What makes fries good

Try out the science of cooking in your kitchen sometime, check out that Maillard reaction, and let us know how your potatoes turn out at Dr. Universe wsu. Search for:. Videos Activities Podcasts.

Sincerely, Dr. Universe What do you think? The cooks fry them twice, first blanching them until slightly limp in peanut oil heated to degrees, and again in degree oil to crisp and brown them.

However, they also contain a whole lot of extras. When french fries cool down, they keep the golden color and the browned flavor, but the water that was on the inside migrates to the outside.

This makes fries soggy on the outside, while the inside turns coarse and gritty. In France and other French-speaking countries, fried potatoes are formally pommes de terre frites, but more commonly pommes frites, patates frites, or simply frites.

Improperly cooked french fries are limp, greasy, or soggy and often over-browned. These problems all arise from the improper handling of starch and sugar when exposed to high heat.

Wouldn't it be safe to assume that McDonald's was up to some similar shenanigans with its french fries? Though it may be hard to believe when you crack into another carton of perfectly cut-and-shaped McDonald's french fries, every batch does, in fact, start with real, whole potatoes, including Russet Burbank and Shepody varieties. The potatoes are skinned, washed, and then fired at impossible velocities of up to 70 miles per hour through a knife-filled tube, which cuts and shapes the humble spuds into those familiar shoestring shapes.

The cut fries are par-cooked, and then flash-frozen and shipped to stores, where they get finished cooking and covered in delicious, life-giving salt. Maybe fries made with reconstituted potato mash would taste fine, but we can't help but think that those real potatoes go a long way in making McDonald's french fries taste so good.

Yes, appearance goes a long way when it comes to making foods craveable and desirable, and McDonald's goes to great lengths to make sure that every batch of fries is as close to visual perfection as scientifically possible. The process starts right after the potatoes are precisely cut; the raw french fries are pushed through a blancher, which strips them of their natural sugars before being coated in dextrose , a corn-derived sugar, which factory workers say ensures "a consistent color no matter what time of the year it is.

Nobody wants gray french fries, no matter how delicious they are. Though McDonald's stopped using trans fats in its french fries way back in , for a long time, the signature flavor of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil had a lot to do with the deliciousness of their french fries.

McDonald's had been using partially hydrogenated vegetable oil in its fryers for years, in part because the chemical process of adding hydrogen to the oil helped to extend its shelf life and changing the fryer oil less frequently means more profit for the company. But this hydrogenation process also creates trans fats, which according to an article at the time by NPR , were "as bad for you, and possibly worse, than the saturated fats they replaced. Trans fats not only raise bad cholesterol levels, which increase the risk of coronary heart disease, but lower good cholesterol levels as well.

The problem that the company faced in the s, however, was that trans fats tended to make things more delicious. According to a company representative at the time, when McDonald's fries don't taste quite right, "It's the minor components of hydrogenation that [were] imparting the flavor. So [customers] really want 'hydro flavor' in their product. After experimenting with 18 different types of fryer oil , the McDonald's corporation settled on a "high oleic canola oil," which has the lowest levels of saturated fat in the vegetable oil family, zero trans fats, and longer life in those hard-working fryers, all without sacrificing flavor.

When the McDonald's corporation made the decision to add artificial beef flavoring to their fry oil, in an effort to mimic the beef tallowy-goodness of the s recipe , they created another chemical component that contributes to the addictive quality of their French fries: MSG. The natural beef flavoring McDonald's uses in its recipe is made mostly from hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk, which for reasons better explained by hardcore food scientists, closely resembles the taste of beef.

But here's the thing: When these ingredients hit the bubbling hot oil of the fryers, they start to break down, creating naturally-occurring monosodium glutamate, or MSG, in the process. The consumption of MSG has been accused of everything from weight gain to headaches to weird allergy-like reactions, side effects that have been almost entirely debunked. The fact is, MSG isn't in and of itself a bad thing; naturally-occurring glutamate chemically identical to MSG is in plenty of foods, including Parmesan cheese, green peas, and tomatoes, and lends a savory, umami-rich flavor to protein-packed foods.

It also happens to interfere with the satiation mechanism in our brains, and has been proven in some studies to increase overall food intake in laboratory animals.

That's not a good thing. Pre-cooking the fries in a water bath the way McDonald's does accomplishes two goals. First, it rinses off excess simple sugars, helping the fries attain a light gold color, instead of a deep dark brown. Secondly, it activates an enzyme called pectin methylesterase PME. According to an article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry , PME induces calcium and magnesium to act as a sort of buttress for pectin.

They strengthen the pectin's hold on the potato cell's walls, which helps the potatoes stay firmer and more intact when cooked to a higher temperature. That's why the surface of a McDonald's fry looks the way it does: rather than blistering into large bubbles like a traditional double-fried french fry does, the reinforced walls form the super-tiny bubbles that give them their extra crunch.

Now, like most enzymes, PME is only active within a certain temperature range, acting faster and faster as the temperature gets higher until, like a switch, it shuts off completely once it reaches a certain level. My objective just became much clearer: in order to get my fries ultra crisp, I'd need to find a way to strengthen their pectin before allowing their starch granules to burst.

It worked like a charm. The fries tasted nearly identical to those that come from McDonald's. Of course, now two new questions entered my head: What about for those poor souls who don't have a temperature-controlled water bath?

And more importantly, now that I've got the fries down, could I make them even better? I mean, they taste fantastic now, but we all know that McDonald's fries get soggy pretty darn fast. If these fries were really going to be perfect , I'd have to address that issue.

To solve the first problem, my initial though was to start the potatoes in cold water, and slowly bring it up to a simmer. No dice. The potatoes were certainly better than ones dunked straight into the fryer, but they didn't come close to the originals. Next I tried adding a measured amount of boiling water to a pot containing the cut potatoes. It worked a little better, but the water temperature dropped off too quickly for it to be effective. Was I gonna have to break out the beer cooler for this one?

There had to be another way. That's when I thought—perhaps there is another way to strengthen pectin without having to rely on some fickle enzyme I've never liked enzymes anyway , and it struck me: apple pie. What's this got to do with french fries? Well everyone who's ever baked an apple pie knows that different apples cook differently. Some retain their shape, while others turn to mush. The difference largely has to do with their acidity.

Thus super tart apples like Granny Smith will stay fully intact, while sweeter apples like a Macoun will almost completely dissolve. Just like a potato, apple cells are held together by pectin. Moral of the story: acid slows the breakdown of pectin. What if rather than trying to fiddle with temperature, I just relied on the use of acid to help the potatoes keep their structure?

I tried bringing two pots of cut potatoes to a boil side by side, the first with plain water, and the second with water spiked with vinegar at a ratio of one tablespoon per quart.

Here's what I saw:. The fries boiled in plain water disintegrated, making them nearly impossible to pick up. When I added them to the hot oil, they broke apart even further. On the other hand, those boiled in the vinegared water remained perfectly intact, even after boiling for a full ten minutes.

When fried, they had fabulously crisp crusts with tiny, bubbly, blistered surfaces that stayed crisp even when they were completely cool. As for the flavor, if I tasted really hard, I could pick up a faint vinegary undertone, though I wouldn't have if I didn't know it was there.

Even knowing it was there, it wasn't unpleasant at all. After all, I'm used to putting my fries in ketchup or mayo, both of which contain plenty of acid.