I could lie to you and say my favourite foods are crème brule, baked goat cheese, and boeuf bourguignon… but that wouldn’t be very nice of me. Instead, I will put my cooking cred on the line and tell you… my favourite food is… French fries. I am a self proclaimed French fry connoisseur. In my opinion, Waterloo’s best restaurant fries are at Molly Bloom’s and best quick fries will always be at McDonald’s1. If you want French fries at home but without the work, M&M Meats sells great shoe-string fries and they cook in 6 minutes. Orrr… you can make these. It would only make sense that I attempt to make my own. I have perfected them over the years and this is the result.
Ingredients:
- 6 medium sized red potatoes, rinsed2
- Cooking spray3
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1 tsp black pepper
- ½ tsp chili flakes
- 1 tsp paprika4
Total prep time: 15 minutes
Total cook time: up to 1 hour
Turn oven to 450F
Pull out a cookie sheet and give it a generous spray with the cooking spray. Slice your potatoes into your desired fry shape. Personally, I like shoe-string style but you can cut them into steak fries if you’d like. Once your potatoes are chopped, toss them on the cookie sheet. Pour the oil over the potatoes and toss with your hands. Spread the potatoes out into a single layer.
Wash your hands.
Sprinkle pepper, chili flakes, and paprika over the fries. Toss the tray in the oven.
After 5 minutes, pull the tray out and toss the fries with a spatula. Return to oven.
Repeat this after 20 minutes and 30 minutes. Depending on how many fries you’re making, they should be done in 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Serve immediately.
A few weeks ago a vegetarian friend of mine mentioned that he missed eating poutine, which has beef stock in the gravy. I got a bit ambitious and offered to make vegetarian poutine. I made mushroom gravy, this one, and my homemade fries. It was fun to make, though there were a lot of mushrooms which I still cannot bring myself to embrace, please withhold judgment.
Poutine Pictures!
Fries!
Cheese curds!
GRAVY!!
Notes:
- Completely unrelated to cooking… when I was growing up my mom and brother really liked Big Macs, I mostly ate French fries though. When I came to university I essentially stopped eating McDonald’s as there was no real excuse to go. UNTIL… this summer… I was out with my brother and we needed food… apparently Ben never stopped going to McDonald’s so he suggested we go there. I figured, it had been at least 4 years, what harm can it be? That was 3 months ago. I have been SIX more times. Curse you brother and your manipulative ways and curse you McDonald’s and your unreal French fries. I want those puppies at my wedding
- Really, you can make as many fries as you want so long as it’s a single layer on the sheet. I just needed a number for the ingredient list.
- TRUST ME, you need cooking spray AND oil. Otherwise you will have a very hard-to-clean pan and mushy fries that you’ve had to scrape off.
- Again, just my choice of spices, you can stick to plain salt if that’s your thing.