Food - Drink
The Potato Tip You Should Use When Making Homemade French Fries
By JOE DILLARD
Your choice of potato will greatly affect how your homemade fries turn out. Luckily, the best spud for the job is widely available and affordable, and that’s the Russet potato.
Russet potatoes have a low-moisture, high starch ratio that leads to a crispier final product. This quality is what makes them the spud of choice for McDonald’s fries.
Waxy potatoes such as red potatoes or fingerling potatoes have their moisture and starch ratios flipped, which makes them burn very easily when cooked in hot oil.
If waxy potatoes do successfully make it out of the fryer, you might end up with hollow fries, because all the moisture is drawn out during the cooking process.
The high starch in Russet potatoes keeps these mishaps from occurring and produces fries with perfectly fluffy insides and crisp exteriors, which makes them perfect for frying.
The russet potato has become synonymous with the label “Idaho potatoes” in the United States, but as long as the label on your potatoes says “Russet,” you’re golden.