do I need lard to make good chips?
 

So I'm wondering if an air fryer would be a good purchase. I love my chips but wonder if I'd be better of sticking to lard or at the very least - vegetable oil.

Have you not read the air fryer thread? Yes, you can make excellent chips with just a little olive oil. Just ignore the instructions from the manufacturer. Can't remember exactly how UK1 does it but I boil rinsed and chipped potatoes for 10 minutes, drain and allow to cool and dry (doesn't have to be as dry as when using lard, as UK1 explains, water on the surface is what draws the oil in and there's not that much oil to draw in). Brush olive oil on the chips, let them cook at 160C for ten minutes, take them out, let them cool while I do another batch, then crank up to 200C, might brush some more olive oil on then cook for at least another 10 minutes.

Or I might toss chipped sweet potatoes (the white flesh purple skinned kind) in some olive oil and bung them in directly. 10 minutes at 200C and they are done to a tee. Or chop squash, dress in a little olive oil with crushed/grated garlic, salt and pepper and throw those in for 10 minutes at 200C. You can roast/fry daikon in the same way.

http://www.coalshed-restaurant.co.uk...oct-2014-6.pdf

I ate here recently.
Their beef dripping chips were superb.
I'm sure air-fryers are fine but I can't believe they make chips as good as the way God intended.

I have a professional Lincat double fryer in the garage that we use to use for our weekly fish and chips. I have reasonably high standards :D

To be absolutely honest the McCain chips are so good, i no longer bother. preparing them myself. I do however do roast potatos in them by parboiling and covering them in olive oil, and airfrying.

The McCains French Fries are identical to MacDonalds Fries and taste like they have just been fried and put under the lamp in the strainer for a few moments. You cannot tell they are not fried.

The art when using the air fryer is to pretty much finish the rest of the meal and hold and do the fries. Time the meal around the fries as a minute each way is either soft or too crisp.

Before you go through any palaver I suggest you try an Airfryer. I have two Phillips in our main home and one in our beach home and they are used every day.

Good luck.

EDITED: If you look back through "eating today" thread - all my pictures showing chips are McCains via the Philips Airfryer. They are of course also very much more healthy .... We also use some fatter McCains Home chips when we fancy a change and keep a couple of bags of each in the freezer.

I've tried the McCain chips (and a couple of other brands) as uk1 had recommended them but do not bother anymore, McDonalds Fries are not what I am seeking to replicate. My husband was not impressed by the shortcut either.
If I want to make chips in a hurry we'd rather have those white fleshed purple skinned sweet potatoes.

Baby new potatoes are easy to do also, or you can approximate a tapas classic (papas arruga's) by par boiling small potatoes in water with an excessive amount of salt in it and then air frying until the skins wrinkle (name in Spanish is wrinkled potatoes). Aim is to cook the potatoes with a crust of salt on the skins.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canar...inkly_potatoes
No oil used at all for this method.

^^^^^

Add In-N-Out fries to that as well.:)

As important as your chip preperation for your husband is to me I was offering my view on the OP's specific question about airfryers and chips.

I think i'm gonna skip the air fryer - I think I need a rice cooker first.

You certainly need a Zoji first! :D

On the airfryer plus side, I under-estimated how much I'd use one. They take a load off my main cooker and find myself using them for anything from sausages, to pasties, to chips, to roast potatoes, to small joints of lamb .....it goes on. They are wonderful small convection ovens.

Buy both!

:)

I use a rice cooker and an Air fryer daily. Rice cooker is more important.
Good call.

I saw you banging on about the Zoji and thought I'd look into it. There's no chuffing way I'm spending that much money on a rice cooker.

I understand that. It is rational. If however you have the cash, it seems incapable of making anything other than perfect rice.

:)

If you can get to SeeWoo on Lisle Street (Chinatown), they have a Sanyo ECJ-FS50 there for about £75. It's in the basement.

We've been cooking with ours for over 5 years. Makes Japanese rice beautifully, slow cooks and steams.
I've used higher end rice cookers (you should see the one my father-in-law in Japan owns) and, yes, they are a little better. But not enough for me to fork out on one.

On the basis that I do boil in the bag, I am sure even a cheapie will be a step up!

The Sanyo definitely punches above its weight. It's not like getting a rice cooker from Argos (awful, waste of time and money)

It will. And so will being a better cook and using a pan. :);)

:p

I use two bags for portion control.:p

Someone, living in London with as much cash and leisure time as you should be spending less cash at Wetherspoons and picking bags of rice on your way back home and buying yourself an airfryer and a zoji.

Get a grip.

