Sous Vide French Fries
Speed - 93%
Simplicity - 95%
Tastiness - 100%
96%
Excellent!
These fries are simply perfect. Soft like mashed potatoes on the inside and brittle and golden on the outside.
Ingredients
- 500 Grams Potatoes peeled and cut into half-inch batons
- 1/2 Cup Water
- 1/2 Tablespoon Salt
- 1/4 Teaspoon Sugar
- 1/4 Teaspoon Baking Soda
- Vegetable Oil for frying
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Stir together water, salt, sugar, and baking soda.
- Put potatoes in a sous vide bag with the brine.
- Cook for 15 minutes at 194F.
- Air dry the potatoes.
- Fry at 130C for 7 minutes.
- Drain and let cool.
- Fry for a minute at 190C.
French fries. This humble side may be among the easiest to prepare. . . if you’re content with mediocre to average results, that is. This sous vide french fries recipe takes it to the next level.
But who doesn’t appreciate a perfectly-cooked serving of these potatoes? Soft and pillowy like mashed potatoes inside a glass-like brittle crust. To be honest, getting your French fries to this level of perfection requires much more effort and technique than you might think.
It all begins with selecting the perfect variety of potatoes. You’ll want something that has a lower moisture content like Russets or Burbanks. The high moisture content of other varieties will keep your fries from crisping up optimally however you try.
Peel your potatoes and cut them into batons as uniformly-sized as you can. Again, attention to this little detail would make or break your French fries. Cutting your potatoes unevenly would mean that they would cook unevenly as well.
Seriously. It’s worth taking the time to get this part right. It makes a huge difference at the other end.
While working, have a bowl of cold water on your workstation. Oxidation will start as soon as you peel those potatoes, causing them to turn brown really quickly. Soaking them in cold water would slow this process down significantly.
Next, make up a simple brine of water, salt, sugar, and baking soda.
The salt and baking soda will aid in drawing out any excess moisture from the potatoes, ensuring that they crisp up beautifully.
The sugar, on the other hand, will try to mimic the natural sweetness of potatoes which may have been lost during the entire preparation process.
Get everything in a sous vide bag, potatoes and brine, keeping them in an even single layer so they’ll cook evenly in the water bath.
The cooking begins with this first phase. The potatoes have to be cooked at a precise temperature of 194°F for about 15 minutes. This controlled cooking will render the potato insides soft and fluffy while keeping their structure intact.
As soon as the time’s up, get the potatoes out of the bag and let them air-dry. Getting them as dry as possible would again make them fry to a perfect crisp.
Spreading them on some paper towels would be a good idea.
Now they’re ready for the second phase of cooking. This would be a slow fry over low heat, 130°F to be exact. Depending on the thickness of your potatoes, this should take between five and ten minutes.
Make sure to use enough oil so the temperature does not drop as you get the potatoes in, or, work in small batches.
No need to set-up a timer. You’ll know they’re ready when they float on top of the oil and develop a loose blistered-like exterior.
These fries are almost good to go after the first fry, lacking just a rapid fry at high temperature to get the outsides crispy.
They’ll be perfect to store in the freezer at this point too.
To finish, get your oil heated up to 190°F and give these fries a minute or so to crisp and turn golden. Lastly, you can create various dips and sauces with sous vide for dipping your fries as well!
Ingredients
- 500 Grams Potatoes peeled and cut into half-inch batons
- 1/2 Cup Water
- 1/2 Tablespoon Salt
- 1/4 Teaspoon Sugar
- 1/4 Teaspoon Baking Soda
- Vegetable Oil for frying
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Stir together water, salt, sugar, and baking soda.
- Put potatoes in a sous vide bag with the brine.
- Cook for 15 minutes at 194F.
- Air dry the potatoes.
- Fry at 130C for 7 minutes.
- Drain and let cool.
- Fry for a minute at 190C.
Are Sous Vide French Fries Gluten Free?
As you probably noticed from the recipe, all the ingredients in French fries are naturally gluten free. But, this doesn’t mean that French fries always end up being gluten free. They can get contaminated if the frier has been used for gluten-containing foods, like chicken nuggets.
This is one of the benefits of making French fries at home. Doing so allows you to completely control what the frier is used for and steer clear of all gluten.
Why Deep Fry With A Sous Vide?
As you’ve seen in this recipe, you can’t fry food directly in the sous vide. Instead, you use the sous vide to cook the French fries initially, then deep fry them. It’s best to fry them twice, as this gives you a crispy golden exterior.
The process can feel like a lot of work, but you get more consistent results than with any other frying approach. This is because the sous vide gives you much more control than you’d have otherwise.
So, with this approach, you get a soft and pillowy interior every time, with a crisp exterior. You don’t need to be ultra precise either, which is fantastic.
The approach isn’t limited to French fries either. You can do something similar with most fried foods and also for foods you plan to grill (like steak). This means you can easily create consistently perfect meals. Besides, once you get familiar with the sous vide, the approach quickly becomes second nature.
There’s another benefit too – the sous vide step helps ensure your food is always cooked all the way through. This is particularly important with chicken, as it’s too easy to undercook the meat using other techniques.
Other Fried Sous Vide Recipes
Now that you’ve made French fries using your sous vide, why not try your hand at some other dishes? Here are a few favorites to get you started.
- Sous Vide Chinese-Style Fried Chicken. This recipe is the fried chicken that you know and love, with some distinctly Chinese flavors. The flavoring ingredients make the chicken taste much better than normal. You could even try the same trick using a different marinade for the chicken.
- Sous Vide Buttermilk Fried Chicken. If you want something more familiar, this fried chicken is the perfect place to begin. It uses a buttermilk mixture as a marinade, which helps to keep the chicken nice and moist.
- Deep Fried Sous Vide Egg Yolks. The sous vide is an excellent choice for eggs, as it gives the yolks an amazing texture that you don’t get any other way.
- Deep Fried Sous Vide Turkey Porchetta. Have you ever thought about preparing Thanksgiving dinner using the sous vide? This recipe gives you an exceptional main course, one that tastes every bit as good as it looks.
- Deep Fried Sous Vide 36-Hour All-Belly Porchetta. You’ll need to plan ahead for this recipe, as the pork spends a full 36 hours in the sous vide.
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Are the frying temps correct? They seem more like C than F.
Yup. Typo!
190F? Are you sure you don’t mean 190C? 190F is my coffee temperature. 190C is more for frying french fries.
Yup. Typo!
No typo – 194F seems reasonable for sous vide cooking – my sous vide immersion cooker doesn’t go as high as 194C.
The typo has since been fixed.
WOW! I love French fries. Thanks for sharing this recipe with us.