I wrote this a while back. Thought it might be of interest. I mistakenly
posted it to rec.food.preserving earlier. Belongs here...
Pastorio
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The all-wrong, amazingly-good, new-wave French Fries
Listen up. I’m about to walk you through a way to cook French fries
that’s completely wrong. It flies in the face of everything we all know
about deep-frying. It guarantees failure. It insures disaster. Except
it results in some of the very best fries I’ve ever had. I read about
this cooking method as written by Jeffrey Steingarten in “The Man Who
Ate Everything” and which I heartily recommend.
Some of the things we all know will be bad if you’re frying look like this:
* Potatoes won’t brown very well in fresh oil.
* If the oil isn’t very hot, the potatoes will absorb it and be very greasy.
* You need a lot of oil to deep fry anything; enough for the foods to
move around freely.
* Foods being deep-fried need to be stirred or shaken to make sure they
don’t stick together.
* Temperature is very critical and too high or too low means foods will
be improperly cooked and maybe even dangerous.
I’m sure you know even more of these doom forecasts. We’re about to
point at them and laugh. To wave our fingers in the faces of doom and
danger. To run off cackling in the secure knowledge that we’re right and
they’re wrong. Or, um, we will after I tell you what we’re talking about.
For frying, older potatoes work best. They’re starchier and generally
have less moisture that has to be cooked out of them. Older potatoes are
larger than young ones. Duh. For potato salad and the like, smaller and
fresher potatoes are better because they stay more moist.
For this particular approach, I used large russets which are generally
considered best for baking. They’re drier and mealier and besides, they
were the only ones I had since I bought them because I was on a baked
potato kick. They were largish potatoes ranging in weight from about 12
to about 16 ounces each. Big ones.
So here’s where the “errors” begin. Let’s do this for four normal
people - about four potatoes. Start by peeling the spuds. Or don’t.
It doesn’t make any difference in cooking time or final texture except
for the skin part, more about that in a minute.
Lay them on your cutting board and cut them in half lengthwise. You now
have two long potato halves. Cut the halves into slices longways, about
1/4-inch thick. You now have big slices of potato, at least compared to
the usual shoestring potatoes from most fast food joints. Don’t do
anything to the potato slices yet.
Here’s where it really breaks the rules. You only need enough oil to
just cover the potatoes, not gallons. I used a 5-quart stewpot, but a
large saucepan that holds a bit over a gallon will do it. Pour in about
a quart and a half of some oil (we’ll talk more about that in a moment)
but don’t turn the heat on. Slide the potato slices into the
room-temperature oil a few at a time making sure that each one is coated
by oil on all sides, until all the potatoes are fully immersed. If you
need more oil, pour some in, but the potatoes should be just covered -
maybe by a half-inch or so. Have faith.
Turn the heat on under the pot to high heat. On an electric stove with
a dial that goes from 1 to 10, set it at about 9. Do the corresponding
thing with your gas stove. Timing is rather loose and the temperature
will take care of itself.
At first, it looks like nothing is happening. Then, as the heat climbs
up over about 200F degrees, you’ll start to see bubbles. Maybe 6 or 8
minutes have passed. You’ll be tempted to stir or somehow move the
potato slices around. Resist the temptation. As the heat gets up near
250F, the bubbling gets more pronounced but the potatoes are still just
as white as when you put them in. Maybe 10 or 12 minutes in. Don’t stir
them.
When the oil gets up near 300F, you’ll start to see a little browning
at the edges. It’s now up near 15 minutes since you turned the heat on.
And now they start looking like French fries. Within another few
minutes, the cut surfaces begin to brown rather nicely and the
individual slices float. Now you can stir them very gently to satisfy
your need to meddle.
When the potatoes look like they’re done, a nice golden brown, scoop
them up with slotted spoons or whatever you usually use and lay them out
on paper towelling to drain. Congratulations, you’ve just made fries
that are utterly wrong and utterly wonderful. Salt and eat while much
too hot.
If you don’t peel the potatoes, you get that nice, crisp skin to
crunch. If you don’t like that, then peel. Or maybe peel half and leave
the rest au naturel.
The story about how I came to be doing the potatoes this way is a long
and devious one. Here’s the short version. I had bought a goose to roast
and, as we all know, geese are very, very fatty. I pulled out maybe 4
handfuls of solid fat from the critter before I started roasting it. I’d
heard that goose fat was good for frying, so I popped it into a skillet
and turned the heat on to render it.
It was amazing. The amount of fat was enormous and the nicely browned
cracklings were good.
I put the goose fat into the stewpot off the heat and cut the potatoes.
The goose was happily roasting in the convection and was nearly done -
maybe 25 minutes away. Peeled and cut the potatoes and slid them into
the oil and had to add more. I used canola oil for a total just at a
half gallon. Turned the heat on and hoped for my version of the
untested recipe to work. Boy, did it work.
The outside of the potato slices was a wonderful golden color and
gently crisp. The inside was creamy smooth, almost like, if you can
imagine it, slightly firm mashed potatoes. Amazing.
We ate some of the goose, but we ate all of the potatoes. And we did
more potatoes the next night. Skipped the third night. Fourth night, I
sliced the goose off the bone and made a rich gravy to go with it. I
peeled two of the potatoes and left the other two with skin on.
That sliced goose. The gravy. Toast. Right. They combine to make open
faced roast, um, goose sandwiches. Like open faced roast beef sandwiches
but a little different. Served the fries with the sandwiches. Everything
disappeared. Dipped the fries into the gravy. Heaven.
I’m going to play with this approach with other veggies. Sweet
potatoes. Maybe carrots. Who knows. Any ideas?