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French Fries

Alternative names	Chips, Finger chips, fries, frites, hot chips, steak fries, potato wedges, wedges
Course	Side dish or snack, rarely as a main dish
Place of origin	Belgium or France (disputed)
Serving temperature	Hot
Main ingredients	Potatoes Oil
Variations	Curly fries, shoestring fries, steak fries, sweet potato fries, Chili cheese fries, poutine
Other information	Often served with salt and a side of ketchup, mayonnaise, vinegar, barbecue sauce, or other sauce
Cookbook: French Fries   Media: French Fries

French fries, or simply fries (North American English); chips (British and Commonwealth English),^[1]finger chips (Indian English),^[2] or French-fried potatoes are batonnet or allumette-cut deep-fried potatoes. In the United States and most of Canada, the term fries refers to all dishes of fried elongated pieces of potatoes, while in the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Ireland and New Zealand, thinly cut fried potatoes are sometimes called shoestring fries or skinny fries to distinguish them from chips, which are cut thicker.

French fries are served hot, either soft or crispy, and are generally eaten as part of lunch or dinner or by themselves as a snack, and they commonly appear on the menus of diners, fast food restaurants, pubs, and bars. They are usually salted and, depending on the country, may be served with ketchup, vinegar, mayonnaise, tomato sauce, or other local specialties. Fries can be topped more heavily, as in the dishes of poutine and chili cheese fries. Chips can be made from kumara or other sweet potatoes instead of potatoes. A baked variant, oven chips, uses less oil or no oil.^[3] One very common fast food dish is fish and chips.

Preparation

Pommes frites with a mayonnaise packet

French fries are prepared by first cutting the potato (peeled or unpeeled) into even strips, which are then wiped off or soaked in cold water to remove the surface starch, and thoroughly dried.^[4][5] They may then be fried in one or two stages. Chefs generally agree that the two-bath technique produces better results.^[4][6][7] Potatoes fresh out of the ground can have too high a water content—resulting in soggy fries—so preference is for those that have been stored for a while.^[8]

In the two-stage or two-bath method, the first bath, sometimes called blanching, is in hot fat (around 160 °C / 320 °F) to cook them through. This step can be done in advance.^[4] Then they are more briefly fried in very hot fat (190 °C / 375 °F) to crisp the exterior. They are then placed in a colander or on a cloth to drain, salted, and served. The exact times of the two baths depend on the size of the potatoes. For example, for 2–3 mm strips, the first bath takes about 3 minutes, and the second bath takes only seconds.^[4]
One can cook French fries using several techniques. Deep frying submerges food in hot fat, most commonly oil. Vacuum fryers are suitable to process low-quality potatoes with higher sugar levels than normal, as they frequently have to be processed in spring and early summer before the potatoes from the new harvest become available. In the UK, a Chip pan is a deep-sided cooking pan used for deep-frying. Chip pans are named for their traditional use in frying chips.

Most French fries are produced from frozen potatoes which have been blanched or at least air-dried industrially.^[9] Most chains that sell fresh cut fries use the Idaho Russet Burbank variety of potatoes. It has been the standard for French fries in the United States.^[8] The usual fat for making French fries is vegetable oil. In the past, beef suet was recommended as superior,^[4] with vegetable shortening as an alternative. In fact, McDonald's used a mixture of 93% beef tallow and 7% cottonseed oil until 1990, when they switched to vegetable oil with beef flavoring.^[10][11] Starting in the 1960s, more fast food restaurants have been using frozen French fries.^[8]

Etymology

Thomas Jefferson had "potatoes served in the French manner" at a White House dinner in 1802.^[12][13] The expression "French fried potatoes" first occurred in print in English in the 1856 work Cookery for Maids of All Work by E. Warren: "French Fried Potatoes. – Cut new potatoes in thin slices, put them in boiling fat, and a little salt; fry both sides of a light golden brown colour; drain."^[14] This account referred to thin, shallow-fried slices of potato (French cut) – it is not clear where or when the now familiar deep-fried batons or fingers of potato were first prepared. In the early 20th century, the term "French fried" was being used in the sense of "deep-fried" for foods like onion rings or chicken.^[15][16]

It is unlikely that "French fried" refers to frenching or french cut in the sense of julienning, which is not attested until after French fried potatoes. Previously, frenching referred only to trimming meat off the shanks of chops.^[17]

By country

Belgium and the Netherlands

A patatje speciaal, with frietsaus, curry ketchup or tomato ketchup, and chopped raw onions, is popular in the Netherlands.

