Cooking Journal #13

Potato chips

For a time, Lays was selling Sriracha potato chips. It's somewhere between BBQ and SuperHot. I love it. I just bought multiple bags of them. Well, Lays stopped selling them. Unfortunately, now that I know just how good potato chips with sriracha sauce can be, there's no going back! BBQ is not good enough anymore! So I cook my own.

 Regarding potato chip, I can tell you that the thinner you can slice it, the better! It's helpful if you have a slicer, then you can just set it up to the thinnest section. Paper thin is just right!

Frying them is simplicity itself. Just deep fry them until they float. You may even wait until they go slightly brown for extra crispiness.

It's okay if some of the chip "bubbles". It just makes it that extra crunchy!

Make sure to drain the oil with paper towel. Salt to taste, although personally, I never bothered. Serve with sriracha sauce. Delicious!

Cooking Journal #11

French Fries

Last time, it was hashbrown. What do you do different if you want to cook some french fries?

The cutting. And the frying. The cutting is simple. Just cut them long. Instead of doing the second cut vertically, though, I did the second cut horizontally. If you want to keep the skin like I do, make sure to wash it really clean. I know from my trucking days, that they don't wash these potatoes. From the field to truck to processing plant and/or bagging. So clean those potatoes very, very well!

So just fry them. A little note. The first time you fry them, you may not know how hot the oil should be, or how thick you slice them. I always use medium heat, so for me, the heat is fixed. About the only thing I can change is the size of the slice. The outside will be crispy while the inside will be soft. There is a gradual change from crispy to soft. The trick, then, is to find out at what thickness the softness is desired. I find that cutting it to McDonald size yields the best crisp/soft ratio.

The color won't be as good as McDonald's version, but then again, they use beef extract to spruce up presentation.