OK, so our oven is on the blink. But the stovetop works and the microwave works. Anyone have a way to cook the french fries and have them turn out all right? These are actually McCain’s Smiley Fries.
You do know you can fry them.
The name french fries kind of gives it away, french is to cut into strips and fries comes from the process of cooking them in oil. I would wag that if you read the instructions in the bag they will give frying instructions.
You can fry them on the stovetop. You just need a frying pan and lots of oil - a couple of inches worth. Heat up the oil, then drop the fries into the oil in small batches. Fry until golden brown.
Prior to doing that (assuming they’re frozen) - you might want to pop them into the microwave and bring them up to room temperature or a little hotter. It will make your frying easier.
The Doctor
You can cook them in a fry pan w/ a quarter inch of oil, get the oil hot first, if they’re frozen be careful of splatter whe you put the fries in. The microwave, not so good. Why not get a toaster oven, they’re pretty cheap, I bought one a few months ago, It was less than thirty bucks. The fries are a lot healthier if you bake them, less oil.
:smack:
As kanicbird noted.
Also, I came back to give you finishing instructions. When you take the fries out of the hot oil (generally they will turn golden brown and float when they’re ready) - you need to be ready to put them somewhere.
So get a plate and cover it with a couple of sheets of paper towels. Then lay the fries there so the oil can drain off. Salt to taste - you can also pepper them or put other seasonings (like Lawry’s) on them. I like to put another paper towel on top of them so they stay hot. You can then dump the next batch on top of that paper towel and repeat.
When you’re finished with the oil - don’t pour it down your drain. Let it cool off and dump it outside somewhere.
The Doctor
There should be instructions for frying them on the stove on the side of the bag.
They’re much tastier that way, although VERY bad for you.
Before I got a dedicated fryer, I would use a 5 quart dutch oven filled about 1/2 with vegetable oil. With a deep pot, you get less splatter on the stove (less, not none), plus the larger volume of oil over a fry pan lets you cook more at a time. You still want to cook in batches, though, and let the oil get back to temperature between batches.
When done with the oil, let cool, then strain it with a few layers of cheesecloth and store it. I use old pasta jars. I put the cheesecloth in a funnel and pour. You can then reuse the oil for frying. You should be able to get 3-4 uses out of it, as long as you don’t let it smoke (get too hot).
OK enough opinions here, what do you think this is IMHO or something 
Some people think that the extra oil is bad for you, others think that you can chose oils that enhance the nutrition of the product - making it better for you.
Well, frying stuff in oil usually adds more fat than baking it in the oven.
Moved from IMHO to CS.
Guin is, of course, always right.
You can cook French fries in healthy olive oil, or canola, or sesame.
They will be the soggiest, nastiest most vile things you ever ate.
Use some cheap oil with a high temperature. I wouldn’t go so far as to use lard, but I believe a burger chain famous for its fries did.
Use the cheapest vegetable oil. You can get it really hot and it makes for excellent fries or hashbrowns.
In my experience, thawing them first gets water into the oil and it splatters, showering you and your associates with hot oil. Not a pleasant experience.
You could use peanut oil, which I think is supposed to be healthier. It adds a rather nutty (duh) flavor, which I like. I don’t know if everyone else would, though.
Do you really have to fry them in lots of oil? They’re already fried, right? So I’d think all they really need is heat. I’d imagine minimal oil would be necessary.
You need to be able to get 'em all the way under. 
I use a small pot so I can not use up a lot of my valuable cheap oil but still get it to cover them well.
PS
For the real connoisseur (with or without a spell checker) throw away the first batch.
Somthing magical (well, chemical) happens to the oil as it cooks the first ones. (We’re talking real potatoes here, where you peel and cut them-remember “nothing that is food comes in a box” from anohter thread?) They stop being limp and pale and become golden brown and crunchy. Yum. YMMV.
Nah, if you are doing them from scratch, you want to double fry them. First at a lower temp(~325), then at a higher temp (~375-385). The first fry cooks the potatoes, the second fry browns them.
If you fry correctly (oil above 375, below 390), the fries will absorb very little oil. Don’t believe me? Measure your oil both before and after frying. Canola oil is fine…hell, it is near perfect. Very, very little added flavor. Olive oil and sesame oil, IMO, are too flavorful for fries. Soggy fries come from either having your oil at too low a temperature, or from overcrowding a pot (which has the effect of dropping the oil to too low a termperature).
Definitely the best method for making chips/fries. It also means you can prepare and pre-cook your chips/fries hours in advance and when you need them just drop em in for the second high-temp frying.
The best Fish & Chip shops use beef dripping to fry their chips.
“But they’ll be soggy…won’t they?”
-Gratuitous commercial television reference.
There also something – don’t know what, but something – about taking them from the oil with a slotted spoon and putting them right into a brown kraft paper lunch bag. Add salt, fold the top over, shake well, then dump the fries out onto a (paper) plate and eat. If you want to feel like you’re being extra diligent about draining extra fat, you can double up on the lunch bags. When we were kids my parents used to do this with shoestring potatoes all the time. Faaaaaaaaaaaabulous.
That sounds like it would work well.
I drain them on a rack over newspaper (or paper towels), rather than setting them right on the towels. This keeps one side from sitting directly on the oily towels, which promotes sogginess (especially for the early batches which sit the longest).