Frozen Fries with 13 Spices
It's video + recipe day!
The road to this recipe was as wild as my curls on a humid summer day.
How it Started: A craving for beef tartare became a deep desire to develop a beef tartare recipe for my channel. I have never not once made beef tartare at home, but it felt like something that was achievable, easy-technique-y, and sort of glamorous. I wanted to put daikon and lots of chives in it.
Where it Went: Lone tartare felt unfinished. It needed something. A martini, maybe? How could I make this a meal? I thought about what I would want to see on the menu at my imaginary tartare restaurant. I would want fries with that. Fries!
Then What Happened: Everyone I work with would get weird and evasive when I brought up the idea of doing beef tartare, with or without the fries.
“What about tartare?” I would say.
“I’m OOO without email access…” they would respond.
The Pivot: Okay fine! I can take a hint. Forget the tartare. Now I was fixated on fries. A fry recipe you could make at home that was a) not annoying and b) actually paid off. Not “whatever” fries. REALLY GOOD FRIES. Thick and crisp on the outside, fluffy and delectable inside. Salty. Golden brown. The perfect amount of fat to gloss your fingertips.
Well. Fries like that are not achievable at home without being incredibly fussy and annoying, and while those recipes are interesting to me from a food science perspective, they are not my style.
How It’s Going: Two words: frozen fries. Most restaurants that serve sicko delicious fries start with frozen fries. (I have a good Shake Shack story about that if you want to hear it!) Therefore, using frozen fries at home is the most cheffy thing you could possibly do. Work smarter, not harder! Newly energized by the idea of optimizing the roasting of said fries to make them the best they could be, I turned next to the seasoning that would make them unique and—well—extreme.
I wanted these to be not just salty, but sour, tangy, spicy, and savory, too. Getting the balance right wasn’t easy. It was assaultive to my palate. It was maddening. It was weird. I had fun.
To recap, I started out at a cute little bistro with sublime tartare and ended up at the French fry equivalent of a monster truck show. Food sure is fun!