I believe Kenji Lopez-Alt, the author of the Serious Eats article, is the "Former Cooks Illustrated Test Cook" quoted at the end of Dave Arnold's article.
(Everything at Cooking Issues is amazing, especially Dave Arnold's weekly podcast; also, you can get Pectinex Ultra SPL from Modernist Pantry online).
If you can access this 30 min radio programme from the BBC about chips (from June 2010), you might find it interesting. It features a segment on Belgian fries
"In Belgium the oven chip hasn't caught on. Instead friterie shops proliferate, and Belgians take their chips very seriously. How the potato arrived in Europe remains contentious, but the Belgians are confident that it was them, and not the French, who invented the "French" fry. Ray Kershaw visited the Friet Museum in Bruges established to celebrate their national fry with director Eddie Van Belle."
Exactly. The article was almost annoying as it talks about "perfect" fries like everybody on the whole planet has the same taste. There aren't many things more subjective than taste. Just saying a fry should be salty in order the perfect is already a mistake. Not everybody likes that taste. Which is why you get asked specifically if you want salt or not. At least in Belgium, where we like to enjoy the one and only true superior real fries. Lol.
Anyway, still appreciate the article, it just started with the wrong premises.
I am italian living in hungary and I never considered McD fries "amazing". I have never met anyone who didn't prefer home made ones/random shop one's either.
So, last time this article came up on HN I generously filed it under "maybe fries in fast food chains in the US are different than fries in US fast food chains everywhere else".
Confirmed, an American who has made the trip to Belgium, the fries in your country are ridiculously superior to anything we get here, except certain places that specialize in them, where they occasionally manage to achieve par with Belgian frites.
The author acknowledges that other types of fries are also great, but this article is about the perfect "thin and crispy" fry, rather than the perfect thicker style fry.
"my thick-cut pub-style fries are super-potatoey and fantastic, and when I'm in the mood for them, my seasoned steak fries can't be beat, but for thin, super-crisp fries..."
The "taste like cardboard" is probably because McDonalds no longer fries in beef tallow.
Gotta love a) this guy's passion for fries, b) that McDonalds gave away their secret recipe (blanching) without which Kenji seemed to be totally stuck, and c) the vinegar trick to make it easier for us to do back at home.
He doesn't mention what's he using to cut the fries?
As sjtrny already mentioned, it's not a secret and Kenji would not have been stuck not knowing it. What he found interesting was that "McDonald's does indeed use a double fry method, but it's far from the traditional one." It's indeed interesting the method McDonald's has ended up with. I blanched many potatoes as a young lad working in a restaurant. Interestingly, the local farmers who we sourced our potatoes from often came in for lunch and requested single fried fries (unblanched). They were certainly a lot different, mostly not as crispy a crust.
bostik has also already mentioned that Heston Blumenthal covers a method in detail in the fish and chips episode of his In Search of Perfection series. I've only gone all the way with this method once, but it is fairly close to what we did at the restaurant, only we never froze our fries, only refrigerated them. It does make nicer fries than simply double frying, but not by a wide margin.
Fries are a bit of an ongoing project for me. I'm trying to find some reasonable method to have nice baked fries. What I get so far is serviceable, but not nearly as nice as frying them.
Edit: I forgot to add the second reason I wanted to make this post: Kenji has an ongoing series on Serious Eats called The Food Lab. He takes the same semi-scientific approach to certain dishes as in the submitted article. Another good post in the series is on dry-aging beef at home [0]. American's Test Kitchen [1] tends to do the same thing, but they only really share the final result with a few tidbits on their process of discovery.
> I find it remarkable that the bigwigs have discovered a way to create a frozen fry that even a one armed eyeless chimp has trouble screwing up.
I find it in general remarkable that McDonalds' business processes seem to be so foolproof that any one armed eyeless chimp is able to create BigMacs, Hamburgers and any other McDonalds dish always and anywhere in the world with the same high quality.
I watch all Heston's videos he seems like he makes fantastic food, I think he shows how to make really good food sometimes in a different way not pretentious but fun.
To me, the most interesting part of this article was the quest to obtain the frozen fries in the first place. I'm amazed a McDonald's manager gave them out.
Corporations like McDonald's rely on trade secrets: things that can't necessarily be patented, or which might be placed in danger by being patented. (Applying for a patent makes a recipe public record, and the lifetime of the patent is finite.) The secret recipe for Coke, or in this case the secrets behind McD's fries, are worth billions of dollars.