A Belgian frites shop

The French and Belgians have an ongoing dispute about where fries were invented, with both countries claiming ownership.^[18] From the Belgian standpoint the popularity of the term "French fries" is explained as a "French gastronomic hegemony" into which the cuisine of Belgium was assimilated because of a lack of understanding coupled with a shared language and geographic proximity of the countries.^[18]

Belgian journalist Jo Gérard claims that a 1781 family manuscript recounts that potatoes were deep-fried prior to 1680 in the Meuse valley, in what was then the Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium): "The inhabitants of Namur, Andenne, and Dinant had the custom of fishing in the Meuse for small fish and frying, especially among the poor, but when the river was frozen and fishing became hazardous, they cut potatoes in the form of small fish and put them in a fryer like those here."^[19][20]
Gérard has not produced the manuscript that supports this claim due to the fact that it is unrelated to the later history of the French fry, as the potato did not arrive in the region until around 1735. Also, given 18th century economic conditions: "It is absolutely unthinkable that a peasant could have dedicated large quantities of fat for cooking potatoes. At most they were sautéed in a pan...".^[21]

At least one source says that "French fries" for deep-fried potato batons was also introduced when American, Canadian, and British soldiers arrived in Belgium during World War I. The Belgians had previously been catering to the British soldiers' love of chips and continued to serve them to the other troops when they took over the western end of the front.^[22] The Belgians served them, and since French was the language of the Belgian Army, the name "French" was associated with the food. However, other sources disagree.^[19] Since a Frenchman (Parmentier) first made the potato popular, it is not surprising that the first reference to fried potatoes appears to come from France: in 1775, investigators there found fried potatoes in a dish. Through the nineteenth century, fried potatoes became common enough that songs and engravings took the “Fried Potato Vendor” as a popular subject. But at first these were cut in rounds. In 1865, Gogué, in France, wrote to cut them either round or “in long and squared pieces”; in 1870, Cauderlier, in Belgium, also offered both options. Given the lag between practice and print, one cannot say that the five years’ difference is significant; the most likely hypothesis is that the practice grew up spontaneously and spread across both countries.^[23] Some other sources refer to the old-English verb to french, meaning to cut lengthwise, as the origin of the name. At that time, the term "French fries" was growing in popularity – the term was already used in the United States as early as 1899 – although it isn't clear whether this referred to batons (chips) or slices of potato e.g. in an item in Good Housekeeping which specifically references "Kitchen Economy in France": "The perfection of French fries is due chiefly to the fact that plenty of fat is used".^[24]

"Pommes frites" or just "frites" (French), "frieten" (Flemish) or "patat" (Dutch) became the national snack and a substantial part of several national dishes, such as Moules-frites or Steak-frites.^[25]
Fries are very popular in Belgium, where they are known as frieten (in Dutch) or frites (in French), and the Netherlands, where among the working classes they are known as patat in the north and, in the south, friet.^[26] In Belgium, fries are sold in shops called friteries (French), frietkot/frituur (Dutch), or Fritüre/Frittüre (German). They are served with a large variety of Belgian sauces and eaten either on their own or with other snacks. Traditionally fries are served in a cornet de frites (French), patatzak^[27]/frietzak/fritzak (Dutch/Flemish), or Frittentüte (German), a white cardboard cone, then wrapped in paper, with a spoonful of sauce (often mayonnaise) on top.

Friteries and other fast food establishments tend to offer a number of different sauces for the fries and meats. In addition to ketchup and mayonnaise, popular options include:^[28]aioli, sauce andalouse, sauce Americaine, Bicky Dressing (Gele Bicky-sauce), curry mayonnaise, mammoet-sauce, peanut sauce, samurai-sauce, sauce "Pickles", pepper-sauce, tartar sauce, zigeuner sauce, and à la zingara.

