Crispy Homemade French Fries

So, I wanted to make up some homemade french fries for my friends the other day.  I went to my trusty blog (which mostly functions as a handy recipe book, these days) and searched "fries."  Unfortunately for me, it turns out I never did that post I meant to about how to make the perfect, crispy, delicious batch of homemade fries like I thought I had.  So here it is now, for all of you (and me, next time I want it -lol).

First take the potato of your choosing.  Yes, the humble spud.  My husband is partial to Yukon Golds, so that is what I will be using in this post.

Cut up your potatoes into thin strips.  (Leave the peels on.)  Put them in cold water, and rinse them until the water runs clear. 

Pat them dry with a paper towel.

Heat your oil to 350 degrees, and lower a small amount of potato slices in.  Make sure they are fully covered.  Stir them, if using the stove.  If using a basket and a deep fryer, give the basket a shake occasionally so they don't stick together.  Fry them for five minutes.

Bring them up and try to dismiss the visions of McMinamin's greasy, floppy fries from your mind.  We aren't done here.

Let the oil drain a bit, and then put them on a baking tray and put them in an oven heated to 200 degrees to keep them warm, while you fry up other small batches of fries.  

If you are only making 20 or so fries, you can skip this step.  But don't overfill your fry basket in order to not have to heat the oven.  You want your fries to have hot oil on all sides, not other potato pieces slapped up against them! 

Continue frying small patches of up and adding them to the tray.  Then heat your oil up some more.  Preferably 425 degrees, or if your fryer only goes to 375 degrees like mine, just crank it all the way up. Dip them in there for two more minutes.

Dab them off again with paper towels.  Add salt.

Maybe not quite this much salt:

But look how crunchy and divine these look!

A little ketchup, and you are good to go.

If you are the skeptical or scientific type, take a look at The Burger Lab's post about why we double fry them.  Also, the recipe is from the same guys, and can be found here.

Enjoy!

Corn Dogs, Anyone?

With the county fair in our rear-view mirror, I was feeling the need to fry up some comfort food and drown my sorrows at having missed it. (Okay, not really - I'm just stretching for a segue. None-the-less...)

And what better deep-fried goodness than the humble corn dog? Being in possession of a deep-fryer, I thought it would be great fun to make corn dogs with homemade batter. I selected a recipe, on trusty all-recipes, read the reviews for tips & tricks, then grabbed my camera to chronicle what was sure to be a stunning success.

I was surprised to find that I had, on hand, everything I needed to make corn dogs from scratch.  

Corn dogs wouldn't be corn dogs without cornmeal.

I mixed in flour, salt & pepper, sugar and baking powder.

Then added an egg and some soy milk.

And stirred up a nice batter.

At this point, I had read some different ideas in the reviews as to how to make the batter stick on to the dogs best.  I decided to try just dipping them in (as the original recipe calls for) as well as rolling some in flour first as some Allrecipe members had suggested.

So I inserted the bamboo skewer like this...

and dipped the turkey frank in the cup of batter.

Other of the dogs got rolled in flour first, like so:

And dipped:

Without further ado, I placed the first two dogs in the basket of my deep fryer and gave them a dip.  


While they were frying, I assembled a small army of additional raw corn dogs.

Including my favorite, a half-sized dog:

This may be a good time to mention that I had no guests coming over to help me eat these, and my husband is not a fan of corn dogs either.  But what else was I to do with so much batter!?

Meanwhile, back in the fryer...

Ah... sweet success!  I just can't wait to pick those up, dab them off, and consume them whole.  (Well - maybe not the stick.)

Uh... wait a minute.

*tear*

"But they were tasty, right?"

Sadly, no.  They were not.  Even this cute little guy left something to be desired.

So this all leads me to my question: 

Does anyone out there know how to make good corn dogs at home??

Deep Fried Goodness

One thing I have been doing a lot of this summer is using my deep fryer to create delicious sides and snacks. Ok... so this isn't the most healthy way to spend the summer - but it sure is tasty once in a while to fry up some 'taters!

Bryan has a thing for Yukon Gold french fries (like the ones you can get at Burgerville) so that is mostly what we've been doing.

Once, I even made chips, just for fun:



And the Jo Jo is classic, too:


Stay tuned for something else I tried in my deep fryer this summer...