FRIED POTATOES
THE IDEAL FRENCH FRY IS LONG AND CRISP, with sides cut at right angles, a nice crunch on the outside, and an earthy potato taste. Its bass flavor note should be rustic, like a mushroom's, and its high note should hint of the oil in which it was cooked. It should definitely not droop, and its coloring should be two-toned, blond with hints of brown.
Obviously, a good french fry requires the right potato. Would it be starchy or waxy? We tested two of the most popular waxy potatoes, and neither was even close to ideal. During frying, their abundance of water evaporated, leaving hollows inside the potato that filled with oil. The finished fries were greasy. Next we tested the starchy potato most readily available nationwide, the russet. This potato turned out to be ideal, frying up with all the qualities we were looking for.
Because russets are starchy, it is important to rinse the starch off the surface after cutting the potato into fries. To do this, simply put the cut fries in a bowl, place the bowl in the sink, and run cold water into it, swirling with your fingers until the water runs clear. This might seem like an unimportant step, but it makes a real difference. When we skipped the starch rinse, the fries weren't quite right, and the oil clouded.
At this point, you take the second crucial step: Fill the bowl with clear water, add ice, and refrigerate the potatoes for at least 30 minutes. That way, when the potatoes first enter the hot oil, they are nearly frozen; this allows a slow, thorough cooking of the inner potato pulp. When we tried making fries without chilling them first, the outsides started to brown well before the insides were fully cooked.
Our preference is to peel potatoes for french fries. A skin-on fry does not form those little airy blisters, which we like. Peeling the potato also allows the cook to see—and remove—any imperfections or greenish coloring.
What is the right fat for making perfect french fries? To find out, we experimented with lard, vegetable shortening, canola oil, corn oil, and peanut oil. Lard and shortening make great fries, but we figured that for health reasons many cooks won't want to use these products. We moved on to canola oil, but we were unhappy with the results: bland, almost watery fries.
Corn oil was the most forgiving oil in the test kitchen. It rebounded well from temperature fluctuations, and it held up very well when the same oil was used for several batches of fries. What's more, the fries tasted marvelous. Peanut oil also produced good results. A potato fried in peanut oil is light, and the flavor is rich but not dense. The earthy flavor of the potato is there, as with corn oil, but is not overbearing. At this point, we were very close, but something was still missing. The high flavor note, which is supplied by the animal fat in lard, was lacking.
We tried a dollop of strained bacon grease in peanut oil, about two generous tablespoons per quart of oil. The meaty flavor came through, but without its nasty baggage.
So bacon grease appeared to be the animal fat of choice. To be certain of this, we added bacon grease to each of the oils, with these results: canola oil, extra body, but still short on flavor; corn oil, more body, more flavor, nearly perfect; peanut oil, flavor, bite, body, bass notes, high notes galore. At last, an equivalent to lard.
So now it was time to get down to the frying, which actually means double-frying. First, we fried the potatoes at a relatively low temperature to release their rich and earthy flavor. Then we quick-fried them at a higher temperature until they were nicely browned and served them immediately.
For the sake of convenience, we also attempted a single, longer frying. Like many cooks before us, we found that with standard french fries (as opposed to the much thinner shoestring fries), we could not both sear the outside and properly cook the inside in a single visit to the hot fat. When we left them in long enough to sear the outside, we wound up with wooden, overcooked fries.
We found it easy to adapt our recipe for steak fries. In this case, we like to leave the skin on for a more rustic appearance (although it can be removed) and cut the fries into lengths 1/2 inch thick. Frying was exactly the same except that steak fries need a couple of extra minutes on the first frying to color.
Oven fries are a completely different animal. Many cooks don't want to deep-fry because of health concerns. They also don't like the mess associated with deep frying. Recipes for oven-fried potatoes have been popular in recent years, but we had found most oven fries to be a pale imitation of the real thing. We wanted fries that were crisp and golden brown. In addition, the inside had to be fluffy and potatoey tasting.
We first experimented with different ways of cutting the potatoes. We assumed that wedges of some sort would work best. However, because the thickness varies (the ends are thinner, the middle quite thick), we found that wedges cook and color unevenly. We had far better luck when we cut the fries into uniform 1/2-inch-thick lengths, just as we did for steak fries.
As with fries cooked in oil, many sources suggest refrigerating or chilling the raw, cut potatoes in ice water to get oven fries to brown nicely. We found that chilled fries emerged from the oven with a mushy interior and that they were less crisp than potatoes simply cut and oven-fried.
At this point, we wondered if the double-cooking method used with french fries could be adapted to oven fries. We tried steaming the potatoes first, hoping this would set the starches in the fries and help the exterior to crisp up. The potatoes emerged from the steamer quite sticky because of the starches that had been released. We carefully dried the potatoes with a tea towel (they stuck to paper towels) and spread them out in a single layer over a preheated pan.
The fries emerged from the oven crisp and delicious. By getting the potatoes to release some of their starch during steaming, they release less starch in the oven, which allows the exterior to become especially crisp and golden brown.