French Fries (Chips to the Brits)

My Ghanaian and Laotian friends had never made French Fries themselves which I served last night with classic hamburgers – so I provide the simple recipe.

Potatoes – best made from large thick skinned potatoes, like "Idahoes". 

                 Thin skinned greenish potatoes have too much water in them to
                 become really crispy.

Oil (peanut or sunflower or corn) for frying – do not use olive oil.

Vinegar (white or caramel), ketchup or mayonnaise to accompany the fries

• Peel the potatoes and slice them – I like my chips cut thin fairly small, but other people prefer bigger or chunkier fries.
• If you washed your potatoes, or if the cut chips have been sitting in water to keep them fresh (I sometimes do that if I prepare the potatoes early), then dry them very well in tea towels or paper towels. You don’t want to get water into your oil. 
• Put the oil into a deep frying pan or a large wok. (If you have a special deep frier, of course, use that, but a frying pan works fine.) 
• Heat the oil until it is very hot. Test by putting in one chip to see that it is immediately sizzling. 
•  Add the potatoes and fry until crispy and golden. 
• I do the chips in two or more batches if I have a lot of potatoes to fry. The individual chips should have room to cook evenly in the oil. If you put too many into a pan with too little oil, the chips will come out soggy. 
• Carefully remove the chips from the oil with a spatula and toss in a brown paper bag, or put them into a dish covered with paper towels, to remove the excess oil. 
• Transfer to a serving bowl, salt and serve.

·         As a Canadian, I need vinegar (preferably white, though the Brits like caramel coloured vinegar). Others like ketchup or mayonnaise with their fries.

Note: You can save the oil to reuse once or twice. But the older the oil, the more water it collects from the potatoes that you fried in it and the longer it takes for the chips to become crispy.