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How To Fry French Fries In A Pot
To fry french fries in a pot, first, wash the potatoes and cut them into strips. Now heat some oil in a pot and put the potatoes in it. Keep stirring constantly and fry them until golden brown or crisp. Remove from the oil when they’re done. Serve immediately.
Because French fries are already cooked, you just need to remove them from their generous portion of oil once golden brown. If you just drop fries in the hot oil just long enough for them to turn browned, they will look good, but will be tough and undercooked on the inside. If you cooked them low until brown, water from the inside will escape before the potatoes are even cooked, creating oily fries.
You are supposed to first fry them low and slow, so that you are cooking the potatoes themselves, then high again, with very hot oil, so that they are crispy. When double-frying, you are first roasting potatoes at a lower temperature, and then cranking the heat up to high, then roasting a second time.
The genius of this method is that, while the oil is heating slowly, the potatoes are cooked through. Starting with a cold oil, the insides of the potatoes have time to cook and reach a temperature before the exterior starts to crisp. As COLD oil warms up to the regular fry temp, it slowly cooks the interior of the potato, so by the time the oil is bubbling, the inside is cooked — it is well on its way to that crisping stage.
Continue cooking the potatoes, not stirring them, until the oil has heated to 300F again, about 5 minutes. When the oil is up to 325 F, add those fries, making sure you do not crowd the pan. As the oil warms (avoiding heating the oil too hot); test the temperature is ready to grill by placing a wedge into the oil first.
Next, once you have raised the temperature of the oil to 365degF, you will again re-fry your partly-cooked fried slices. Increase the oil heat to 375degF, and fry those fries for another 3 minutes, stirring often, until they are golden brown. After the 30-minutes simmering time, drain frozen fries and cook on high, the temperature of the oil should be 350F. This will take approximately 40 minutes for frozen fries to be cooked. The cooker fries the frozen fries twice, first by frying them until a little limp in peanut oil heated to 325 degrees, then in 375-degree oil again to crisp and brown.
When ready to cook the fries, drain off any water and lay potatoes out on 2 baking sheets lined with paper towels. The soak process will get rid of any lingering starch from the exterior of the potatoes, helping your frozen fries reach perfect crispness. What the soaking does is removes potato starch to ensure better-tasting fries, as well as making cut potatoes crispy. Drain those fries once more, and you can see here how starchy the water is after soaking.
| Ingredients | Steps |
| Oil | First, peel and cut the potatoes |
| Fries | When ready to cook the fries, drain off any water and lay potatoes out on 2 baking sheets lined with paper towels |
| Salt | Heat the oil to 300 degree F and as it is heated, put the French fries in it and cook until they don’t turn golden |
| Ketchup | After the French fries are made, take them out and remove the oil from them. Sprinkle some salt on them and add ketchup on them |
Once you have trimmed your potatoes, put them into the strainer and wash for a minute, removing any excess starch. Cut these slices into long sticks to make stir-fries, placing the stir-fries into a bowl of cold water when cutting them, to keep them from turning brown. Use a slotted spoon to pull the fries out of a 10-inch cast-iron skillet, then strain onto a paper towel-lined plate.
After 15 minutes, using tongs or wooden spoons, stir and scrape the bottom to loosen any stuck-on fries, and break up any clumping fries. Cook until done, about 7 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep fried items from sticking and cooking all sides. If you cut the fries at similar thickness as I did, 5 minutes should be enough time for potato insides to be soft. Just 30 seconds might be good when you do not want to further cook the insides of the food (such as when deep-frying a meal after cooking it sous vide).
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Instead of slow, low-temperature cooking the first time, frying is plunged in very hot oil for just 50 seconds (the second frying is then done in its true place). The generous amount of oil actually makes the fries less oily, as it fries them faster and steadily; the temperature does not drop much once you have added potatoes. Because a lot of oil absorption happens in the between-frying the fries, they are less fatty by 1/3.
Keep potatoes at room temperature instead of refrigeration so that the starch does not convert into sugar, causing fries to turn brown before cooking. If you place the raw potatoes in a salted water bath, it helps to extract some moisture that is naturally present in potatoes, which results in crispier fries. If you find the potatoes starting to take on another color as you are waiting for them to be fried, you can put the potatoes back in water.
You can leave cut potatoes in the water for longer than 30 minutes, but if you do, you will want to put the bowl in the fridge to chill. Then, completely cover the potatoes in cold water and allow to soak for at least 30 minutes (or even overnight). Working in small batches, roast your potatoes until they turn from glossy to opaque, about 3 to 5 minutes (this is also called blanching).
If you are making a lot of batches ahead, you can prevent the fried potatoes from getting soggy by placing them on a tray in the hot oven. Once the potatoes are completely dry, toss them into a deep-fryer or a big pot with about 300-320 degrees of vegetable oil (a Dutch oven will do). While the vegetable oil is warming, peel potatoes and press them through a French-fried cutter to form evenly cut sticks.
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The journey through the blancher takes about fifteen minutes… After fries come out of the blancher, they are dried out, and then they go into a deep-fat fryer that is filled with a hundred-percent vegetable oil. Air-fry frozen potato wedges for 10-15 minutes, shaking the basket every 5 minutes to re-distribute the wedges and make sure they are cooked evenly.
Can you fry french fries on the stove?
In a skillet, heat the olive oil and butter over medium heat. 20 to 25 minutes, cook and toss potato strips in heated oil-butter until browned on all sides. Season the fries with salt & pepper and place them on a paper towel-lined dish.
What kind of pot do you fry French fries in?
If you are in a time-crunch, you can use any cast iron or metal pot for deep frying your French fries, like a frying pan or any other non-stick pan. These tend to be 3 inches deep to submerge and fry the French fries in an adequate amount of oil and prevent the oil from splattering.
Can you deep-fry French fries in a pot?
Yes, you can deep-fry French fries in a pot on a gas stove. You will require a large and deep pot (preferably 3-5 inches deep) with high walls. You can then fill the pot with 1-2 inches of oil, enough to submerge the potato strips in without the oil simmering and splattering.