Welcome to Cook Food Good, the show where I teach you how to cook food good and do other things good too, but mostly just the cooking thing if we’re being honest with ourselves, which we rarely are. Today we are making french fries, the absolute king of the potato dishes, and the queen of potato dishes is mashed. And if you’re following along at home, you can snag the time codes right there. Shooter! So I get it, home deep frying can be super intimidating but let me guide you to a safe way to enjoy this fast food staple from the comfort of your own home. Let’s cook food good, huh? Most light oils are very similar, peanut oil, canola oil and vegetable oil are the three most common types of light oil. I’m going with peanut oil ’cause it’s my favorite. A lot of restaurants don’t use it because of peanut allergies, but you’re not a restaurant. If you are, I hope you’re not getting your cooking tips from YouTube. As far as potatoes go, there’s so many different fancy potatoes out there, I am using what I like to call a normal-ass potato. Use the easiest route possible. I’m gonna go ahead and take what’s called a Santoku blade. It’s got these little ridges on the outside, and that’s actually gonna create an air pocket that’s gonna stop the potato from sticking to it, so it should come off the blade a lot easier. Anyone that’s cut it with a normal chef’s knife knows that you gotta go in and kinda dangerously peel at it with your finger to get it off. First you have to cut the potatoes. You have to decide what kind of french fry you like, the Wendy’s french fry to me is kinda the perfect shape. So I’m going with a nice medium cut. You can choose to peel your potatoes, I’m just gonna go skin on. When Wendy’s switched from skinless to skin on fries when I was a kid, I was like “Ooh, that’s fancy,” and that has always stuck in my head. So you’re gonna take the kind of cylindrical-shaped potato, and then you are gonna cut this into roughly a square shape. You’re just gonna cut about a centimeter, so we’re just gonna stack these together, and then we’re simply going to cut them into logs. Like me a nice thick boy fry, but not steak. So as far as equipment goes, if you have a deep fryer at home, probably stop watching this video and go play around with your deep fryer, it’s a fun time. A lot of people are very particular, everyone typically says you should fry things between 350 and 375, that’s such hot heat, people are getting their oil up to 375, 400 degrees, you add a single drop of water to it and it’s like a nuclear bomb going off in your kitchen and it splatters everywhere and it sucks. I’m taking a normal pot, and I’m just putting that on a burner. All I’m gonna do is submerge the french fries fully in the oil, and then crank the heat on, and it’s gonna gradually bring it up to temperature and deep frying them. So now we have all of our fries in there, if you notice I saved a potato. They’re great for spleheh! So the reason people normally fry them twice is because all the best fries, they get the benefit of cooking at a lower temperature oil, so they get nice and fudgy and the inside of them actually steams and cooks, and then they take ’em out, you can freeze ’em so you’re not gonna get oil penetration all the way through, and then you blast them in hot oil to get ’em crispy. In this method, if you just put fries in cold oil and then bring up the temperature, they’re going to get cooked in that cold oil the whole time, and then the oil’s gonna continue to heat and they’re gonna get fried in hot oil at the end, so you’re getting the best of both worlds, and it’s such an easy method. Take my oil, and I’m gonna cover my potatoes to the point where there is an inch of oil over the potratoes. Mike Paisley says “potratoes” in the Fancy Fast Food KFC episode, and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. I got the french fries in there, I got the oil in, all I’m gonna do is turn the heat on medium high, and it’s gonna take about 20 to 25 minutes for these fries to actually cook. Go work on your Bananagram strategy. Everyone thinks that making one long word in the beginning is the way to go so you have more room to play. You never know what’s gonna branch off a short word, you just gotta start putting words on the board sometimes, I suck at Bananagrams, dude. Another reason people don’t like deep frying is the 400 million dollars of property damage that deep fried turkeys do every Thanksgiving. I think that’s a real number, actually. Go to turkey fry fail compilations on YouTube. Wow, that’s frightening, don’t get drunk and drop a frozen turkey in your oil, stick to french fries. Another reason that people say they