Deep Secrets: Making the Perfect Fry; The potato of the moment is often a soggy disappointment. Time to take things into your own hands. (Published 1999) (2024)

FEW foods cross as many boundaries as the french fry. It is trashy fast food in a paper pouch, it is the inseparable partner to hanger steaks in lively brasseries, it is the austere, perfect batonette, a work of fine chefs.

And it is as pervasive as it is adaptable. With bistro food becoming the everyday equivalent of pizza and countless Belgian restaurants serving frites, the french fry seems to be everywhere.

But wherever it appears, it is nothing more than a strip of potato deep-fried and seasoned with salt.

You wouldn't think something so simple could cause so many major groups -- from university agricultural research centers to cookware manufacturers -- and legions of restaurant cooks to obsess. But it has. And now I join them.

Cooking decent enough french fries is easy, something even a beginner can handle. But getting that perfect fry -- long, thin as a chopstick, speckled with salt crystals large enough to feel on your tongue, brown as toast, nutty but not too greasy, and, like a ficelle, crisp on the outside and tender on the inside -- requires enormous synergy. There is potato variety to consider. Cooking fat, temperatures and equipment, too.

Determined to master french fries at home, I worried over the various techniques and tried them all. Over the last few weeks, the smell of cooking fats -- from peanut oil to beef fat -- has taken over my apartment. I've eaten my weight in french fries.

But I did not start in the kitchen. I started on the street. Balthazar beckoned. Its fries -- best enjoyed at the bar with a drink -- are potato and oil harmonized. Served like thin pencils lined up in a cup, they are as crunchy as chips on the outside, amply potatoey but not dry. A lemon mayonnaise on the side is dangerously good. So good, in fact, that as I covered a fry like a sock with the mayonnaise and ate it, I forgot about the fries.

''You have such a fine line between an excellent french fry and a not-so-excellent french fry,'' said Riad Nasr, an executive chef at the restaurant. He uses Idaho potatoes, which the cooks peel, soak in refrigerated water for eight hours, cut into long thin sticks and soak for eight hours more before frying. The soaking, Mr. Nasr said, is the secret to the crisp texture of the fries. It draws out the starch, making them more rigid and less likely to stick together. The cooks fry them twice, first blanching them until slightly limp in peanut oil heated to 325 degrees, and again in 375-degree oil to crisp and brown them. All for something that costs just $6.

At Patroon, one cook's sole job is to do the french fries. (Imagine the turnover rate.) Les Halles treats them like caviar.

''We are very, very hung up on our fries around here,'' said Anthony Bourdain, the chef at Les Halles. ''It's the first thing I look at when I come in in the morning.'' The fries are a little fatter and more moist than those at Balthazar -- like creamy mashed potatoes in a crisp shell.

How Les Halles arrives at them, though, couldn't be more different. The potatoes are hardly soaked at all and are cooked at different temperatures. ''Too much starch leaches out and it changes the sugar content and the starch,'' Mr. Bourdain said. ''All the good stuff ends up in the water, and the potato starts behaving weirdly.''

That was the first sign of trouble. I began to sense a long road ahead.

It was time to get in the kitchen.

First, I focused on technique, deciding whether to cut and fry, or go the extra mile and soak. To simplify, I used Idaho potatoes and peanut oil for these initial forays.

And I regret to report that going the extra mile was markedly better. I peeled the potatoes and soaked them in water for eight hours, then cut and soaked them for eight hours longer. Before frying them, I laid them out on dish towels and let them dry completely. (This is important to prevent oil from bubbling up when the potatoes are dropped in.) The double-soaked fries snapped under my teeth and seemed lighter.

I DREDGED one batch in potato starch before frying, as some fast-food restaurants do to assure a crisp outer shell. The fries were crisp, but the starch gathered into tiny balls on the surface and did not brown well.

