Fries” and “Hot chips” redirect here. French fries are served hot, either soft or crispy, and are generally eaten as part of lunch or dinner or by themselves as a snack, and belgian waffle dough commonly appear on the menus of diners, fast food restaurants, pubs, and bars.

The standard method for cooking french fries is deep frying, which submerges them in hot fat, nowadays most commonly oil. Vacuum fryers produce potato chips with lower oil content, while maintaining their colour and texture. They may then be fried in one or two stages. Chefs generally agree that the two-bath technique produces better results.

This step can be done in advance. They are then placed in a colander or on a cloth to drain, then served. Since the 1960s, most french fries in the US have been produced from frozen Russet potatoes which have been blanched or at least air-dried industrially. French fries are fried in a two-step process: the first time is to cook the starch throughout the entire cut at low heat, and the second time is to create the golden crispy exterior of the fry at a higher temperature. This is necessary because if the potato cuts are only fried once, the temperature would either be too hot, causing only the exterior to be cooked and not the inside, or not hot enough where the entire fry is cooked, but its crispy exterior will not develop.

The starch granules are able to retain the water and expand due to gelatinisation. The water and heat break the glycosidic linkages between amylopectin and amylose strands, allowing a new gel matrix to form via hydrogen bonds which aid in water retention. In the United States and most of Canada, the term french fries, sometimes capitalised as French fries, or shortened to fries, refers to all dishes of fried elongated pieces of potatoes. Variants in shape and size may have names such as curly fries, shoestring fries, etc. Thomas Jefferson had “potatoes served in the French manner” at a White House dinner in 1802.