are afraid of frying is the splatter, and I totally get it, and there is a very cheap and easy tool, is this cyberpunk tennis racket. I also use it when I’m making marinara sauce, to stop it from just splashing around everywhere. If you use a normal pot lid on top of something while it’s deep frying, water’s going to condense at the top and then it’s going to drop into the pot and it’s gonna cause splatter. And you get the french fry up potaters, mm-hm. Our fries are in there, we’ve left them completely untouched, and they are looking absolutely perfect. Might let ’em go for another 30 seconds, but if you see, they’re super golden brown, and not only that, this is a super erect fry, not flaccid whatsoever, do you know the word’s actually pronounced “flaxid” and not “flassid”? Huh, that’s a fun thing you can bring up to your girlfriend’s mom after you spell testicles in Bananagrams. They’ve been in here for 25 minutes, but the time is all going to depend based on how hot your oil gets, and that’s about the strength of your pan, and that’s about how high your flame was, so just keep an eye on it, but you’re looking for this nice golden brown color. So we’re just gonna take the fries, we’re gonna put them directly into a mixing bowl, you want to season them very shortly after because you still want the oil coating on the fries when you toss them in salt. So we’re gonna put a very liberal dusting of salt, and then you get to do the real cool cheffy thing that they do as a slow-mo in literally every food show where you take the bowl and you just toss ’em like that. And those are your once-cooked fries that get you the same result as cooking them twice and dirtying a ton of dishes. Can I eat these fries now, I’m hungry. This is a little ASMR french fry eating. Just sit back, and relax. I’m just gonna scratch the french fry. Just gonna drop the french fry on the ground, oops. Should we cut? All right, since french fries are one of my favorite foods, I’m very particular about the condiments. Favorite thing, you get three parts ketchup, to one part sriracha. There’s two camps, you have the ketchup camp, very American, but then you have the mayonnaise camp, very French. I like to take mayonnaise and then I add Chipotle habanero hot sauce to it. The key is you gotta mix it with the back of a fork, it is the perfect cooking utensil for this, and this is my perfect bite of food on any given day, you go, and you eat the mayonnaise directly off the fork, I know people are saying “Josh, that’s disgusting,” “Josh, what little respect I had for you “is now completely gone,” “Josh you’re a trash human being “who needs to be in therapy.” Those are all true statements, but mayonnaise is just savory pudding and I stand by that. Ketchup is a beautiful agrodolce tomato chutney, don’t crap on ketchup. It’s a pretty perfect french fry, you’re only dirtying one pan. I don’t understand why more people aren’t doing this frankly, it’s like a life hack. I’m enjoying french fries too much, it’s the perfect food. Anybody who orders salad instead of fries as a side is a narc. You can just literally reuse this oil, all you have to do is clean your oil, or strain it and reserve it. What I like to do is I take an old protein container, let your oil cool first, it can be a little bit warm but you don’t wanna pour hot oil, especially into plastic. All I do is I take a fine mesh sieve, and I put it on top, so this isn’t a colander, this is a sieve that has a bunch of different layers of mesh going around it, meaning it’s gonna get any particles out there. Tons of restaurants have been reusing the same oil for 50 years. You can reuse this oil five or six times, and then you’re simply gonna take that, and you’re gonna pour it through your sieve. Using a funnel would also be helpful, ’cause I spilled a little bit of oil. I’m fine. You’ll know when to not use it because it’ll actually start to smell bad, and you won’t want to use it, but you don’t wanna put oil down your drain, you can however compost it in small amounts if you are a composty person and drive a Subaru. Subaru drivers love composting, that’s all I’m saying. Thank you so much for stopping by the Mythical Kitchen and letting me teach you how to cook food good and do other things good too. Lemme know in the comments what other foods you wanna know how to cook. We got new recipe videos coming out every week and new episodes of A Hot Dog is a Sandwich every Wednesday. Hit us up on Instagram with pictures of your food under #dreamsbecomefood. Thanks for stopping by, we’ll see you next time. Get as messy as you want in your kitchen when you have the Mythical Kitchen towel, available now at Mythical.com.