french fries? READ!!?

Question

i'm making french fries. a couple sources told me to soak them in cold water for about an hour beforehand, as this washes out most of the starch and makes them crispier.

the whole point is that potatoes are nutritional, and french fries are a fun way to eat a bland food.

my question is, does washing the starch out completely ruin the nutritional value of them? am i eating nothing more than crispy foam? we eat potatoes for carbs, right? and most of those carbs come from starch? yes?

is this like grilling vs. stewing? the nutrients drip into the fire?

know what i'm getting at?

thanks for the condescending answers, as far as i had reasoned, these are thick fries, and the oil doesn't permeate the fry entirely, so the inner "meat" is being cooked by the steam and heat from the adjacent potato...

i'm aiming for high calories here, not health. i could give a f**k about the greasiness of them.

some say rinse, some say soak, some say just fry twice, some knock me for choosing to fry in the first place, this helped a lot. lol

Answer 1

The short answers to your question(s) you so pointedly highlight are 'no', and again 'no'.

Applying the cold water etc, you're not 'washing out the starch' (you can't) and you're not depleting the nutritional value of the potatoes. There's a misunderstanding at the root of this, so I beg pardon for 'doing the science bit' to try to undo the tangle.

You can only free up some of the potato starch by breaking/damaging the cell walls: precisely what you do when you peel and slice them. The starch contained in the cells you have cut through *only* can now escape. When you rinse the sliced potatoes, it is *that* starch *alone*, now liberated, that you wash away. The surplus, or 'surface' starches, in fact. The rest, still locked into all the cells that remain undamaged, are not affected. You could soak those slices in water till kingdom come, and starch-wise, you would be none the wiser for it, once the surface starches had dispersed.

Now the why and how. You rinse off the surface starches that have escaped from the cut cells when you sliced, so they don't turn to sugar in the first frying and colour the fries prematurely. (It also reduces sticking or clumping together of the fries in the oil.)

You reserve the cut fries in iced water for two reasons: to preclude oxidisation (turns them brown) and to make sure you start cooking them all fom the same (low) temperature in the first phase, to minimise early colouring or (better) prevent it altogether, and to ensure enough of a period of first cooking to get them 'done' before colouring *has* to happen.You can delay the Maillard reaction, but you can't stop it, given time. (Louis C. Maillard was a french doctor, btw, who formulated this behaviour of starches and sugars when being cooked, for the first time.)

Method, summarised: peel and slice the potatoes, and reserve in iced water. When ready for first cooking (blanching) in oil, rinse under cold water and dry thoroughly in paper towels. Cook in cool oil (I use 140°C / 285°F) until white and opaque (6-8 minutes, or as long as it takes without colouring). Drain and rest for at least 15-20 minutes. Raise the heat of the oil to 190°C/375°F and, when you're ready, fry briskly until golden, 2-3 mins, in modest batches to ensure ample space for the fries in the hot oil to cook evenly without sticking. When done, drain, rest a moment on paper towels, shake, salt, and send to table. (Or make a pig of yourself, there and then, of course )

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

French fries are not the best way to get the very little nutritional value that a potato has to offer.
I'd say that baked potatoes are a much better way to go because you can top them with all sorts of yummy things, but you're not adding unnecessary oil.
If you're dead set on french fries, then slice them thinly, pat them dry, and fry them in lots of very hot oil. The more oil there is, the more heat there is, so don't scrimp. Also if the oil is hot enough, the fries don't soak up quite so much of it.

Answer 3

You're not "rinsing all the starch out." Maybe just the exterior. Most nutrients are just under the skin. Keep the skin on them and you'll have plenty!

Alton Brown on FoodNetwork dotcom has a great classic FF recipe, where they are actually twice-fried at 2 different temps. Sounds intensive, but it's not. And they come out perfectly!

Answer 4

I like to wash and peel the potato, rinse it, cut it across a couple of times and then slice the pieces, and heat up a medium layer of olive oil in my iron cast pan. I lay out the fries in a single layer and turn them as they brown. They come out thick, with a nice outer texture and creamy potato inside, and I lay them on paper towels to remove the extra oil, add a little fine grain sea salt. I don't eat potatoes very often but yum! Tasty! And hey, it's a potato.

Answer 5

White Potatoes are not very nutritional to begin with, and dropping them in hot grease makes them even less so........if you are going to fry them anyway, why worry about losing the starch?

Answer 6

Sadly I can no longer have french fries because of the salt and salt makes them. I have to be on low sodium diet. So French Fries are but a fond memory to me . :(

Answer 7

put in the fridge overnight this will turnsome of the starches into sugar, which increases the mallard (pronounced "may ard" bc its latin & you're not cooking a duck) reaction, which means that you carmelize the sugars, (same thing happens when you toast bread).

then just rinse them to get the wee bits of starch that you release by cutting them.

then remember to "be sure to DRY, before you FRY"

Answer 8

Rinse them, don't soak them. Yes, it washes a small amount of nutrients from them and it also reduces their flavor. Chilling them before frying will make them cook a little crispier, too.

Answer 9

I am a diabetic and yes potoes are almost all starch. on the old dietetic diet potoes count as a bread. and of course that's because of so many cabs in one. most vegetables only have at the most 5gems of crabs in them per serving size. where a serving size of potoes would have at least 15gms of crabs. i have to take 1 unit of insulin for every 15gms of crabs. because carbs all crabs good and bad crabs is what turns into sugar in your body from the food. you need crabs in your diet no matter who you are.if you are not taking insulin shots or on a insulin pump ; when you eat your brain automatics tells your panaceas to make and release insulin into your system.crabs also give you your energy to do things and not be so tried.

Answer 10

You don't need to soak them, but when you fry them make sure you blanch them in 320F oil, let them cool, and then fry them in 370F oil. If you don't blanch before you fry, you won't acheive a nice crispiness.