Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Current Thoughts On Fried Potatoes

It's curious to me how French fries work. It's not so interesting to me anymore that they are actually Belgian in origin. There are other things that have my attention. One is the heated battle to have the best fast fries in fast food. This was an issue at one time, but I can't remember the last time it came up, really.  It used to be held that McDonald's had the best fries, and Burger King made some herculean effort to best them, but these things don't seem so relevant anymore.

Fries can be cut in an awful lot of ways. The most common seems to be shoestring fries, which you'll see at the fastfood places mainly. I guess that's what I favor, if not curly fries. I see them as being the most reliable for flavor, maybe because of where I get them. The others need some sauce or another too much, although I'm content with that as well. You just have to have a favorite, although I guess I'd be better off if I didn't like any.

Steak fries are fine as part of fish and chips. I like tartar sauce and vinegar on them, but they need it, as I said. Really, they're basically OK. The same is true for crinkle-cut fries, which I feel like you see mainly in grocery store freezers. I associate them with poor French frie experiences, but maybe it's because most that I ever have eaten were cooked by me, and baked instead of fried. It's a poor worker who blames his tools, as they say.

About the most exotic cut to me is waffle-style. They have that at Chick-Fil-A, but let's not get to talking about that place. The cut  does not really appeal to me. I prefer a frie to be long and at least relatively thin. I don't care for a broad, flat surface that is not conducive to neat dipping and eating. There's got to be one end with sauce and one end without. I confess that is not always perfect with other cuts, especially if one drizzles a pile of fries with sauce, but I think the others are best.

Of course, all of this is inconsequential, and probably plays right into the hands of the companies I have described. I am loath to provide free advertising and to encourage phony debates about the right way of something that is basically the same no matter what superficial differences there are, but at my heart I am a regular person prone to such faults as not living up to my highest beliefs all the time. There you have it: I'm human.

2 comments:

Beverly said...

Sonny's with mayo....actually I have had 5 Guys a couple of times and they were ok.

Frenchie said...

The memory of fries is better than actually eating them. I loved the French fries served in the late night at the Woodstock Fair...in a paper cone. Hot, greasy, salty. Vinegar to cut the grease. Perfect!

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