Thursday, July 3, 2008

Dirty Word

In my mother's food lexicon, there was one dirty word.

Frying.

She never fried anything that I can recall, not even an egg. She might saute' something in butter, but fry in hot oil? No, indeed! She saw frying as the royal road to a fat family, an idea that horrified her. As a result, we never had potato chips or fried chicken or any of those fatty foods while she was the cook.

So, when I decided to exercise my new crinkle cutter, a garage sale bargain given scouted out by cousin J-Yah, I did so with a certain amount of trepidation and guilt.
Trepidation because this is a skill I didn't learn at my mother's elbow and guilt because, you know, she's watching from heaven.

Turns out, it's pretty easy. I used a heavy iron skillet and about half an inch of canola oil, set it over a medium-high burner and, when it was hot enough to make a scrap of potato sizzle, I put in my crinkle-cut red potato pieces and let 'er rip.

I was hoping to approximate the fries we so enjoyed in Belgium so I fried them twice, once to soften the potatoes and, after cooling them, once again to crisp the outside. As they came out of the second frying, I salted them lightly and served them with - what else? - burgers. They weren't Belgian but they were darn good, nicely crispy and browned.

Frying may be a naughty word but, damn, it's good!

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7 Comments:

Blogger Dagny said...

I have never had much luck with fries. A coworker recently told me that the trick was to fry them twice. Now I'm inspired to give it another try.

Thursday, July 03, 2008  
Blogger cookiecrumb said...

I thought the purpose of the second fry was to jack up the temp a little for the browning. Which you probably did.
I'm almost over my fear of frying!

Thursday, July 03, 2008  
Blogger Chilebrown said...

Fried Bacon!

Thursday, July 03, 2008  
Blogger Kitt said...

Nice fries! What does a crinkle cutter look like?

Friday, July 04, 2008  
Blogger Ms Brown Mouse said...

I don't fear frying so much as hate cleaning up the mess after frying (and the smell). We tend to get our fry-fixes from kitchens not our own. Not often but often enough ;)

Friday, July 04, 2008  
Blogger Ms Brown Mouse said...

I did try oven chips (fries) once - not a spectacular success

Friday, July 04, 2008  
Blogger Zoomie said...

Dagny, if you know a good place to just buy them, it's easier!

Cookiecrumb, maybe that's what I should have done! I used the same heat after letting them cool.

Chilebrown, well, yeah, she did fry bacon occasionally...

Kitt, hard to describe - sort of like a cleaver but with the handle on the top and a wavy-edged blade. Maybe I'll post a picture one of these days...

Morgan, mostly I think you have the right idea - not something I'd do all the time (especially with Mom watching!).

Morgan, I've tried those but, again, not as good as other people's kitchens~

Monday, July 07, 2008  

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