:D

Excuse me - but I usually hold my nose while walking past Wetherspoons.

:p

No idea what an air fryer is.... I make chips the traditional way (which I assume is not with an 'air fryer'... and I'm not demonizing an air fryer, could be awesome). I always use peanut oil. 320 degrees F until blonde color. Drain, let cool, then 375F until finished. Malt vinegar and plenty of salt. Excellent.

Hi,

Airfryers have the qualities of a really good convection (not forced air) oven but is smaller, more controllable - circulates around all of the product - and you can "shake" it.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...L._SL1500_.jpg


I use to do much the same except that I would blanche in boiling water until soft and then refrigerate and then double fry as you. If done correctly this is a perfect approach although some will debate their preference for sunflower or peanut ie whether it is neutrality or peanut flavour.

The airfryer approach I posted a long time ago from fresh allows you to use olive oil - something you cannot do with the traditional deep fry method because of the low flash point of olive oil. However this method allows the taste and caramelising of deep fry but give the flavour of your best olive oil. The only real compromise with this approach isn't the flavour but the shape of chip. It's better not to cut them long but to cut them into segments so they don't break when you shake! Shaking is a real advantage of airfrying compared to using a traditional oven.

The OP has confused me a little as he was someone seeming to wish to take trouble and achieve thr best result but morphed into a boil in the bag rice person ..... so it's difficult to focus and help!

There are cerain type of chips and I guess situations where to me the airfryer for chips is a perfectly acceptable and undetectable solution. Life is after all about acceptable compromises ie results v trouble. Getting 95% or more of what you are happy with for example.

Many of the McCain oven chip products when air-fried taste exactly like deep fried restaurant chips as the air-fryer does a perfect job with premium oven chips compared with using a traditional oven, which I find unacceptable. They crisp without drying and are moist and fluffy inside. The first time I tried the airfryer I was confused by it because I really couldn't tell the difference between those and deep fried whereas oven chip cooked in an oven have never been acceptable to me.

Most people cooking chips the traditional way will have good and bad chip days and then you have the fryer to keep clean and store and the oil to maintain. The majority of people expressing an opinion about the airfryer approach often do not appear to have tried it but are instead starting from a point of presuming it cannot be as good because perhaps they have tried oven chips cooked by another method or a different brand of fryer as these vary and have different results as well. I'm an experimenter, hence my conclusion.

My olive oil potatoes are a different thing to chips really ... more small roasties.

:)

USA_flyer, to put some of the comments into perspective, remember that they come from someone whose approach to cheese is the "boil in the bag" equivalent.
eg. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/dinin...se-slices.html
I'll paraphrase:
"It is interesting to see how your post about boil in the bag rice elicits such a variable range of attitudes ...........Some of it quite close-minded and snobbish" :eek:

Your own responses and attitude have been quite magnificent. My respects!

Only another week or two now and my Aga will be on for the winter.
Nothing beats cooking on an Aga.

Snob! :D


This is the corner of the kitchen with my side-Aga-range for fast rather than slow cooking .... with a picture of the much hated McCains Home Chips and a chicken ciabatta I have rather shamedly eaten this lunch time. Those chips looked alright and tatsed alright to wifey and me ....... .... but what do I know ... I yearn for round cheese for my burgers .....:eek: :D :p

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...F535B9706D.jpg

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...9D491D7C37.jpg

First thing I'll cook is large jacket potatoes rubbed with olive oil, ground black pepper and garlic powder.
An hour in the top oven without foil sees them with a cripsy outer-shell and fluffy insides with a little melted butter.
Together with a steak and some curried baked beans.
My kids arrive home from school and when they see the Aga on they know instantly that will be their first meal on it.
And they love it.

I bet you've got a 'bleedin labrador and a cocker dozing as well.


:p

That earlier thread was hilarious, ridiculous enough to stick in my mind. My "research" took all the time I spent to enter "cheese" + "slices" in the search field.

Way less time than googling "Gouda" and "cumin" and then documenting 4 or 5 different internet sites out of the many that sell Cumin flavoured Gouda to spoon feed you with. Was doing enough of that with my then three year old.

Unlike your kitchen where you appear to need two of everything to cook for just two people I only have the one mutt. ;)

All this over the humble chip :rolleyes:


Just to put another point of view across - I'd take McCain's Curly Fries over a straight chip any day.:D

It is truly amazing, sometimes, what sort of animus and invective can get hurled back and forth. If the sparring partners want to spar and one-up via PM, go for it. For now, this thread is closed on multiple FT Rules grounds.

cblaisd
Co-Moderator, Dining Buzz