French fries

For crispy outside, tender inside, cook twice.

First cook: cook the prepared potatoes until tender. They can be boiled in water or cooked in the same oil used to deep fry. If in oil, temperature should not exceed 250°F or they'll start to actually fry and you don't want that at this point.

Let them cool. They don't have to cool completely, if you need to get on with it, or they could be frozen for later.

Second cook: Hot oil no less than 350°F, notice that's 100°F higher than before. The temperature drops when you put the potatoes in the oil and you want to prevent it from dropping below 350°F so run up the temperature by a lot, a scary lot, like 50° more, at least, and watch the temperature carefully. Don't hesitate to kick it on high if it drops below 350°F to attempt to get it back quickly. On the other hand, there's no reason once it's stabilized to go above that.

The first cooking gives the potatoes soft insides, deep frying in hotter oil gives them crispy outsides

One last thing, it's important so I'll underline it, use a pot MUCH LARGER than needed to contain the oil. How's that for emphasis? Because the hot oil boils up like crazy! That's at the heart of the drama, wouldn't want to end up in Emergency.

Check out how carefully and thoroughly the cook peels the potatoes.

 

 

 

Lately I find that they still get soggy.

I used to make these as a kid and this technique really worked.

But now it doesn't work so well and I don't know what happened since then.

Then I saw Paula Dean demonstrate. She kept saying over and over "twice fried, twice fried, twice fried." But then in her demonstration she actually fried them three times. Like the third time didn't count because she was just warming them back up. But come on. Her method is really frying them three times.

So now, that's what I do. And they really do come out much better and they stay crispier for a lot longer.