WORLD’S BEST AIR FRIES (Weird Trick, But It Works!)

Watch until the end to see recipes for different cuts of frozen fries, along with my recommended brands.

If you want air fries that you’d swear came out of a deep fryer, then this recipe will give you that. In 22 minutes and 30 seconds. It works by simplifying some French fry cooking technique pioneered by the three-Michelin starred chef Heston Blumenthal and his widely-copied Triple Cooked Chips. It uses frozen fries instead of fresh cut potatoes, because they’re often better.

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– If you want air fried french fries that you’d swear came out of a deep fryer, then this recipe will give you that, starting from the moment you abuse some frozen fries by soaking them, shaking them, nuking them, air frying them, and finally dressing them so they don’t suck.

You can hear that they’re shatteringly crisp and they’re also very light and fluffy on the inside. For me, that’s the perfect fry. This recipe works by adding some easy steps that simplify some solid french fry cooking technique pioneered by the three-Michelin-star chef, Heston Blumenthal, and his widely copied Triple-Cooked Chips

Using frozen fries that are sorted to have consistent water content and natural sugar levels, which isn’t just convenient, it makes for better fries than the average fresh cut supermarket potato. And there’s one weird trick that exploits the science and acoustics of brittle failure for maximum crispness.

But why use an air fryer at all? Why not just use a convection oven? Well, you can, but air fryers move air in a different way. They suck rather than blow, which gives them an advantage that helps ’em cook more like a deep fryer.

As a chef, I was skeptical of a dedicated air fryer, but having used one now for a couple of months, I get their appeal. For example, they’re perfect for reverse searing a steak or two to go along with these fries for an easy weeknight dinner of steak frites. And when I combine it

With the Wireless Predictive Thermometer that I’ve built with my team at Combustion Inc, this steak will come out perfectly cooked, ready for a quick sear just before the fries are done. The eight temperature sensors in the Predictive Thermometer provide total temperature awareness from the surface to the center of the steak.

Of course, the Predictive Thermometer also does what its name says and uses a physics engine to predict the cooking time to done. And I can use the patented true surface temperature to adjust the air fryer temp up or down so that the steak is cooking at the doneness I want

From edge to edge, just like sous vide. And while this steak cooks, the thermometer also keeps track of all the time spent at bacteria-destroying temps above 130 degrees Fahrenheit. It lets me know when this steak has reached a USDA level of food safety while still being a juicy medium rare.

If you wanna learn more about the Predictive Thermometer, check out my product links below, or go to Combustion.inc. But for now, this steak can cool before searing while I turn the air fryer up to 400 degrees and get these fries going. But before we start cooking,

We need to build the sounds of crispy into our fries. It turns out our brains decide if something is crispy or not from the frequency spectrum of sound waves created as we bite into food. So how do we get all of these pulses of sound? From food cracking when we bite down.

A few big cracks form when food is hard and tough, which sounds crunchy to our brain. But if the surface has lots of defects in weak spots, then dozens of cracks can form all at once and the food shatters like glass, which sounds crispy to our brain. It’s a weird thing to do,

But if you take frozen fries and soak them in warm water for about one minute, then strain them, the surface has thawed enough that it can be roughened up. By the way, it’s really important that the core of the fries still be frozen, or this is gonna completely destroy them. These fries look pretty messed up, but I promise this shredded surface is the proto-crust that’s going to be amazingly crisp when these are done. They’ll see better days soon. Microwaving these is the key to a light and fluffy interior and a crispy, delicate crust. The secret to The Fat Duck’s Triple-Cooked Chips was blanching the potatoes dangerously close to disaster. – Is we want the potato to be as close as possible to breaking up. Be very careful, though,

Because a few seconds too long and you’re gonna end up with potato soup. – I’ve never seen a blog post or a YouTube video that claims to be inspired by the Fat Duck’s Triple-Cooked Chip recipe that gets this important detail correct. When they’re not cooked until they’re falling apart,

They can make a good French fry, but not one that’s gonna be life changing. As a young chef at the Fat Duck, I got a proper British bollocking for not doing them correctly. The microwave is actually a fast, efficient, and gentle way to steam the potatoes in their own moisture

Until the individual potato cells come undone, which is what makes for a fluffy interior. If you skip the microwave blanching and just cook your fries for longer in your air fryer or oven, you end up with a french fry that’s really hard and crunchy on the outside and hollow on the inside.

It sounds loud and crunchy for the microphone and it looks good for the camera in a YouTube video, but it’s not a texture I prefer in a great French fry. Now these need to be air fried until they develop a golden and crispy crust. Be sure not to overload the air fryer

With more than about one pound of fries in a batch. It takes about 15 minutes for thick-cut fries like mine, but thinner fries will cook faster, and I’ll have some recommended times for different fries at the very end of this video. Inside your air fryer, a centrifugal fan at the top spins

And creates a low pressure zone in the center of the fan that sucks air up past the heating elements, which heats the air and dries out the moisture, at least it will as long as you don’t overload the fryer. The spinning fan blades push this hot, dry air outward,

Where it’s forced to flow down the sides of the air fryer and beneath the fry basket before being pulled back up through the fries. As the hot air flows through the fries, it doesn’t just heat them, it scrubs away the steam and dries the crust. And because steam is less dense than air,

It’s naturally buoyant and wants to flow upwards towards the fan to keep the circulation going. This is actually similar to deep frying. The difference is that in a deep fryer, the erupting steam bubbles do the job of the fan and force the oil to circulate.

As the bubbles rise up to the top of the oil, they pull the hottest oil from the bottom of the pot up through the fries. By comparison, the fan in a convection oven tries to pull the air sideways and is fighting the natural tendency for steam and hot air to rise.

This makes for slower air flow and stagnant pockets of humid air getting stuck around the fries. So a convection oven takes about twice as long as an air fryer and the fries will tend to become hard and crunchy with a hollowed core. Even with its advantageous design,

The fries in an air fryer aren’t floating around and stirring themselves like they do in a deep fryer. So help them out by shaking them around and turning them over several times while they cook and crisp. And while the fry’s finished cooking, now’s a good time to finish searing this steak. These are done. You can see all the crispy shards covering the surface, which feels glassy and fragile, not hard and tough from overcooking. But they’re not done yet. There’s one more really important thing to do to make these great. They need to be seasoned with salt, and just as important,

They need to be anointed with an obscene amount of delicious and flavorful fat, because a french fry without oil is just a baked potato. You might be thinking that’s a lot of oil. Yeah, it is. French fries absorb up to 20% or more of their weight

In oil once they come out of a deep fryer and begin to cool. It’s why they taste so damn good. The oil also waterproofs the crust, which keeps them crispy for longer. For me, that’s a win-win. French fries aren’t supposed to be a low-fat health food. Now these are done,

Golden brown and covered in shards and fragments that are like bits of crispy potato chips glistening with flavor. Personally, these air fries look more appealing to me than the same frozen fries simply deep fried. And when you bite into one, Their looks aren’t deceiving. This air fried fry shatters and gives way to a light and fluffy interior that’s like the very best baked potato. Mm. These fries will get crisper as they continue to cool and the surface fully hardens, which is really good news for me,

Because after I say that’s it for today and thank you so very much for watching, and if you enjoyed this video, please let me know in the comments below, I’m gonna go sit down and enjoy these with the guys who’ve been working hard behind the camera

And lights and eyeing these fries for days. Oh, one more thing. As promised, here are some recommended cooking instructions for a few different cuts of frozen fries.