Personally, I dislike convection ovens, except for very specific foods. They shorten cooking times but also change how recipes come out.
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As a teenager in the '70s, can confirm. Very good. Even considering my teenage pallet and nostalgia-tinted glasses (for McD? Really?). But only if they’re fresh. I don’t bother getting fries if they’re on the way home; the 15 minutes in the bag kills 'em.
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Well, crispier and less greasy just basically mean you’ve replaced all the water in the fried object with fat, as it’s the contrast between the remaining water and the oil that gives it a greasy feeling, cuz water and oil don’t mix (I know, grandmother, egg consumption methods). When you triple fry chips, or fries, the most important part is putting them on racks to steam until they’re dry, so as much water as possible can escape… I’d be interested to see if somehow saturated fats allow water molecules to escape during cooking more easily or something?
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Does that mean it helps if I dump a bunch of suet into the fryer? It’s the kidney fat from grown up veal, after all.
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Like i said. Don’t recall all the details. But the primary thing is that oil remains liquid in the finished food, making it texturally greasier. Where as saturated fats start to solidify as they cool. Harder fats like tallow can harden too much leaving the food kind of waxy when they’re fully cool.
That has an impact on whether the exterior can reabsorb water from the food as it sits. Thus the stay crisp longer part.
Yes. Assuming it’s rendered.
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Goose fat is best of all - especially for roast potatoes. We have a goose at xmas and its fat lasts us almost all year.
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When I was in high school far back in the mists of time (the early-mid 70s) I worked a then-obligatory time at a local McD’s, and there was no such sugar-water bath for fries, at least that far back. What I did note, though, was the frozen fries were all coated in what appeared to be a thin layer of shortening/lard/some other thick paste. I never sample-tasted this coating before frying, so I can’t say exactly what it was. Sugar paste? ~shrugs~
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I don’t think anyone would disagree on that. Fast food’s lack of nutrition is essentially a negative externality like pollution. It affects the vulnerable much worse and nobody cares too much because of that. This is why we have governments, because free markets can’t fix negative externalities, especially when they are distributed mainly to poor people and people of color.
Ideally there would be no food deserts and everyone could have fresh produce all day every day. However that will take a lot longer to fix. In the meantime, a few basic things like banning trans fats can help. Nutrition and flavor aren’t a zero sum game.
I didn’t mean to kick off a whole debate. I just found it funny that Julia Child felt so strongly about anyone mentioning food can be bad for you that she uses the word “nutritionist” derisively.
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Absolutely. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my love of food and cooking, it’s that healthier is more often than not tastier. Part of the problem, as you elucidate, is that it’s often more expensive to the bottom line of companies that want to externalize that cost.
No worries. It was a good tangent. And I agree about it being an externalized cost.
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She came from a classical haute French cooking background, which in turn came from layers of abstraction on top of French countryside cuisine based on easy access to animal fats. Her recipes are butter butter butter and heavy cream and meat fats. I love them!
Farms are the root of about half of mainstream European and Asian cuisine. The sea is the basis for the other half. Farm style cooking was geared towards massive compaction of calories, as fuel for the family labor force: gigantic meals packed with fat and protein, and carbohydrates when they could get them, but also saturated with fat, almost never served naked. Fast food is a descendant of this style.
I’m not passing judgment here. I love this style of cooking. However, it is not healthy. Neither in the classical form nor in the fast food form. Most people simply do not perform enough hard labor every day to justify the intake. Yet people still eat it and prefer it. This is why we have an incredible heart disease and obesity epidemic that did not exist 100 years ago. Easy access to fats and simple carbohydrates, taken in together, all day, every day.
Read about the Ornish diet and Michael Pollan has a good intro to the subject in Omnivore’s Dilemma.
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Can’t recall which comedian who said, and I paraphrase, evolution hasn’t caught up to McDonald’s.
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Oh, I’m aware, I have her two foundational books and I learned to cook following her methods. I still find it funny to put a moral stake in the ground on the use of beef tallow in corporate chain french fries.
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The Republican-Reptilioid plot to ‘adjust’ Earth for space aliens includes 1) pollution-provoked climate change (cf greenhouse effect) to give our scaly alien overlords a comfortable environment and 2) fattening humans with McFood to provide Reptilioids with a juicy food crop. Devour McFood this week and be devoured by aliens next week. It’s inevitable. I read this online so it must be true.
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Not where I live. Salt’s not heavy. Fries are fresh. McDonald’s everywhere is like ingesting the dead sea though. I never taste anything but salt and bland mush.
Honestly, I meant it as best fast food fries, but only when done as overcooked Cajun fries.
Best fries I’ve ever had were in a Belgian restaurant, with homemade mayo.
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Pretty sure the McDonald’s fries in Japan still use the beef tallow. (It’s been a while since I lived there so things may have changed.) They also heavily salt the fries which makes them noticably better. My favorite throwback was the deep fried apple pie. That I miss.
I think many here, if they wanted to take the time, would say this is a reductive view. It’s just not that simple, and human beings probably could use an advocate in government against the multi-billion dollar corporations with enormous R&D put into hijacking our old, old need to seek out sugar and fats. Most of America didn’t suddenly turn obese because people changed how they make decisions.
That said, McDonald’s frys suck now and I wish they would change them back.
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You know that tastes of orangutan, don’t you
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I use my air fryer all the time. It’s a combo air fryer/toaster oven/ mini-convection oven and it’s taken my cooking to the next level. Foods that come out soppy from the oven come out crispy from the air fryer.
You don’t buy it to re-create fried food. You aren’t going to get anything Kentucky Fried out of it. It’s an alternative, and it works fabulously if you’re using the right recipes or for the right purposes. It gets things crispy. It also re-heats frozen foods incredibly well. I’d post some excellent recipes but I don’t want the Powers That Be to think I’m advertising something.
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I actually have a toaster oven that I prefer to my induction oven. I thought about getting the version that doubles as an air fryer, but ultimately decided against it realizing I’d barely use that feature.
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The problem irrc was not so much that the fries were unhealthy, they are unhealthy anyway, but that they didn’t disclose the fact that animal fat was used in the frying Animal fat is even unhealthier and of course vegetarians were also kinda pissed. Not disclosing that kind of stuff was rather a big deal, over here in germany anyway.
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