Recipe talk:Steak and triple chips

A couple of tips for frying.

• 325-350 F is a good start temp, the oil should NOT be smoking
• avoid water in the oil, this is bad , and will degrade the oil, as well as spatter
• wet potato can make your oil foam up as the water is forced out, add chips in small lots or use a deeper pan
• baking soda will put out a grease fire
• for golden fries from any potato, add sugar to the water used to blanch them. The sugar will coat the potato and caramelize in the fryer. Instant golden fries which taste slightly sweet.

Hamster (talk) 20:08, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Sugar instead of salt sounds fairly interesting, IIRC, that's what McDonalds do when sugary potatoes are out of season. ^{d hominem} 20:10, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Needs pint of real beer to the side - David Gerard (talk) 20:18, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

In all seriousness, that was totally worth the effort. In my next attempt I might use Hamster's suggestion of pre-sugaring the chips and I'll definitely have to heat the pan a notch more for the steak (this is fucking difficult with electric hobs) as it wasn't quite up to the texture you'd expect in that sort of time. Also, I think I lost out some of the Thai seven-spice I was using on the steak, there was a bit of heat, but not much flavour but I am agreeing with Heston Blumenthal that if you do steak sous vide you don't need a sauce with it. ^{d hominem} 22:27, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Using sugar on the potatoes doesn't seem to work - they don't absorb the sugar at all. According to a few other sites I've visited on the subject, I think it was Heston again, there is no effective way to compensate for the wrong kind of potato as it's not just sugar content but the entire structure of the starch inside them that changes with type. Chips need to be a fluffier, sugary kind as opposed to more "hard" ones (I forget the proper terminology) like New Potatoes or baking potatoes. ^{d hominem} 15:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)