For all the McD's manager knew, Grant might have been a rival doing some corporate espionage. Or he might have been a government inspector of some sort. It sounds farfetched. But many people in store management in retail and fast food are very aware of these possibilities, and they're trained to err on the side of extreme caution.
Kenji isn't lying when he says the employee/manager in question could get fired for having given these out. Trade secrets in multi-billion-dollar corporations are a fascinating subject: they're often tied to the most seemingly minute details, and they're guarded as carefully as gold.
I doubt McDonalds really cares that much about their trade secrets.
Even though I love McDonalds fries (you can almost taste the oppression and cultural hegemony), perfectly emulating McDonald's fries is always going to be a tiny niche. No competitor is going to want their fries to be exactly the same as in McDonalds since brands want to position themselves as interesting and unique.
That said, I don't really like the deception he (and his agents) practiced, but it seems like a minor sin in the scheme of things.
For anyone interested in a broader look at the science of cooking I strongly recommend 'How to read a french fry' by Russ Parsons. It explains equally important factors like the need for natural soaps (surfactants) in the oil as it breaks down, for that perfect color. If you've ever tried to fry something until golden brown in a perfectly clean pot using new oil you've run up against this. The food is still white when it's done and cooking it until brown means overcooking it. You have to save a bit of the old oil to mix in with the new stuff.
It's an easy read with recipes for several dishes and the book can serve as a really solid base for understanding how to be a much better cook.
One thing that McDonalds do is add the salt to the fries for you. This seems a little bit odd if you have been used to buying 'chips' from a British Fish and Chip shop.
However the 'salt' they add isn't just salt. It is a mix of sugar and salt. This does work wonders for making them taste really nice, it works well with regular 'chips' too. Yet it is tantamount to deception, unless you are in the know you would never imagine that McDonalds fries are sugar coated.
I'll concede that Kenji (the food lab author) definitely has a hacker-ish point of view when it comes to cooking, but I feel like we may be diluting the content of HN with a french fry recipe. Maybe everyone just loves fries?
Oh and for the record, I'm a huge Food Lab fan and have been a regular reader for some time... But I think that this Cook's Illustrated recipe beats Kenji's fries (and it's way easier too): http://deep-fried.food.com/recipe/easier-french-fries-cold-o...
[+] [-] tptacek|12 years ago|reply
http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/05/12/the-quest-for-french...
I believe Kenji Lopez-Alt, the author of the Serious Eats article, is the "Former Cooks Illustrated Test Cook" quoted at the end of Dave Arnold's article.
(Everything at Cooking Issues is amazing, especially Dave Arnold's weekly podcast; also, you can get Pectinex Ultra SPL from Modernist Pantry online).
[+] [-] mattmaroon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] batbomb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DigitalTurk|12 years ago|reply
Funny. I tend to think of super thin fries as an American thing. Fries from McDonald's, in particular, taste like cardboard to me.
Then again, I'm Belgian.
[+] [-] chestnut-tree|12 years ago|reply
If you can access this 30 min radio programme from the BBC about chips (from June 2010), you might find it interesting. It features a segment on Belgian fries
"In Belgium the oven chip hasn't caught on. Instead friterie shops proliferate, and Belgians take their chips very seriously. How the potato arrived in Europe remains contentious, but the Belgians are confident that it was them, and not the French, who invented the "French" fry. Ray Kershaw visited the Friet Museum in Bruges established to celebrate their national fry with director Eddie Van Belle."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sqkgb (segment starts at 18:33 seconds)
[+] [-] stinos|12 years ago|reply
Anyway, still appreciate the article, it just started with the wrong premises.
[+] [-] riffraff|12 years ago|reply
So, last time this article came up on HN I generously filed it under "maybe fries in fast food chains in the US are different than fries in US fast food chains everywhere else".
[+] [-] jaggederest|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbutler|12 years ago|reply
"my thick-cut pub-style fries are super-potatoey and fantastic, and when I'm in the mood for them, my seasoned steak fries can't be beat, but for thin, super-crisp fries..."
The "taste like cardboard" is probably because McDonalds no longer fries in beef tallow.
[+] [-] raldi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|12 years ago|reply
I've had lots of wonderful french fries in the US -- and none was in a McDonalds (or Burger King, or Jack in The Box, or Arbies, or ...).
[+] [-] zaroth|12 years ago|reply
He doesn't mention what's he using to cut the fries?
