EATFREAK

I love fries.  I really do.  I love them.  I have dirty dreams about them.  I like to think that maybe they have the same feelings about me.  But I doubt it.

I love fries so much that I forced my wife to put a deep fryer on our wedding registry.  Some brilliant and understanding friend purchased it for us, and Boom!  Deep frier.  The day it arrived I started my battle to make the perfect french fry.  A battle I am losing, my friends.  Losing really really bad.  French fries obviously don’t love me anywhere near as much as I love them – otherwise they would never hurt me like this.

Making the classic french fry is a crazy long ridiculous drawn out heartbreaking process of blanching and reblanching and doing all this crazy shit, and if you slightly fuck up one section you’ll know what shoelaces taste like.  I know what shoelaces taste like.

A couple of days ago, I caved, and started putting together a recipe for an Oven Fry – that could satisfy my Fry urges until I perfect the real thing.  There are foodies out there who would have me killed for this.  The general consensus is that the baked oven fry could never ever replace the deep fried french fry.  No one’s talking about replacing here – but there’s no reason in the world you can’t make a good oven fry.  And after a little trial and error – I made a fucked up good oven fry.

It’s super easy.  It’s super tasty.  It’s super cheap.  It’s healthier than french fries.  If you don’t make this that means you don’t even like fries – and that means you are a horrible person.

So at the risk of everyone knowing that you are a horrible person – do this.

4 (ish) potatoes
Peanut Oil – some.  it’s mostly eyeballed
Kosher Salt and Fresh Ground Pepper
other seasonings – whatever you want – I recommend a little curry powder

1.  Cut your fries.  Try to make them as even as is humanly possible.  We want perfect little potato clones – this way they will cook more evenly and you’ll avoid eating one kick ass fry and then one puke ass fry.  You can remove the skin or not – I didn’t.

2.  Throw the cut fries in a bowl of cold water.  Should stay there about 30 minutes.  I have to start preheating my oven to 475 at this point because my oven takes 7 business days to heat up – maybe you don’t have to start this early.

3.  Remove the fries from the water and do anything in your power to dry them.  Careful not to break them, but get that fucking water out of there.  Once they’re dry, toss them in  a bowl.  Drizzle some peanut oil over them, just enough to lightly coat.  Then chuck in Salt, Pepper, and seasoning (I threw some Lawry’s salt on mine).  Toss it all around til all that stuff gets all over the place.

4.  Pour some Peanut Oil into a baking pan.  Pour in just enough to line the pan.  Now chuck the fries in there.  Spread them out as evenly as you can in one layer.  Sprinkle a bit more Salt, Pepper, and stuff over them.  Cover tightly with Tin Foil.

5.  Chuck it in the oven.  5 minutes.

6.  Remove the Tin Foil – Back in the oven 10 minutes.

7.  Rotate the pan – back in for another 10 minutes.

8.  Do your best to flip all of the fries over – back in for another 10 minutes.

9.  rotate the pan – back in again for yet another freaking 10 minutes.

10.  get ‘em out of there.  Line a big bowl with paper towels.  Throw the fries in there – dry off the fries as much as is humanly possible with those paper towels.  remove the paper towel.  throw yet another little shake of seasoning stuff on there.  NOW EAT DAMNIT!!

Watch the fries near the end after you’ve flipped them over – if they look like they are starting to really get golden – speed up the process and get them out of the oven early.  Overdone fries are gross.

ok so check this out.

put ketchup in a small container. (preferably organic ketchup.  All ketchups are made in Chem. Labs, but at least the organic ones don’t use the ten thousand chemicals that go in the other ones.  they taste great too)  like 2 tablespoons.  stir in 1 teaspoon of Madras Curry Powder (just go buy it, you can get a tub the size of Texas for like a buck).  Now eat that.  So stupid simple, and So fucking good.

alright.  fries and  ketchup.  but awesome.

ok bye.