Spain

In Spain, fried potatoes are called patatas fritas or papas fritas. Another common form, involving larger irregular cuts, is patatas bravas. The potatoes are cut into big chunks, partially boiled and then fried. They are usually seasoned with a spicy tomato sauce, and the dish is one of the most preferred tapas by Spaniards.^[29] Fries may have been invented in Spain, the first European country in which the potato appeared from the New World colonies, and assume fries' first appearance to have been as an accompaniment to fish dishes in Galicia,^[30] from which it spread to the rest of the country and then further away, to the "Spanish Netherlands", which became Belgium more than a century later. Professor Paul Ilegems, curator of the Frietmuseum in Bruges, Belgium, believes that Saint Teresa of Ávila of Spain cooked the first French fries, and refers also to the tradition of frying in Mediterranean cuisine as evidence.^[20][31]

France

Steak frites in Fontainebleau, France

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. The words aiguillettes ("needle-ettes") or allumettes ("matchsticks") are used when the French fries are very small and thin. One enduring origin story holds that French fries were invented by street vendors on the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in 1789, just before the outbreak of the French Revolution.^[32] However, a reference exists in France from 1775 to "a few pieces of fried potato" and to "fried potatoes".^[33]

Eating potatoes for sustenance was promoted in France by Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, but he did not mention fried potatoes in particular. Many Americans attribute the dish to France and offer as evidence a notation by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson: "Pommes de terre frites à cru, en petites tranches" ("Potatoes deep-fried while raw, in small slices") in a manuscript in Thomas Jefferson's hand (circa 1801–1809) and the recipe almost certainly comes from his French chef, Honoré Julien.^[12]
In addition, from 1813^[34] on, recipes for what can be described as "French fries" occur in popular American cookbooks. By the late 1850s, a cookbook was published that used the term French fried potatoes.^[35]
The thick-cut fries are called Pommes Pont-Neuf^[4] or simply pommes frites (about 10 mm); thinner variants are pommes allumettes (matchstick potatoes; about 7 mm), and pommes paille (potato straws; 3–4 mm). (Roughly 0.4, 0.3 and 0.15 inch respectively.) Pommes gaufrettes are waffle fries. A popular dish in France is steak-frites, which is steak accompanied by thin French fries.

Canada

A popular Québécois dish is poutine, such as this one from La Banquise restaurant in Montreal. It is made with French fries, cheese curds and gravy.

The town of Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick, headquarters of McCain Foods, calls itself "the French fry capital of the world" and also hosts a museum about potatoes called "Potato World".^[36] It is also one of the world's largest manufacturers of frozen French fries and other potato specialties.^[37]

Frites are the main ingredient in the Canadian/Québécois dish known (in both Canadian English and French) as poutine; a dish consisting of fried potatoes covered with cheese curds and brown gravy. Poutine has a growing number of variations but is generally considered to have been developed in rural Québec sometime in the 1950s, although precisely where in the province it first appeared is a matter of contention.^[38][39][40] Canada is also responsible for providing 22% of China's French fries.^[41][42]

Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Currywurst and frites, Germany

French fries migrated to the German-speaking countries during the 19th century. In Germany, where they are usually known by the French words pommes frites, or only Pommes or Fritten (derived from the French words but pronounced as German words). They are often served with mayonnaise, and are a popular walking snack offered by Schnellimbiss ("quick bite") kiosks.^[43] Since the advent of Currywurst in the 1950s, a paper tray of sausage (bratwurst or bockwurst) anointed with curry ketchup, laced with additional curry powder and a side of french fries, has become an immensely popular fast food meal.^[44]

United Kingdom and Ireland

Fish and chips

The standard deep-fried cut potatoes in the United Kingdom are called chips, and are cut into pieces between 10 and 15 mm (0.39 and 0.59 in) wide. They are occasionally made from unpeeled potatoes (skins showing). British chips are not the same thing as potato chips (an American term); those are called "crisps" in Britain. In the UK, chips are part of the popular, and now international, fast food dish fish and chips.

