If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat? Imagine how good these taters would taste if fried in the fat of rendered-down obese folks. Like me. Not that I’m volunteering, you understand. But shouldn’t all these pommes fritas be called obesity fries?
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Yeah, Hindus in India and the rest of the world lost it circa 2001 when the beef tallow part of the recipe became common(?) knowledge. There was a lawsuit about it, too. Maybe 2002?
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Luke Fater not only found
Jaysus - could the gods of nomative determinism make things a little less obvious?
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I wonder if New Crisco works as well as the Old for non-food-related tasks…
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I’m sure there are some mom and pop joints that use beef tallow. Michael Symon uses lard in his restaurants for fries.
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How does this compare to the seminal 2010 article about how to make the perfect french fry? So meticulously researched, and the author went on to do amazing things!
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When the vegetarians here are away I’ll roast potatoes in duck fat and the flavour’s awesome.
I parboil, drain and then seriously shake them in a pan with some fat to soften up the outside before roasting. Turn a few times and turn the heat up towards the end for super crunch. Awesome.
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It has to have been the beef tallow. I remember very distinctly as a child seeing the McDonald’s employee unwrapping and carefully putting large blocks of hard, white fat in the fryolator to fill it back up to the right level. Crisco was never that hard and blocky at room temperature.
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Saturated fat is more the thing. Highly saturated animal fats tend to fry better. Make things crisper, less greasy and so they stay crisper longer. Forget the details but has to do with how the fats interact with water and whether and how long they stay liquid.
Generally duck fat, tallow, and lard are pretty magic for fried foods even when they’re rendered so as to be very neutral. Shortening generally doesn’t replicate them as well as you’d think.
For my money duck fat beats tallow or lard. And it’s easy to collect up a lot if you roast ducks with any regularity.
Old school minded Belgians and French swear by freshly rendered veal kidney fat for fries. But getting that basically requires being a commercial kitchen that serves a good amount of veal kidney.
Yeah I’ve never had this mythical amazing french fry from McDonald’s and I was alive before they changed them. Really think it’s just raw nostalgia.
I’ve even made the food lab clone recipe. And yeah, it’s just not a good fry, even when you make the best version of it way too much effort can render.
They just go limp in like 30 seconds and don’t taste much like potato.
This is another thing I don’t get. Every five guys fry I’ve had in like 4 states is basically a giant puddle of grease and I do not get what people are raving about.
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5 Guys fries have way too much salt. Like, heart attack too much.
Penn Station FTW.
Mutants know the secret to crispy fries at home is to dunk them twice, but the trick to perfect, not too greasy fries is completely counter-intuitive: start with the deep-fryer cold.
Clean and chop up your taters, don’t rinse or dry them, and stick em in cold oil (obviously you have to use liquid oil in your fryer, not Crisco). Once the fryer heats up and starts cooking, then do the Dutch double-dunk thing (basket up for 5 minutes, then back in the hot oil until as done as you want).
The disadvantage is you can only do one batch of fries this way, but I guarantee they will be perfect.
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They lost in the popular vote AND the electoral college. Very sad.
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FTA:
While Sokolof’s victory dealt a blow to the corporation, it wasn’t exactly a win for consumers, either. Exchanging beef tallow for pure vegetable oil in high-temperature frying introduced consumers to a different and arguably worse dietary threat than saturated fats: trans fats, which, as we now know, are a major cause of cardiovascular disease, digestive issues, and weight gain. Despite the best intentions, Sokolof ultimately made a bad problem worse, one that McDonald’s has spent decades trying to fix. They’ve bounced new ingredients in and out of their frying oil to reduce the levels of trans fat, claiming today to have essentially eliminated them from their fries.
I’ve never had the original McDonald’s fries, so I have no idea if they live up to the hype. But trans fats are the main reason I mostly avoid fast food French fries. When I deep fry at home (not often), I substitute olive oil or avocado oil for vegetable oil. Palm oil also works, but has a higher percentage of saturated fat. I mix it with tallow (beef, duck and/or pork). Still not the kind of thing you want to eat regularly, but as a treat it’s still healthier than trans fats. I haven’t soaked it in sugary water first, but I may give that a try now that I know about it.
Just my 2¢. As an advocate for healthier eating I’m glad nutritionists encourage restaurants and schools to offer healthier options. But I can see where the older recipe (especially before the switch to vegetable oil and later canola oil) may have been healthier and possibly tastier.
ETA: I’ve thought about getting an air fryer, but I just wouldn’t use it enough to justify the cost or counter space. I’d love to see if a restaurant could scale air-fried French fries though. 
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Bought a whole duck a month ago and cut it into parts to be cooked separately. I have a tailbone, back and skin that I want to render down for its glorious fat
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Air fryers are bullshit.
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That’s a sentiment I’ve heard from many who’ve tried them, which is another reason I’ve not done so myself.
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You do understand that poor people frequently live on it, right? There are large areas of this country where fresh produce is unattainable (google “food deserts”) and fast food is the highest calorie count per dollar so when you’re trying to feed 2 or 3 kids on minimum wage, you do what you have to do sometimes. It’s one of the reasons obesity is unintuitively common in poor and rural areas.
All this to say, the issue is a lot more complicated than “its garbage and don’t eat it if you don’t want garbage”.
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I hate skinny fries; they are just a lot more surface for salt to stick to. Thick cut fries from fresh potatoes are the only way to go. I prefer them with a surface fried to a medium brown and very lightly sprinkled with salt and garlic powder.
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Yup. And even in places that aren’t food deserts, homeless people often rely on it for the same reasons.
I’m not against people having access to junk food; I’m against people only having access to junk food, the condition of millions in the US alone, including often the wage slaves working for fast food restaurants.
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If you have a convection option in your oven it’s the same thing.
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Yes I have that. Most of the time I make potato cubes tossed in oil in an iron skillet in the oven on 450 convection stirring occasionally and sprinkled with Spike. Yum
Fries, though, must be deep fried.
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