McDonald's style French Fries

Here is a classic recipe of everyone's favourite "French Fries" in McDonald's style. There are multiple variants of French fries recipes exist. Each variant have its own signature taste and mainly texture.

A typical French fries should have a crispy outer later and softer inner central core. If the fry is fully crisp inside as well as outside it is not perfect French fries. And this sets apart a variation in texture of a French Fry vs. Potato wedges.

And a case like McDonald's French fries, it has a taste and texture. This is mainly due to the selection of Potatoes McDonald's use as well as the process it involves to make end product.

However he is our recipe which shows you how to make McDonald's style French Fries. Kindly follow the procedure and the instructions, and you can also get the great authentic taste of McDonald's style French Fries at home.

Selection of Potatoes:

Select farm fresh long potatoes as shown below. You cannot have inconsistent sizes of cut french fries pieces. This will ruin the consistency of the final product.

Remove the skin:

Wash the potatoes thoroughly, and peel the skin of raw potatoes as shown. During the process place these in a bowl full of water so that it won't tarnish.

Cut the potatoes:
Cut the potatoes with a French Fries cutter. You can choose anything such as heavy-duty ones or the one which we used. The final objective is to cut in uniform consistent french fries form pieces.

Tip: Never cut manually with a knife. If the pieces are not consistent you will not get a uniform cooked product. So kindly use only a french fries cutter.

Tip: Sometimes you may get French Fries cutter with multiple blade set. Please choose the one which can make French Fries of the size you get in McDonald's. The cut pieces may be slightly larger, but eventually when you finish the french fries, it will reduce in size.

For example, here is a potato cut via our French fries cutter.

Wash the cut Potatoes:
Collect it into a large bowl with lots of water as shown. As you can see the excess starch is dissolved in water. And this makes the water murkier as you can see the below picture.

So kindly do a through wash for 2-3 times, till the water gets clear as shown. Optionally you can add some salt and wash too.

Explore my Ethnic YouTube Channel: Sarees are my passion:

IMPORTANT: Quality Check:
Kindly remove and discard any small strips of inconsistent bits and pieces as shown. This will ruin your final outcome, as these pieces will get over-fried and spoil your French Fries.

You may have noticed McDonald's always provides you long consistent yummy French Fries. So lets also put our best effort to make something similar.

IMPORTANT: Blanching the potatoes:
Now is the next important step. It is very important to blanch the cut potatoes.

Blanching is a process where you are cooking something in hot-water almost just the way you fry something in oil. And in this case instead hot oil, you use hot-water (typically boiling water) as a medium. So please remember: blanching is not boiling the food !!

To blanch the same heat the water in a large pan. Once the water starts boiling. Add the potato pieces. This will start cooling the water and may stop water-boiling due to the addition of the cold potato pieces. After sometime the water will start boiling again. Now leave it for couple of minutes, till the potato pieces gets translucent. At this stage it should look bit cooked, but not fully enough.

This is the stage immediately you need to remove the bowl from the stove and  strain it with a pasta strainer or some colander. Wash this with running cold water 2-3 times, till it completely gets cold. This will instantly stop potato pieces cooking over.

NOTE: If the blanching, straining and washing is not done correct, this may under-cook it or may over cook it. Over-cooked potato pieces may have tendency to become too soft and fragile. And under-cooked potato pieces will not be translucent enough. This may result in bad taste and texture of the final product.

Now you can just make it pat dry by spreading it on a turkey towel.

TIP: Please avoid using paper, since it may have a tendency to stick to the potato pieces and may tear. We did this mistake. And learnt a lesson. So we suggest you to use a piece of cotton cloth or a towel as shown.

1st Stage Frying:
Now its time to fry the potatoes in vegetable oil. Once the oil is hot, fry the same batch by batch for just 1 to 1.5 minutes exactly per-batch as shown.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is just a 1st stage frying. So NEVER fry more than the prescribed time.

Collect the 1st Stage Fried, Frech Fries in a large pan as shown.

Here are our French Fries all the batches done and collected in a large stainless steel pan.

IMPORTANT TIP: Never take the fried potato pieces on to a tissue paper or some kind of strainer. Let the oil be there, since it will help you in the next stage.

Freeze the French Fries:
Freeze the french fries in a deep freezer for 6-8+ hours. Infact once you freeze them, anytime on demand you can fry and consume the French fries just the same way McDonald's does for you in the shop. McDonald's prepare the fries in a large facility factory pack the frozen fries and ship across to their outlets. And on demand the McDonald's outlet will fry these and serve to their customers.

Here are our French fries kept in freezer and partially frozen. We took this pic after 3 hours.

Here are our fries frozen overnight in the freezer. The oil coated fries will allow them not to stick with each other much.

2nd stage (Final Stage) Frying the French Fries:
Whenever you need the French fries, you can directly grab some frozen fries (as prepared before), and deep fry it in oil. The frying process per-batch may take somewhere around 12-16 minutes.

Fry till it reaches golden brown in colour as shown. When you stir the same, you can feel its already crisp outside.

Strain the fried fries on a paper towel as shown.

Season with Salt and spices (such as Paprika) of your choice and yummy delicious home made French fries is ready to be served.

When I had fries at Chilli's and other restaurants, they do serve a bit wider fries and sometimes with skin on it. This are great variant of French Fries which suits for bear and other drinks. But the McDonald's fries one can immediately notice that their fries are made from peeled potatoes. And the size (the width) of the fries is bit small. This is great to eat the fries as it is or with coke.


I hope you are inspired and enjoyed this wonderful recipe, please do post your queries, comments and suggestions. If you got any secret tips and suggestions please do share with us.