Everyone loves French fries. It's impossible to find anyone who doesn't appreciate the deliciousness of these potato sticks cooked in boiling oil, incredibly crunchy and served with dozens of sauces and condiments: it's no coincidence that, around the world, they exist in so many different and delicious variations.
French fries have just one drawback: they're not exactly the healthiest meal and they contain a significant amount of fat. Luckily, there are now alternatives that allow you to make "fried" fries without actually frying them. And if you think they'll never get as crispy as frying, prepare to think again: the methods we suggest don't involve frying but are guaranteed to be crispy (and keep you slim).
1. Use Glucose Powder
Molecular gastronomy— that branch of cooking that, like a true science, uses foams, additives, chemical reactions, and gelatins to prepare dishes—has developed an innovative solution for achieving light, oil-free frying. It's called glucose powder and is a natural sugar extracted from grapes, perfect for frying sweet foods, but also savory ones if you use a simple trick to eliminate the sweet taste of cooking fat. Glucose creates a light coating around fried foods, making them crispier. It has a very high heat conductivity, allowing for faster frying and allowing for fat-free frying, an ideal advantage for enjoying your French fries without too many regrets.
2. Use Egg Whites
Egg white, the gelatinous white part of eggs, is a highly nutritious ingredient and extremely versatile in the kitchen: you can use it in countless sweet and savory recipes, but perhaps you didn't know that it can also be used to make French fries. Egg whites have binding properties that allow them to form a natural coating that crystallizes during cooking, giving the fries a similar appearance and crispiness to fried potatoes. To try this technique, cut the potatoes into sticks, season them with your favorite spice mix, and dip them in pre-beaten egg whites until frothy. Make sure each potato stick is well coated, arrange everything on a lined baking sheet, and bake at 392°F/200°C for about 25-30 minutes, turning them halfway through.
3. Use the Air Fryer
If you love cooking without oil, you can't live without an air fryer, one of the most useful new appliances to have at home. Its cooking technique is perfect for crispy, non-fried fries: after all, the air fryer was designed by Dutch inventor Fred van der Weij precisely because he was looking for a way to make his beloved fries crispier without frying them. The trick before cooking them? Let them rest for 10-15 minutes in a bowl of water before cooking, because this will remove all the starch, allowing for perfect cooking. The latest generation air fryers even have a "potato" function; simply place them in the basket and start the program (or set the temperature to around 375°F/190ºC) and you'll have perfectly crispy, light fries.
4. Bake the French Fries in The Oven
The last tip for crispy fries without frying is perhaps the most obvious: bake your potatoes in the oven. Getting them crispy is possible and very easy; you'll just need to let them soak in water, as is the case with air frying, because the loss of starch will allow baking in the oven to make them crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. If you're making your own potatoes at home and not using frozen ones, opt for yellow-fleshed potatoes, which are firmer and less floury.
5. When to Add Salt
Salt is generally added to French fries only at the end: both to prevent them from absorbing too much moisture and because it sticks better to hot fries. On baked potatoes, however, it should be added both beforehand and with a final pinch to finish, as this is a different cooking method. In this case, if your goal is to achieve a similar effect to French fries, we recommend adding it at the end, especially given the very thin cut of the fries (the salt, in this case, doesn't need time to penetrate the food).
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