and by then the potatoes are perfectly tender.
Katy Balagopal
these are great - I've tried many other methods, this one foolproof and perfect. I have recommended to several friends, all agree. You can do a quick search of cold oil french fries find expert consensus including America's Test Kitchen that this should be the method of choice.
chuck
Used Russets. Heated to bare simmer. Never over 200 F. 30 minutes at low temp. Stirred now and then. Some pieces fell apart. Raised to medium for 12 minutes. Still white. Raised to high. 4 to 5 minutes. Barely browning. Pulled it a few minutes later. A gloppy greasy but cooked and not completely terrible mess. There's an Atk method that's a cold oil recipe but higher heat with Yukon Golds and no touching for 15 minutes that's better
Adi
I hate this recipe because it takes forever, fries inevitably stick to the bottom of the pot, and it's my kid's absolute favorite and makes ridiculously delicious fries. If only it was difficult and bad, or fast and good. But no. A total PITA to stand there stirring fries and then they stick anyway but they taste so good.
Adi
I feel the need to inform people that your stove and their stove are not the same stove. I feel the need to tell the person who wrote the recipe that medium on my induction stove and medium on a gas stove and medium on a regular electric stove are all different. Give a temp, give an indication of what you're looking for in the pot, give us some kind of hint what temp to fry them at for the higher heat. Yes I made them and they're delicious but I had to crank my heat to 8 out of 10 or 325°F-ish.
Ben
Perhaps others have been successful with this recipe, but mine was a flop. I can’t figure out how fries in the recipe thumbnail photo turn out that way, but I guess if you have the magic touch they can. Like another person cautioned, making fries at home is an unexpectedly difficult task.
Steve from Boston
Save the paper towels - no need to blot water off! The usual reason that you blot water off fries before going into oil is that they're going into HOT oil, and water always means spattering in that case. Since these fries start in COLD oil, the water can harmlessly boil off as the oil heats. No spattering, I promise. (Yes, I tried it both ways and it's great with and without blotting.)
GC
These took time but were very good! Soaked in cold, salted water. Then put on sheet pan at 400 F for about 15 minutes. (Too much oil and too strange to poach.) Then fried in very large pot at medium high heat until golden. Used mix of white Idaho and orange sweet potatoes. Used canola, corn oil and a little bit of duck fat to fry. Put the cooked ones from pot back onto the sheet pan when cooked second batch. Salted and we ate them while cooked the rest. Could not stop eating the fries! Success!
EW
Some recipes are worth making from scratch. This particular recipe was not. It took me about two hours to make these from start to finish, and I had a lot of trouble with the oil temperature. I wish there were specific guidelines here, because I was doing a lot of guessing. The fries turned out - fine? Next time, I'll go across the street to McDonald's and save myself a lot of time and effort.
Joseph Reynolds
Not a good method. I'm an engineer. I follow instructions. The result was poor. The potatoes came out fried and were tasty, but they had all broken apart by then and were more like home fries. Good. But not French fries. During 1st process they tended to stick to bottom of pan and and gentle nudge would break them. Then they also just broke by themselves. Seems simple but this recipe was a lot of work. Don't recommend.
OJohnson
Absolutely did NOT work…soaked the fries in ice cold water for an hour, then dried very well, put in room temp oil and followed the instructions to a tee… essentially by the time it was time to turn the heat up the “fries” turned into bits and pieces and looked more like some sort of home fries but even after 15 minutes of high heat were still white had no color and by the time we achieved that “golden” color they were all just tiny bits of “French Fry” ….a HUGE waste of time.
Joseph Reynolds
Exactly! A lot of work. Waste of time. As home fries they are good, but this was not result I was looking for.
wesley
Complete disaster. Still not entirely sure what went wrong on this one. Used Yukon gold, soaked for 30 minutes and babysat the first cook to ensure the simmer never got too high. They simply never crisped up. In the medium heat stage, I had these on the burner for the better part of an hour. Mashed potatoes. Perhaps canola oil has significantly different frying properties to vegetable oil? Must be …
Rian G.
What's the secret for making this work? The cooking vessel? Followed instructs precisely and like others have said, no crisping or golden color after a half hour of ramping up the temp to medium. Just a congealed mess. Fail!
elizabeth from sydney
I am a fries expert. Got a lot of kids who love potatoes So you can either slice and fry them straight to the pan which is Fine IMO or you can slice in strips not too thin and boil for ten minutes. Let dry. Then fry. This second option means you have crispy fries on the outside and softness on the inside. Vegetable oil only or rice bran oil. Sea salt and must serve right away
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