This quick much recipe is truly a quarantine entry in our family repertoire, and how much damn fun it has been! For disclosure, this is not my recipe, I don’t know who invented fries, I am only aware of the differences between a few styles, like Belgian versus French (Belgian wins). I only memorized the following a few years ago: 140-7-30-170-3. I agree it is a funny way to remember a recipe, and after all we seem to have lost the ability to remember long numbers, but give it a look and you will understand why.
Ingredients:
Serves: 2 / Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: First Fry – 7 minutes – rest 30 minutes – Second Fry – 3 minutes
- 2 lbs Idaho potatoes
- 1.5 lites (6 cups) vegetable oil
- 1 oz lard (optional)
- Salt and Pepper
- Your favorite dipping sauces (not judging, really).
TOOLS: thermometer (infrared or immersion), metal bowl, sheet pan, cooling grill, butcher paper, large hand strainer
Preparation:
- Peel potatoes and slice 0.5cm (1/4″)
- Rinse under cold water to start unloading some starch. Soak potatoes for 30 minutes, changing the water twice and moving them around with your hands. At the end of the process the water in the bowl should remain clear. Strain and pat dry.
- In a large pot, with a rim high enough to prevent splashing, heat the oil (and melt the lard). Bring to 140C or 284F.
- Gently slide the potatoes in the oil using the hand strainer, spread them into the oil so they all have space around them and are submerged.
- Fry for 6-7 minutes. Potatoes have to look almost done, feel solid to the touch of the strainer, float on the oil but they should not show any brown edges.
- Place the cooling grill into the sheet pan and line with butcher paper. Strain the potatoes and rest on paper for 30 minutes.
- Reheat oil to 170C or 338 and fry for 3-4 minutes, until brown edges appear uniformly on all fries.
- Drain, rest a couple of minutes, sprinkle with sea salt and pepper.
- SAVE YOUR OIL. This quantity of oil can fry easy about 10 lbs of potatoes. Oil gets even better tasting on its 4th – 5th fry. Let pot cool off covered, even overnight, then funnel into a dedicated French Fries Oil Bottle! Once oil is too old to use, dispose bottle in garbage, not down the drain.
