Martha Stewart's Important Warning To Anyone Making Fries At Home

When the master of the kitchen herself, Martha Stewart, says she has advice for anyone on the quest to make legitimately crispy french fries at home, it's best to listen. In a video on her YouTube channel, she said she never puts all the potatoes into the oil at once, instead insisting that it is better to fry them gradually in small batches. Yes, it might slow the process down a little, but trying to cook a lot of fries in the oil together could make the oil bubble so aggressively that it spills over the edge. And this can lead to a greasy mess on the stove top at best and at worst, some painful burns. Ouch.

Potatoes hold a lot of water and so when they hit hot oil, the water turns to steam which then turns into bubbles, creating that tell-tale sizzle we associate with frying and why hot oil sometimes spits and splatters. But too much of a burst of steam can force the oil to surge and splatter more aggressively. It's a chemical reaction, and it can be a dramatic one in a smaller pot. So by frying the potatoes off gradually, you can keep this reaction under control and allow the oil to settle before adding a new batch. It sounds like basic advice, but it's essential to make at-home deep frying safer and more accessible.

It isn't just the safety element that makes Martha Stewart's advice so good. In reality, fries will also cook better when you fry them off in smaller batches, because throwing a big amount of anything into hot oil will also cause the temperature of the oil to drop. And cooking in oil that isn't hot enough is basically the quickest way to end up with soggy fries that have absorbed the fat, not crispy ones that have been blasted by it. Cooking in small batches therefore avoids two problems in one go. If you've ever worked in a restaurant kitchen, you'll know that they implement this in professional settings too, rarely filling deep friers to the top.

There are, of course, many tricks to achieving the perfect result, like when you season them or even giving french fries a little pickle-y twist by letting them marinate in pickle juice first. However, gradual frying is quite possibly the most important step. By keeping the oil at the right temperature whilst making sure there's no chance of it bubbling over onto your stove, you'll end up with perfectly golden fries, and no disasters, every time.