Cook and author J. Kenji Lopez-Alt had a mission: recreate McDonald’s french fries. In order to achieve his fries-from-home dream, Lopez-Alt reverse-engineered the fries, from a series of four “Perfect Fry Factors” (my favorite is #4: “The fry must stay crisp and tasty for at least as long as it takes to eat a full serving”), to the acquisition of uncooked McDonald’s fries (not as easy as you’d think), to precise measurements of the fries (1/4″ thick), to a series of complex cooking experiments involving vinegar and a sous-vide machine. This is epic, adventurous cooking.
In the end, Lopez-Alt figured it out, and made the process accessible for home cooks. Here’s a snippet of the process from near the end of the article (it was followed by the photo shown above):
Now that I’d perfected the crust, the final issue to deal with was that of the interior. One last question remained: how to maximize the flavor of the interior. In order to stay fluffy and not gummy, a lot of the interior moisture needs to be expelled in the cooking process, so my goal should be to make this evaporation as easy as possible. I figure that so far, by cooking it all the way to boiling point, I’m doing pretty much the right thing—the more cooked the potatoes are, the more the cell structure breaks down, and the easier it is for water to be expelled. To confirm this, I cooked three batches of potatoes, starting each in a pot of cold, vinegared water, and bringing them up to various final temperature (170°F, 185°F, and 212°F) before draining and double-frying them. Not surprisingly, the boiled potatoes had the best internal structure. Luckily, they were the easiest to make as well.
But was there anything more I could do? I thought back to those McDonald’s fries and realized a vital step that I had neglected to test: freezing. Every batch of McDonald’s fries is frozen before being shipped out to the stores. I always figured this step was for purely economic reasons, but perhaps there was more to it?
I tried freezing half a batch of fries before frying them and tasted them side-by-side against the other half.
Read the rest for a pretty intense story of cooking, investigation, and ultimately…tasty tasty fries. (Note: the story does include a link to the actual recipe in non-narrative form, at the end.)
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But can he have them go completely cold in the time it takes to eat a burger.
posted by Wayne on 7-7-2010 at 2:39 pm
I appreciate this guy’s resolve to create the perfect mimic of the McDonald’s fry, but can’t believe he completely ignored the fact that the fries are frozen. That would have been the first thing I tried…frying, freezing, frying again. That is the basic process of what the fry goes through…seems like a good starting point to me. Anyone that has seen a frozen strawberry thawed out can tell you that the formation of ice crystals wreaks havoc on the cell walls and leaves you with a much different strawberry than the one you put in the freezer fresh.
Despite the criticism, super-great work man! I can’t wait to try these at home!
posted by Chris on 7-7-2010 at 3:01 pm
here goes – the ultimate McDonalds fries flossy post
McD’s fries are cooked to a very specific temperature and time. 435 degrees for 3:10 sec +/- 5 sec. (this is probably technically a trade secret or something, but every fry slinger in the US knows it…) The fryers are calibrated to change the cooking times according to the size of the fry basket and the length of time it takes to lower the temp after the fries have been placed in the vat – in essence, the more fries in the basket, the longer they cook. Its a very exacting science actually.
And yes, frozen fries cook differently (and subsequently taste different) than partially thawed fries.
McDs also takes pride in their oil. Despite the controversy a few years back about trans fats and all that, their vegetable oil is quite specifically engineered as much as anything else.
The secret though to the perfect McDs fry is not necessarily in the details (although that is a LARGE chunk). The real secret is in the manufacturing where they fries are blanched in a light coating of sugar water prior to the freezing process. this helps give them their unique crispiness when cooked, and assists their specific golden brown color.
And then lastly is getting the perfect proportion of salt on the fry, and its always best to salt them still “wet” from getting pulled out of the oil.
May the McForce be with you all on your perfect fry endeavors.
posted by Justin L on 7-7-2010 at 5:14 pm
@Justin – somehow I knew one of our readers would know all these secrets. Frickin’ awesome!!
posted by Chris Higgins on 7-7-2010 at 7:11 pm
All the cook had to do was read “Grinding it Out” by Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s.
The entire recipe for the fries is in there, including which potatoes to use, how long to store them so that the potato center develops the right amount of starch, how they wash them before frying, how they double dip them in the deep fry fat, how the fat contains 10% animal fat (used to, not now).
Do your homework.
posted by Eric on 7-7-2010 at 9:48 pm
Next step, leave the country and try to recreate McD fries from there.
posted by Bakedpotatoes on 7-8-2010 at 1:54 am