Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [46]
Oh, Michael Pollan, you underestimate me.
FRENCH FRIES
“How do you get the covering on them?” Owen asked, pulling at the skin of the hot french fry.
“I didn’t have to put it on,” I said. “It happens naturally when you fry potatoes.”
Homemade fries don’t taste better than what you can buy at McDonald’s, and let’s not fool ourselves that they’re healthier. But they trounce the frozen competition, like Ore-Ida.
Make it or buy it? Occasionally you want to make fries at home, but this is basically restaurant or road food. If you got in the habit of making these at home you might eventually need to buy a medical scale. Frozen french fries are a last resort.
Hassle: You bet. But it wouldn’t stop me. What stops me: fattening.
Cost comparison: It costs about $2.00 to make a pound of french fries—a dollar for the potatoes and another for the oil. (You can and should reuse the oil, so I’ve amortized.) For an equivalent amount of inferior Ore-Ida frozen fries, baked in the oven, you’ll pay about $2.40. If you deep-fry them: $3.40. From McDonald’s, a pound of fries costs between $6.00 and $7.00, depending on who serves you. Not as cheap as you thought, is it?
Neutral vegetable oil or lard, for frying
2 pounds russet potatoes
Salt
1. Line a baking sheet with paper towels or brown paper grocery bags. Start heating the fat in a sturdy pot.
2. Peel the potatoes and cut into batons, as thin or as thick as you like your fries.
3. When the oil registers 320 degrees F on a deep-fry thermometer, or a bit of potato dropped in sizzles and immediately bobs to the surface, slip in a handful of fries. Turn down the heat so the fries cook gently in the oil but don’t darken. You are basically parboiling them right now (albeit in oil, not water) and will fry them again immediately before serving to give them their crust.
4. When the fries are still pale but cooked—you can tell because they will become mealy and tender—scoop them with a slotted spoon onto the baking sheet to drain. Add the remaining fries to the oil and repeat.
5. Immediately—or up to a few hours later—reheat the oil, this time to 360 degrees F. Drop in half the fries and this time let them turn golden.
6. Remove and drain on clean paper. Salt to taste. Repeat with remaining fries. Serve immediately. They’re fantastic with mayonnaise.
Makes 1 pound fries, enough to barely satisfy 4 hungry people
ONION RINGS
An editor once assigned me to review a cookbook by Todd Wilbur, author of the popular Top Secret Recipes series, in which he attempts to crack the codes behind classic brand-name foods, like Kozy Shack rice pudding and Krispy Kreme donuts. I was to cook as many of Wilbur’s recipes as I could and determine whether he made good on his promise.
The results were shocking and unintentionally hilarious. When Wilbur’s recipes failed the test, which they usually did, they failed by producing food that was orders of magnitude better than the originals upon which they were modeled. He aimed low, but he couldn’t aim low enough. Intended as an homage to beloved brand-name comestibles, the book inadvertently revealed how truly lousy they are.
The most extreme example in my experiment: the Burger King onion ring. I’ve eaten Burger King onion rings on road trips and they always hit the spot. But sampling them against homemade offered a lesson in relativity: it is impossible to make a sound judgment about food without a direct comparison, especially when you’re hungry.
One night, I made onion rings per Wilbur’s commendable recipe and Mark brought home a sack of warm Burger King onion rings. I hope it’s obvious that onion rings came to be because sliced onions naturally separate into rings. The Burger King onion ring, however, has moved so far from its origins that it is no longer a natural hoop of onion but ground, rehydrated onions