I also played around with the temperatures, blanching some fries at 275 degrees and finishing them at 375, others at 300 and 400. The trick is to fry them as quickly as possible, so they have less time to absorb the oil, but not so quickly that they brown before they cook inside. Fries cut the way I like them -- slightly thinner than a quarter of an inch -- cook quickly. Blanched at 300 degrees, the fries cooked through in two minutes without browning. And finishing them at 375 made it easier to control the browning. At 400 degrees, many charred before I had a chance to strain them.

Testing french-frying equipment was an unfortunate detour. Initially, I gravitated toward the highly specific: french fry cutters and an electric deep-fryer that controlled the temperature.

French fry cutters are much like garlic presses, squeezing the potato through a sharp grid. But they cut too thick -- more than a quarter-inch in even the smallest grid. And it is impossible to push through a whole potato. So you end up with fat, stubby sticks that look like nuggets, not fries. Mandolines work, but so does a chef's knife.

I got out a ruler and began cutting the potatoes lengthwise into sticks. They weren't what you would call perfect, but I found that this variety translates into more taste variability. The thinner ones brown and have a deeper nut flavor; the thicker ones stay blond and heavy on potato flavor.

An electric deep-fryer was possibly the least pleasurable piece of cookware I've ever used. It was much like using a washing machine and looked like one on the counter. You pour the oil in, heat it, add the potatoes and close the lid. And you have no idea what's going on inside until the buzzer goes off. It was promptly abandoned.

Again, I resorted to basic equipment: a stove-top deep-fryer. The most effective model is a large round pan, about six inches deep, with tall handles where the metal basket can rest to let the oil drain. I hooked a candy thermometer on the side of the pan to regulate the temperature.

Next I addressed the ingredients, first and foremost the potatoes. I had always considered the Idaho potato -- its proper name is Russet Burbank -- plebeian, something that large growers pushed on the American public because it was cheap to grow and high in yield. Baked, it has about as much appeal as ground-up chalk.

But almost every chef I spoke with used it. And I discovered myself that it does have a greater purpose when fried in oil. Its interior expands like a souffle and turns creamy, and its exterior becomes crispy before absorbing too much oil. And coloring the outside, which means caramelizing the potato's sugars, gives it just the right bitterness. French fries need a touch of bitterness and loamy flavor, smoothed out with fat.

When a potato is deep-fried, its water content is replaced by the fat; you want a potato that has more solids than liquids, so it absorbs less oil.

Makers of frozen french fries and fast-food companies are well aware of this. Researchers at the University of Idaho and the University of Guelph in Ontario have been working for years to develop potatoes that outshine the ubiquitous Idaho. One potato grown for Nestle U.S.A., a maker of frozen french fries, is the Ranger Russet. It is longer than the Idaho, has a higher percentage of dry matter and suffers less from ''hollow heart,'' a growth problem that makes it impossible to cut long fries. The agricultural biotechnology division of the Monsanto Company hopes to introduce a high-solids potato in a few years for the commercial market. For consumers, more solids means less oil to clog arteries; for restaurants, less oil means lower cost.

In Belgium, french fries are made with a yellow-flesh potato that is dense and fairly dry. B. Frites, a Belgian french-fry takeout restaurant near Times Square, uses the Maris Piper, grown in Colorado. It replicates the Belgian potato, said Skel Islamaj, the chef. He gave me a few to try. They have a more rounded flavor and a less mealy texture, and are more filling than the Idaho. They make a great fry. But alas, they are not available to buy. Only the Idaho is.

Salt was about the only ingredient I was set on. I wanted large crystals that melt on the tongue and crunch under the teeth. The only solution: a coarse salt. Kosher salt is pleasant, mellow and appropriately humble for a dish of potatoes and oil. Fries seasoned with fleur de sel weren't bad, either.

AS much as great french fries are about the flavor of the potato, the cooking medium really does matter. Canola oil gives fries a cleaner flavor than most oils, but more flavorful cooking fats deepen their taste.

Pure peanut oil, which most chefs use, balances well with potatoes: the fries feel clean in the mouth, with a light, nutty flavor.

