Oven Fries Hot and Crisp
So I made some ribs tonight for dinner. I’ll save the story for another day. Let’s just say low and slow for hours on end. I started cooking after my 2 o’clock meeting. I just finished cleaning up. Yeah. Low and slow for hours on end.
But as the title indicates, I want to talk about the side of fries I made with the ribs. I wasn’t going to deep fry them. I don’t want the mess. So I was going to do them in the oven.
“But the ribs!”
Yeah. What to do. What to do?
I had two russet potatoes. I cut them into fries, threw them in a water bath to remove starch for about 30 minutes, dried them, and spread them out on towel to dry out. Tossed them with some vegetable oil and salt before spreading out again on a pizza pan — that’s the largest pan after my half sheet which at that moment was being used for the ribs.
I planned to “par-boil” the fries before upping the heat in the oven after the ribs were done. So into the oven at the low temperature while the ribs were going. This was close to when the ribs were done — about 30 minutes.
When I pulled the ribs out and covered with tin foil, I upped the temperature in the oven to 450 F, flipped the fries around, and slid them back in for 20 minutes. They didn’t look too great before they went back in. Perhaps I was wrong on this “par-boil” method, and that they’ll turn out soggy.
But after the first 20 minutes they were developing a good color and were slightly crisp. I planned for another 20 minutes, but pulled them out after 10 because they were nicely brown. Crisp. And a bit over done tending towards burnt.
I think they were dried out too much in the “par-boil” method. They were crisp but the inner wasn’t nice and soft. It was missing.
Overall, it was a great dinner, which took too long to get. It shouldn’t be done on a Wednesday, but on a lazy Sunday.
Still it was good.