The first chips fried in the UK were sold by Mrs. 'Granny' Duce in one of the West Riding towns in 1854.^[45] A blue plaque in Oldham marks the origin of the fish-and-chip shop, and thus the start of the fast food industry in Britain.^[46] In Scotland, chips were first sold in Dundee: "in the 1870s, that glory of British gastronomy – the chip – was first sold by Belgian immigrant Edward De Gernier in the city's Greenmarket".^[47] In Ireland the first chip shop was "opened by Giuseppe Cervi", an Italian immigrant, "who arrived there in the 1880s".^[48] It is estimated that in the UK, 80% of households buy frozen chips each year.^[49]

United States

French fry production with thermostatic temperature control, at a restaurant

Although French fries were a popular dish in most British Commonwealth countries, the "thin style" French fries have been popularized worldwide in large part by the large American fast food chains such as McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's.^[50]
In the United States, the J. R. Simplot Company is credited with successfully commercializing French fries in frozen form during the 1940s. Subsequently, in 1967, Ray Kroc of McDonald's contracted the Simplot company to supply them with frozen fries, replacing fresh-cut potatoes. In 2004, 29% of the United States' potato crop was used to make frozen fries – 90% consumed by the food services sector and 10% by retail.^[51] The United States is also known for supplying China with most of their French fries as 70% of China's French fries are imported.^[52][42]

Pre-made French fries have been available for home cooking since the 1960s, having been pre-fried (or sometimes baked), frozen and placed in a sealed plastic bag.^[53] Some varieties of French fries that appeared later have been battered and breaded, and many fast food chains in the U.S. dust the potatoes with kashi, dextrin, and other flavor coatings for crispier fries with particular tastes.^[54] French fries are one of the most popular dishes in the United States, commonly being served as a side dish to entrees and being seen in fast food restaurants. The average American eats around 30 pounds of French fries a year.^[55][56]

Variants

A child holding tornado fries

French fries come in multiple variations. A partial list, in alphabetical order:

• 
  Carne asada fries – fries covered with carne asada, guacamole, sour cream and cheese.


• 
  Cheese fries (UK – cheesy chips) – fries covered with cheese.


• 
  Chile fries – (not to be confused with chili fries) fries topped with green chile peppers, common in the US state of New Mexico.


• Chili fries – (not to be confused with chile fries) fries covered with chili con carne.


• 
  Chili cheese fries – fries covered with chili and cheese.


• 
  Chorrillana – a Chilean dish consisting of a plate of french fries topped with different types of sliced meat, sausages and other ingredients.


• 
  Crinkle-cut fries – also known as "wavy fries", these are cut in a corrugated, ridged fashion.^[57]


• Curly fries – characterized by their spring-like shape, cut from whole potatoes using a specialized spiral slicer, typically seasoned with onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne powder, similar to cajun fries.^[57]


• 
  Curry chips – fries covered in curry sauce, a popular item served by chip shops in Ireland and Northern England.


• French fry sandwich^[58] – such as the chip butty and the Mitraillette.


• 
  Oven fries – fries that are cooked in the oven as a final step in the preparation (having been coated with oil during preparation at the factory), often sold frozen.


• 
  Potato wedges – Thick-cut fries^[57] with the skin.


• 
  Poutine – a dish consisting of fries topped with cheese curds and light brown gravy and principally associated with the Canadian province of Québec.


• Shoestring fries – thin-cut fries.^[57]


• Steak fries – thick-cut fries.^[57] In France, when served with steak, Steak frites.


• 
  Sweet potato fries – fries made with sweet potatoes instead of traditional white potatoes.


• Tornado fries – spiral-cut potatoes that are placed on a skewer and then deep fried.^[57]


• 
  Waffle fries – lattice-shaped fries^[57] obtained by quarter-turning the potato before each next slide over a grater and deep-frying just once.

