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No guilt recipe for healthy french fries cooked on the stovetop using a traditional fat and blanching of the potatoes to minimize starchy toxins. No fryer necessary!
Love french fries? Who doesn’t? The video and recipe below show you a way to make healthy french fries at home the traditional way.
By using this method, you can enjoy them and not feel like your arteries are clogging with each bite like you would if you ate them in a restaurant!
Just be aware that french fries are made from potatoes, which are nightshade vegetables. Some folks with digestive issues can sometimes be sensitive to this category of vegetables.
The great news is that old-fashioned burger joints are starting to pop up all over that are making french fries with healthy fat too!
By the way, if you take the time to make healthy french fries, be sure to use homemade fermented ketchup as the condiment.
Blanch the Potatoes First
One step that nearly everyone omits when making french fries at home is to blanch the potatoes before cooking them.
This greatly reduces the amount of carcinogenic acrylamide that forms during frying.
Anytime starch is cooked, fried, broiled or baked, this chemical forms. This is the case even when a healthy fat is used.
Thus, it is important to take the necessary steps to eliminate it from your food as much as possible.
Below is a picture of heirloom purple potato french fries that I cooked up recently.
Best Fat for Frying
Cooking healthy french fries is all about selecting the right fat for frying.
Tallow, sometimes called beef suet, is the absolute best fat for making french fries!
There really isn’t another traditional fat that comes close to the crispiness and flavor of tallow-cooked french fries in my experience.
You can either render tallow (suet) at home or buy it to make the french fries recipe below. You will typically receive chunks of tallow when you split a cow with a friend from a local pastured beef farm.
If you wish to buy, this brand and this brand of tallow are both excellent.
No Guilt Stovetop French Fries Recipe
No guilt recipe for french fries cooked on the stovetop using a healthy fat for frying. Includes traditional scalding of the potatoes first to minimize the formation of acrylamides.
Ingredients
- 2 medium potatoes preferably organic
- 1/4 – 1/2 cup tallow
- filtered water
- sea salt
- ketchup optional
Instructions
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Thoroughly clean and chop potatoes into finger size pieces. Leave the skin on.
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Place cut potatoes in a pot and add filtered water to cover.
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Place uncovered pot on the stovetop and turn on the heat to medium-high. As the water begins to simmer, lower the heat to keep the water just barely simmering.
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Remove the pot from the heat after 10 minutes, and drain the water.
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Dry the potato pieces thoroughly.
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Add tallow to a small fry pan and turn on the heat medium-low. Make sure the tallow is about 1/2 to 1 inch in depth in the pan.
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Add a handful of blanched french fries to the hot oil and let cook for 3-5 minutes or until golden brown.
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Remove the cooked french fries with a stainless steel slotted spoon and place on a plate covered with a paper towel. Sprinkle on sea salt while they are still hot.
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Top up the oil in the pan so that it is the proper depth if necessary and then repeat steps 7-8 until all the blanched french fries are cooked and lightly salted.
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Serve immediately.
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Refrigerate any leftovers after coming to room temperature.
Recipe Video
Hello, so should we follow this method whenever we cook potatoes, regardless the method of cooking them?
Not necessarily. Boiling potatoes does not produce any acrylamides.
I may give it a try since it seems as guilt free as it gets!
I was wondering if you can save the oil, refrigerate it and reuse it next time when you fry potatoes. That way you can actually use a bigger pan to fry more potatoes at a time so fry all potatoes in one batch and then refrigerate the oil till next time.
thanks for all the education on nutrition!
Hello, does it make a difference what kind of potato you use ( like it does with mashed potatoes)?
I don’t believe it matters much on a nutrient level. Use whichever ones you prefer. We love to use Yukon Gold or red potatoes in our home. Sometimes, if available, we use purple potatoes too!
Thank you so much for this recipe…going to try this tonightβ€οΈ…Want to let you know about a typo hun…”health medium-low.” I think it is suppose to read heat medium-Low…Right?
I just love, love, love these!!! I made them for the first time tonite with the tallow I rendered a few weeks ago. I was afraid they might impart a bit of “beefy” scent, but there was absolutely none & the taste was so clean! I so appreciate all the teaching you do Sarah. I am learning so much!!! From one healthy home economist to another:)