Sweet and Sour Oven Fried Potatoes

 

 I love fries. Everybody does. Regular french-fries can get a bit repetitive though. That's why we have good old processed chips with their many amazing flavors. God bless Proctor and Gamble. Then came a day when I was craving both french-fries and Pringles, salt and vinegar precisely. Did I go out and buy some Pringles? No of course not. I chose to day dream about British fish and chips instead. Or maybe I started craving vinegar chips because I was reading a book by a British author, and fish and chips came up. On brand.

I decided to make my own and checked out a couple for oven made fries and learn some food science. I soaked some sliced potatoes in vinegar and water for about 14 hours to increase the crispiness, boiled them for 8 minutes with some salt and sprayed them with some oil. Then I baked them for 15 minutes at 225C. I then drizzled salt, vinegar and honey all over the fries. It tasted like pure genius.

Here's what I discovered. No point soaking in vinegar. The soaking creates a weak blunt vinegary taste that takes away from the sweetness of the potato. If you're boiling, soaking at all is kind of useless. Couldn't get away without adding plain vinegar to top the fries making the soaking pointless. Vinegar also makes the fries acidic and so it blunts the Maillard Reaction, that's what makes fried things go brown.I dont want blond oven fries. I would also get vinegar powder to maintain the crispiness of my fries and increase the sharpness of the vinegar taste. Yes I want to feel like I was slapped.

Next up I'll be making kettle chips, If I can unearth my mandolin. I will also attempt making my own vinegar powder because getting anything interesting in this place is a chore. Chao.