Cooking For Engineers

[BubbaT]

I have to be honest, I don't like keeping around as much oil as it would take to deep fry french fries. I've tried the oven baked thing with "ehh" results, but that's a no no in the summer. (Baking in an air conditioned house that's a greenie no no. )

It would be nice if there was a way of microwaving french fries. Since I couldn't find a recipe, I thought I would try on my own.

Now in my vast french fry eating experience, I have observed that there are two parts of the french fry baked in two different ways. The outside and the inside.

The inside is basically baked, so if you want french fry insides, all you would have to do is put a potato "french fry" cut into a microwave for a minute on high. The hard part is making a whole french fry and getting the outside right.

The outside is fried in oil, creating a Maillard reaction on the surface. The question then is how to produce a similar reaction on the surface of a potato in a microwave.

One trick McDonalds uses on their fries is to soak them in sugar water, so the surface absorbs extra sugar which helps in the process. Which I will be trying out.

Now here is something that you may not have noticed about potatos. Potatos have by far the highest cross-section of any other food. Put another way, potatos tend to absorb the lions share of the radiation in a microwave oven. Put another way when you nuke potatos and other food in a microwave oven, the potatos get hot while the rest barely get warm.

This complicates the situation,because if you spread oil on the outside of a potato, it is probably not going to get very hot. So the insides cook but the outside doesn't brown.

I see ways around this and would like other peoples opinions.
In each case I am taking one potato and a bit of oil ( canola or grapeseed ), and I have questions on all parts.

Case 1: I ( stir) fry the potato ahead of time till the outside either starts browning or finishes browning. (Which?) Then I stick the fries in the microwave set on ? for how long.

Case 2: I nuke the fries till the insides are almost done. Then I heat the
oil as high as I can. I pour it over the potatos then resume nuking at ?
for how long.

Case 3: I nuke the potatos until the inside is done, the I (brown) fry the potatos .

I would appreciate peoples suggestions.

[jbroom]

I think option 3 is your best option. I would cook the potatoes in the microwave first, then pan-fry them to get the crispy outer-shell of the fries. That is based on how most restaurants prepare home fries or roasted potatoes--bake first, then pan fry (or boil first, then broil). For the larger pieces of potato, this is done to reduce the greasiness of the final product (I imagine potato cubes deep-fried would be too overwhelming for anybody not looking for state fair food). Substituting the microwave for the conventional oven should serve you well.

I would be sure you get the potatoes right away into hot oil after they're mic'ed so you don't get the nasty hardening effect the the microwave can have on starchy foods.

Bon Apetit.

[Sausageman]

option 4
Cook the things on the BBQ outside.
Nuking potatoes! what has the World come to?

Mike
_________________
Mike.

[DrBiggles]

I like #3 too, but thought of browning them with a propane torch on a cookie sheet. I'll so that with other food to quickly boost the browning. Plus, you get to play with fire!

Biggles

[Dilbert]

the traditional / classic approach to french fried potatoes is to

first 'blanch' / par-cook them - deep fried - at a 'lower' temp
- this is the bit that cooks the "insides"

followed by a high temp deep fry to crisp & color the outside.

assuming one 'thickly' juliennes a potato, theoretically a microwave could cook the 'insides' similar to a blanch deep fry.

but I question that a microwave will also create an exterior 'skin' on the fry french fry that will preserve the physical integrity of 'the potato strip' - the blanch deep fry will create a skin on the strip - the microwave is apt to cook the strip 'equally' in cross section - with a result of a cooked but crumbling potato strip.

[ahmali]

Apprently a device exists to do the job solely in the Micorwave .

http://www.amazon.com/Microwave-French-American-Chef-Cookware/dp/B003768LN2

Though most likely it won't work as advertised.

[frosty256]

Option 3 is actually very similar to a technique my parents used to use up leftover baked potatoes.
They'd slice the potatoes about 1 cm thick, then sear them in a frying pan over very high heat just long enough to crisp them. It wasn't in the shape of french fries, but in terms of texture and flavor it was very similar.
Try this:
nuke the potato first before cutting it. I do this sometimes to make "baked potatoes" when I don't actually have time to bake them. I use two rounds of 5-minutes.
Then slice the potatoes french-fry style and briefly saute them over highest possible heat. This'll dry out their exterior and produce your crisping effect.

[villagesdeb]

I just put two potatoes in the microwave like I would for baking them and didn't let them get all the way cooked. Let it cool for a minute or two and then slice thin for fries. Heat oil and drop them in. Result, crisy outside and wonderfully done. They are so good we ate way too many! Try this, it's almost foolproof!

[Jim Cooley]