French fries are served hot, either soft or crispy, and are generally eaten as part of lunch or dinner or by themselves as a snack. Most french fries are produced from frozen potatoes which have been blanched or at least air-dried industrially. Most chains that sell fresh cut fries use the Idaho Russet Burbank variety of potatoes. In UK, a chip pan is a deep-sided cooking pan used for deep-frying.
About French fries in brief
French fries are served hot, either soft or crispy, and are generally eaten as part of lunch or dinner or by themselves as a snack. French fries are prepared by first cutting the potato into even strips, which are then wiped off or soaked in cold water to remove the surface starch, and thoroughly dried. They may then be fried in one or two stages. In the two-stage or two-bath method, the first bath, sometimes called blanching, is in hot fat to cook them through. Then they are more briefly fried in very hot fat to crisp the exterior. They are then placed in a colander or on a cloth to drain, salted, and served. Most french fries are produced from frozen potatoes which have been blanched or at least air-dried industrially. Most chains that sell fresh cut fries use the Idaho Russet Burbank variety of potatoes. The usual fat for making french fries is vegetable oil. In UK, a chip pan is a deep-sided cooking pan used for deep-frying. Chip pans are named for their traditional use in frying chips. Although the potato cuts may be baked or steamed as a preparation method, this section will only focus on french fries made using frying oil. In the United States and Canada, most term french fries is sometimes capitalized as capitalized french capitalized fries, sometimes as French capitalized capitalized fries, sometimes sometimes as french capital fries, or capitalized French fries. In Canada and the U.S., the term French capital fries sometimes refers to the French fries served with ketchup, vinegar, mayonnaise, tomato sauce, or other local specialties, such as poutine or chili cheese fries.
A baked variant, oven chips, uses less oil or no oil, and can be made from sweet potatoes instead of potatoes, or from other types of potatoes such as sweet corn. The oil used to make french fries can be either beef tallow or cottonseed oil, with beef flavoring. The exact times of the two baths depend on the size of the potatoes. For example, for 2–3 mm strips, the first bath takes about 3 minutes, and the second bath takes only seconds. The water and heat break the glycosidic linkages between amylopectin and amylose strands, allowing a new gel matrix to form via hydrogen bonds which aid in water retention. The gelatin molecules move towards the surface of the fries forming a thick layer of pre-gelatinised starch. This layer of starch will turn into the crispy exterior after the potato is fried for a second time. The golden-brown color of the fry will develop when the amino acids on the exterior participate in a browning reaction in a reaction called Maillard reaction. The second time the cuts are fried, the remaining water on the surface will evaporate and the cuts will be cooked again, forming the cooked exterior. This is necessary because if the potatoes are only fried once, the temperature would either be too hot, causing only the exterior to be cooked and not the inside, or not hot enough.
You want to know more about French fries?
This page is based on the article French fries published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 23, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