When I lived in France, I used to fry chunks of waxy potatoes in duck and goose fat. Cooking fries this way is no different. The availability and price of duck fat in the United States is, however. So to two quarts of peanut oil, I added seven ounces of store-bought duck fat. The fries cooked in it were richer, rounder in flavor and devilishly good. And they were an indulgence that cost very little: seven ounces of duck fat is $5.50 from D'Artagnan, (800) 327-8246; Dean & DeLuca sells 24.6 ounces of goose fat for $10.

Another trick: adding a little bacon to the peanut oil. As about two quarts of oil was heating, I put in a piece of bacon about three inches long. The fries were subtly smoky and delicious. I also tried a piece of prosciutto. It tinged the oil with a light pork flavor. Perhaps the best part, as with the bacon, was eating the prosciutto afterward, when it had cooked up to a salty chip.

Though the very idea is probably repellent to even adventurous palates, horse fat is actually the traditional cooking fat for fries in some parts of Belgium and France. I tried to track some down, without -- no surprise -- much luck. But I was able to get my hands on beef kidney knobs (the fat surrounding a cow's kidney) to render beef fat, which is difficult to buy already rendered. Until the 1990's, after all, McDonald's used beef tallow for its fries. (Now it uses ''healthy'' hydrogenated oils.)

When the 15-pound box arrived, my doorman looked at me suspiciously. Fifteen pounds of dry, white, waxy chunks of fat is a great deal of fat. I pulled the chunks apart and packed them into a stockpot. Many hours of gentle heat later, I had more beef fat than I needed in a lifetime.

When I fried the potatoes, the oil was so thick the potatoes stayed in place, as if they were levitating. They browned beautifully, with thin, dark lines along each edge. They took more salt and, even cooked and eaten in the morning, were the best of all the fries I made. What was McDonald's thinking?

No matter how good they were, things had gotten a little ridiculous. It was time to stop obsessing.

But the next time I have fries -- though it may be a while -- I will trust my cheap Idaho potatoes and peanut oil and will go to work with my simple knife, round pan and strainer. And I will definitely whip up some of that lemon mayonnaise.

FRENCH FRIES

Time: 30 minutes, plus 16 hours' soaking time

4 large, long Idaho potatoes

Peanut oil

Kosher salt or coarse sea salt.

1. Peel potatoes. Place in a bowl, cover with water and refrigerate 8 hours.

2. Slice potatoes lengthwise into sticks 1/4 inch thick. Place in a bowl, cover with water and refrigerate 8 hours more.

3. Drain potato sticks, and lay out on dish towels to dry. Be sure they are completely dry before frying.

4. In a large stove-top deep-fryer with a candy thermometer clipped to the side, heat 2 inches of peanut oil to 300 degrees. Add just enough potatoes to cover the base of the frying basket, and cook until slightly limp, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Do not brown. Lift basket and drain fries. Transfer potatoes to a baking rack, and separate sticks. Repeat with remaining potatoes.

5. Increase heat to 375 degrees. Again add potatoes in batches to the oil. Fry until chestnut brown on edges and crisp. Drain, and transfer to a bowl lined with paper towels. Immediately season with salt, tossing to coat. Serve.

Yield: 4 servings.

Note: For a slight pork flavor, to every 2 quarts of oil add a 3-inch slice of bacon or prosciutto. For duck flavor, to every 2 quarts of oil add 7 ounces of duck fat.

LEMON MAYONNAISE

Time: 5 minutes

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon champagne vinegar

Kosher salt

3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon peanut oil

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice.

1. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together egg yolk, mustard, vinegar and a pinch salt.

2. Whisk in peanut oil, starting a drop at a time and moving to a slow steady stream, until sauce is emulsified. Whisk in olive oil, then lemon juice. Adjust seasoning; serve immediately with french fries. Can be stored 4 days in the refrigerator.

Yield: about 1 cup.