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  Chili fries
  

  
  

  
  


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  Chili cheese fries
  

  
  

  
  


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  Crinkle-cut fries
  

  
  

  
  


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  Curly fries
  

  
  

  
  


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  Shoestring fries with blue cheese dressing
  

  
  

  
  


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  Sweet potato fries
  

  
  

  
  

Accompaniments

Fries tend to be served with a variety of accompaniments, such as salt and vinegar (malt, balsamic or white), pepper, Cajun seasoning, grated cheese, melted cheese, mushy peas, heated curry sauce, curry ketchup (mildly spiced mix of the former), hot sauce, relish, mustard, mayonnaise, bearnaise sauce, tartar sauce, chili, tzatziki, feta cheese, garlic sauce, fry sauce, butter, sour cream, ranch dressing, barbecue sauce, gravy, honey, aioli, brown sauce, ketchup, lemon juice, piccalilli, pickled cucumber, pickled gherkins, pickled onions or pickled eggs.^[59]

Health aspects

Fries frying in oil

Oven-baked fries

French fries primarily contain carbohydrates (mostly in the form of starch) and protein from the potato, and fat absorbed during the deep-frying process. Salt, which contains sodium is almost always applied as a surface seasoning. For example, a large serving of French fries at McDonald's in the United States is 154 grams. The 510 calories come from 66 g of carbohydrates, 24 g of fat, 7 g of protein and 350 mg of sodium.^[60]

Experts have criticized French fries for being very unhealthy. According to Jonathan Bonnet, MD, in a TIME magazine article, "fries are nutritionally unrecognizable from a spud" because they "involve frying, salting, and removing one of the healthiest parts of the potato: the skin, where many of the nutrients and fiber are found."^[61] Kristin Kirkpatrick, RD, calls French fries "...an extremely starchy vegetable dipped in a fryer that then loads on the unhealthy fat, and what you have left is a food that has no nutritional redeeming value in it at all."^[61] David Katz, MD states that "French fries are often the super-fatty side dish to a burger—and both are often used as vehicles for things like sugar-laced ketchup and fatty mayo."^[61]

Frying french fries in beef tallow, lard, or other animal fats adds saturated fat to the diet. Replacing animal fats with tropical vegetable oils, such as palm oil, simply substitutes one saturated fat for another. For many years partially hydrogenated vegetable oils were used as a means of avoiding cholesterol and reducing saturated fatty acid content, but in time the trans fat content of these oils was perceived as contributing to cardiovascular disease.^[62] Starting in 2008, many restaurant chains and manufacturers of pre-cooked frozen French fries for home reheating phased out trans fat containing vegetable oils.^[63][64]

French fries contain some of the highest levels of acrylamides of any foodstuff, and experts have raised concerns about the effects of acrylamides on human health.^[65][66] According to the American Cancer Society, it is not clear as of 2013^[update] whether acrylamide consumption affects people's risk of getting cancer.^[65] A meta-analysis indicated that dietary acrylamide is not related to the risk of most common cancers, but could not exclude a modest association for kidney, endometrial or ovarian cancers.^[66] A lower-fat method for producing a French fry-like product is to coat "Frenched" or wedge potatoes in oil and spices/flavoring before baking them. The temperature will be lower compared to deep frying, and which also reduces acrylamide formation.^[67]

Legal issues

In June 2004, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), with the advisement of a federal district judge from Beaumont, Texas, classified batter-coated French fries as a vegetable under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act. This was primarily for trade reasons; French fries do not meet the standard to be listed as a processed food.^[68][69] This classification, referred to as the "French fry rule", was upheld in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit case Fleming Companies, Inc. v. USDA.^[70][71]

In the United States, in 2002, the McDonald's Corporation agreed to donate to Hindus and other groups to settle lawsuits filed against the chain for mislabeling French fries and hash browns as vegetarian because beef extract was added in their production.^[11]

See also

References

Bibliography

Wikimedia Commons has media related to French fries.

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on French Fries

Look up french fries in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• 
  Lingle, Blake (2016). Fries! : An Illustrated Guide to the World's Favorite Food. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 9781616894580.
  


• 
  Tebben, Maryann (2006). "French Fries: France's Culinary Identity from Brillat-Savarin to Barthes (essay)". Convivium Artium. University of Texas at San Antonio. Retrieved 28 December 2009.