We all love it and like to eat it as often as possible. However, fries are not always and everywhere equally tasty. If I am honest: I especially like home-made fries. A good tasty potato, cut into fries and fried in fresh oil. Fried not once, but twice!
Have I become more critical or have the potatoes for fries become less tasty in recent years?
French fries from the supermarket are my least favorite. It is the taste of the potato itself that I do not like so much, while I do like eating potatoes. A good chip shop or chip shop chooses a good potato and bakes it with love. Here and there I still come across a container or bag of really good fries. At the Saturday market in Antwerp, in a small shop in Alkmaar on a canal on the edge of the city. No idea what it is called.
Baking fries at home
I won't be looking for a good chip shop anymore and maybe you won't either, because I'm going to teach you how to fry fresh chips! Nice at home, as much as you want. Come on, let's make chips ourselves.
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The type of fries
The recipe for good fries starts with the main ingredient: The potato. A French fry potato is quite floury and contains a lot of starch. Originally, fries were often fried from bintjes potatoes. This type of potato is not very widely available. I have seen them occasionally in recent years at the Rotterdam market. I personally buy Frieslander potatoes in our neighborhood. Other good French fry potatoes include Asterix, Premiere, Innovator, Challanger and Ukema.
Do you have a potato farmer nearby? Then go and ask the farmer himself what good French fries potatoes are.
In the sunflower oil
I bet he'll love it and you'll go home with a nice bag of potatoes!
Ultimate potatoes are baked with beef fat. However, I prefer to bake in vegetable fat. Olive oil cannot be heated for a long time, so I choose peanut oil (arachis oil) or sunflower oil.
Making your own fries
Peel about 350-400 grams of potatoes per person. That seems like a lot, but you will be peeling a significant portion of the potatoes.
Opinions differ. Should you leave potatoes in cold water for a few hours afterward or not? We never do this and I think our fries are absolutely divine!
Cut the potatoes into fries of about 1 cm. We like rustic fries, preferably not too narrow. You are the boss, cut the fries as big as you like or use a special fries cutter. Wash the starch from the pre-cut fries by placing them in a bowl of water or holding them under the tap. If you do not do this, there is a chance that the fries will stick together. Dry the fries well afterwards.
Heat your oil to 150 degrees. Fry your fries for a few minutes. They don't have to be brown, you're cooking the fries a little. This is called pre-frying the fries.
Let the fries rest and drain on napkins or kitchen paper.
After half an hour of cooling, you can bake the potatoes at 180 degrees, the colder the better. This will create a deliciously crispy crust.
The family is now sitting at the table, because you have to eat fries right away. That's when they taste best.
While everyone is a bit excited waiting for the fries, the fries are already going into the fryer for the second time. Within a few minutes your fries are ready. Shake the fries in the basket and hear how crispy and crunchy the golden boys push against each other. You can hear that they are delicious!
Put your fries in a bowl and sprinkle with some salt. Shake the fries and salt together.
Don’t wait any longer; time to enjoy.
Dip your fries in mayonnaise the Dutch way, in a lighter version in French fry sauce or in Belgian style, for example, in Andalouse or Samourai sauce.
You can tell by the fries whether they are tasty!
There is still so much to know about frying chips. This is evident from the reactions of the readers under this blog. Feel free to read the reactions. For example, Maurice says that fries sing when they are ready. Patricia says that you can also bake them in the actifry/airfryer yourself and why she leaves her potatoes in water with vinegar for a while?
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