Homemade French Fries

My 10-year-old goddaughter for Christmas gifted me red serving baskets with adorable checkered liners. She knows red is my color and the theme of my kitchen decor. She’s so thoughtful! The baskets are the ones you’d see at a drive-in movie or old-school diner. I wanted to make food fitting for their use. Hamburgers, hotdogs, or French fries would work well. I went with my favorite out of the three, French fries.

I realized after looking up a few recipes that I’ve never made fries correctly. I learned you’re supposed to soak the potatoes to remove the starch and fry them twice. Once at a low temperature and then again on high heat. This technique is how you get that professional crispness. It didn’t take much more time and the outcome was worth the effort. Give this one a try!

Homemade French Fries
(1 large serving)

Ingredients:
5 large russet potatoes
Vegetable oil
Sea salt
Fresh ground pepper

Directions:

1. Peel and rinse the potatoes. Cut them into sticks by slicing the potato in 4 or 5 vertical pieces, and then cutting each piece into sticks.
2. Place them in a bowl and cover with cold water. Allow them to soak, for at least one hour or as long as overnight. The longer you soak, to remove the starch the crispier they will be.
3. Drain off the water and lay the potatoes on paper towels. Pat dry.
4. Heat a few inches of oil in a pot to 300 degrees F. Cook the potatoes until soft, 4 to 5 minutes per batch. They should not be brown at this point. Remove each batch and drain on dry paper towels.
5. Once all the potatoes have been fried at 300 degrees F, turn up the heat until the oil reaches 400 degrees F. When the oil is hot, start frying the potatoes in batches again, cooking until the fries are golden and crisp. Remove the potatoes from the oil and drain on paper towels.
6. Sprinkle it with sea salt and fresh pepper.

I came across an interesting fact about potatoes. Both yukon and sweet potatoes are root vegetables but they’re distantly related. Sweet potatoes are from the morning glory family. Yes, the flowers you see growing all over Rockaway through fences and just about everywhere else. Yukon potatoes are part of the nightshade group, which includes many familiar vegetables like tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. If you’ve ever grown both, you’ll notice how different the flowers are, this is an indicator of their distant relation.

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