Attention Prince George restaurants, diners and pubs, this is an important safety announcement. Poorly-cooked French fries are a danger to your success.
A perfect, or even almost perfect French fry, is a beautiful thing: salty, crunchy and not yet not burn-your-mouth hot. A terrible French fry is sacrilegious to the wonder that is the potato.
People who know me, know that my love affair with the potato is a beauty to behold. I love all things potato with one exception: scalloped potatoes are a horrific monstrosity with its milky sauce, slimy onions and wilty, sliced potatoes.
Other than a baked potato, my favourite side is French fries.Except, all of the French fries that I have had in a restaurant or pub over the last three months have been completely disappointing.
Recently, my husband and I shared a plate of poutine (don't judge us, it was a long week) but to our utter dismay, the fries were completely uncooked in the middle and limp to the touch.
Poutine, proper poutine, needs crispy fries otherwise you're just eating flaccid potato strips with stringy cheese and tepid gravy. Mediocre poutine can be saved if only the fries are cooked.
This was the only time we have encountered poor potato fries in this town.Sadly, you are more likely to get a bad fry than a crispy one. To that end, I am optimistically giving instructions on how to prepare a properly cooked fry that I hope a few places in town will read and consider.
First, properly cut the potato.A good fry is cut from a potato lengthwise and is half the width of an adult finger. A good fry is not three inches wide. A good fry is not "home fries" which is just chopped potato that's been fried in oil on a flattop grill. That's not a French fry - that's a potato. A good fry is also not an odd cross-hatched soggy potato mess that wilts into your plate like it hates life.
After you have properly cut the potato, (or opened the bag of frozen fries, because potatoes are expensive?), you need to do a very important step.
Pay attention now - you need to cook the fries.
I am sure you are saying, "All fries are cooked, Megan, what are you talking about?"
Well, friends, I am talking about the fact that this one small step seems to have been forgotten about by so many eating establishments in town. I have munched into many uncooked fries and the experience does not improve with repetition.
Before you submerge your little fries in boiling oil, you will need to cook the fries in some way.If frozen, you can boil them in salted water, you can bake them first, you can broil the sweet little things - in fact, cook them any way you choose but for the love of all things salted, do not serve me raw potato covered in oil. If it feels like I am biting into freeze-dried sawdust, something has gone horribly wrong.
After the fry is cooked, then deep-fried for optimal crispiness (please, I am begging you, turn up the temperature of the oil so it doesn't feel like the fry is having a hot oil treatment), you should drain the excess fat, lightly salt the fries and serve it to me in a non-irritating container.
I would prefer a plate but if that is too much and you must serve fries in a plastic basket (I can't for the life of me think why a plastic basket is used in a restaurant but who am I?), please make sure the plastic basket is flat-bottomed, not tippy and that the little paper covering the basket, actually covers the basket.
The final touch for a good fry is an interesting dip plus the standard ketchup. Again, if you are going to give me interesting dips for my fries, please also bring ketchup. I don't want to ask for a dip; I want it to be served with my fries.Most importantly, I want more than a teaspoon of dip. Everyone does - it's not just me.
This is not just a Prince George problem either; I have eaten terrible fries all across our fair province and throughout most of Alberta as well.
By working together and standing up for our rights as Canadian citizens, no poutine shall be ruined by undercooked fries, ever again.