[+] [-] dmunoz|12 years ago|reply
bostik has also already mentioned that Heston Blumenthal covers a method in detail in the fish and chips episode of his In Search of Perfection series. I've only gone all the way with this method once, but it is fairly close to what we did at the restaurant, only we never froze our fries, only refrigerated them. It does make nicer fries than simply double frying, but not by a wide margin.
Fries are a bit of an ongoing project for me. I'm trying to find some reasonable method to have nice baked fries. What I get so far is serviceable, but not nearly as nice as frying them.
Edit: I forgot to add the second reason I wanted to make this post: Kenji has an ongoing series on Serious Eats called The Food Lab. He takes the same semi-scientific approach to certain dishes as in the submitted article. Another good post in the series is on dry-aging beef at home [0]. American's Test Kitchen [1] tends to do the same thing, but they only really share the final result with a few tidbits on their process of discovery.
[0] http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/03/the-food-lab-complete-gui...
[1] http://www.americastestkitchen.com/
[+] [-] sjtrny|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xdissent|12 years ago|reply
I don't blanch them, I first soak them, dry them, then deep fry them twice per Alton Brown's guidance: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/chips-and-fis...
They're perfect.
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
Be careful, it's ridiculously easy to slice way fingertips with these.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Selkin-Borner-V1-Slicer-White/dp/B00...
etc etc etc.
[+] [-] nicklovescode|12 years ago|reply
Thick: http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/thick-cut-french-fries
Thin: http://www.chefsteps.com/classes/science-of-poutine/#/thin-c...
disclaimer: I'm working on a project with ChefSteps
[+] [-] apunic|12 years ago|reply
I find it in general remarkable that McDonalds' business processes seem to be so foolproof that any one armed eyeless chimp is able to create BigMacs, Hamburgers and any other McDonalds dish always and anywhere in the world with the same high quality.
[+] [-] venomsnake|12 years ago|reply
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000024.html
[+] [-] sampo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhughes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnathanson|12 years ago|reply
Corporations like McDonald's rely on trade secrets: things that can't necessarily be patented, or which might be placed in danger by being patented. (Applying for a patent makes a recipe public record, and the lifetime of the patent is finite.) The secret recipe for Coke, or in this case the secrets behind McD's fries, are worth billions of dollars.
For all the McD's manager knew, Grant might have been a rival doing some corporate espionage. Or he might have been a government inspector of some sort. It sounds farfetched. But many people in store management in retail and fast food are very aware of these possibilities, and they're trained to err on the side of extreme caution.
Kenji isn't lying when he says the employee/manager in question could get fired for having given these out. Trade secrets in multi-billion-dollar corporations are a fascinating subject: they're often tied to the most seemingly minute details, and they're guarded as carefully as gold.
[+] [-] yetanotherphd|12 years ago|reply
Even though I love McDonalds fries (you can almost taste the oppression and cultural hegemony), perfectly emulating McDonald's fries is always going to be a tiny niche. No competitor is going to want their fries to be exactly the same as in McDonalds since brands want to position themselves as interesting and unique.
That said, I don't really like the deception he (and his agents) practiced, but it seems like a minor sin in the scheme of things.
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
triple cooking (blanch, cool fry, hot fry) and the sciencey stuff about sugars and starches.
I love the batches and notes about temperature. This is something I need to start doing so I can recreate the sucessful cooking I do.
What I'd have liked to see more of was a discussion of different types of potato, and different treatment of the oil.
[+] [-] tombrossman|12 years ago|reply
It's an easy read with recipes for several dishes and the book can serve as a really solid base for understanding how to be a much better cook.
[+] [-] treenyc|12 years ago|reply
I walked into a KFC and ask to buy a bag of batter, it is how funny they turned very serious all the sudden and asked me to leave to store.
I mean I just want to use it on real organic chicken. Anyone???
[+] [-] chestnut-tree|12 years ago|reply
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2009/jul...
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beedogs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dlsx|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Theodores|12 years ago|reply
However the 'salt' they add isn't just salt. It is a mix of sugar and salt. This does work wonders for making them taste really nice, it works well with regular 'chips' too. Yet it is tantamount to deception, unless you are in the know you would never imagine that McDonalds fries are sugar coated.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lnanek2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylnclrk|12 years ago|reply
Oh and for the record, I'm a huge Food Lab fan and have been a regular reader for some time... But I think that this Cook's Illustrated recipe beats Kenji's fries (and it's way easier too): http://deep-fried.food.com/recipe/easier-french-fries-cold-o...