I’ve made potatoes every which way. From mashed to smashed (thank you Pioneer Woman!), cooking potatoes is pretty darn easy. Except for one method: french fries. I’ve tried every method of making good crispy french fries that involves batches of boiling oil. I’ve tried baking them, making them in the microwave, even! My mom used to make decent fries in her Fry Daddy.
I think we have one around here somewhere, but really? One more stupid appliance to drag off my garage shelf o’ crap-that-doesn’t-fit-in-my-kitchen. I can’t be bothered. So when I saw this post from Stone Soup, I was sold. There was a lot of doubt in the comments and it did sound a little too good to be true. But I had to try it and I’m so glad I did!
Here’s how it went down. 
Three butter golds. My theory is that anything EXCEPT your average baking potato will make great fries. And really, that’ll probably work just fine, too. This was all my local grocery store had and they worked great. Chop these into your favorite french fry shape.
Place them in a saucepan of your choosing. Fill it with oil to the top of the fries.
So, about oil. I don’t know a lot about it. I use olive oil for everything. Stone soup says to use a “neutral oil.” What’s a neutral oil? If you know, please share. The only explanation I could find on the intarwebs was that it was “not olive oil.” Still unsure, I decided to just follow the recipe and go with peanut oil.
At the store, our choices for buying peanut oil were a small bottle and a giant jug. I had no idea how much I’d need, let alone whether the experiment would work at all, so I played it safe and went with the small bottle. The oil needs to just cover the amount of fries in the pot. Naturally, the small container of peanut oil wasn’t nearly enough.
Can you mix oils? Heh, well I did. I went to grab the veggie oil and topped off with it. It seemed to work just fine. Perhaps I’ve angered the gods of cooking oil, but I still got a great product so I can’t complain.
Okay, so back to the pot. Now that your fries are happily swimming in oil, turn the heat to medium-high. No need to stir. You can just sit back and watch the science happen.
While you’re waiting, get your cooling rack ready. I really think this is the key to great fries. Once they come out of the oil, they cool VERY quickly. The more grease you can drip off while still letting air circulate, the better the fries.
Oooh, it’s really going now! Once the fries start to brown slightly, you can give it a stir to make sure nothing’s sticking to the bottom. Now, it’s just a matter of waiting until they look as golden brown as you want them.
Hey look! I get to use this thing! I knew it’d come in handy…someday.
Scoop ‘em out and lay them on the cooling rack. They’ll be cool enough to touch almost immediately, so have your seasonings ready while they’re still hot. Once your oil has cooled down, don’t forget to save it for next time!
Get them salted and peppered and then get them on your plate for nomming!
I’ve got another batch of fry cut potatoes in the freezer. No idea if the process will work from a frozen or a thawed state so I will test this and let you know!
I’m so hungry for fries now! Yum!
A neutral oil is one without any flavor, like a veg, peanut, or canola oil. And you can totally mix oils to fry in, but I wouldn’t fry in olive oil for something like potatoes that require a high heat as it breaks down at a much lower temp than the other oils. Plus, olive oil, even the cheaper stuff would be pretty expensive to fry in. Thanks for this recipe. I’m totally going to try it when the boy and I are craving burgers and fries, which is all the time.
Thanks Danielle! That’s what I was understanding from what I read. I think that confused me because the peanut oil is so aromatic and I was confusing that with taste. When I think about eating the fries themselves, I don’t remember tasting peanuts. But man, I could smell them! It’s such a great recipe! Hope ya’ll enjoy it! And thanks again for the figs you brought over yesterday!
Glad I could help and hope you enjoy the figs! I made jam, but I’m not so sure it jelled properly, so I’m waiting to send you anything yet. But fingers crossed!
Very cool! Way less intimidating than a fryer! (We own one… but for the life of me, I DON’T KNOW WHY.)
Do you know how many times you can reuse oil for something like this? I’ve only ever fried things in small quantities, and usually with some sort of batter that ends up making the oil all gross looking, so I’ve never tried reusing it before.
It depends on what you cooked, what you plan to cook in it and how hot the oil got. Home oils aren’t like commercial oils which have additives that allow them to be re-used a lot.
So, rule of thumb I would say two or three times tops. Each time you reuse oil, you lower it’s smoking point, making it a little more dangerous so watch it closely.
You’ll also want to strain the food particles out, especially if you plan to cook something drastically different in it. They can char and burn when you heat it up again. A coffee filter or cheesecloth should work fine for that.
Be sure to sniff the oil before you use it to make sure it hasn’t gone rancid. I wouldn’t keep it more than a few months. Still, for a big batch of oil like that, it’s nice to know you don’t have to dump it after one use.
Hope that helps!