Hand cut shoe string fries. Why so rare?

[uwebres]

I love hand cut fries. I had some shoestrings the other day, and they were great. I realized I had only had hand cut fresh one other time. Any thoughts? The previous time was in Portland Or. and they were soggy and limp. This time it was in one of the now common high end burger joints. The only thing on the menu that got fried were the potatoes, so maybe dirty oil or lower fryer temps were to blame. These recent ones were at 4 Burgers in Cambridge, MA.

[Will Owen]

Just off the top of my head, I'm gonna hazard a guess that they're rare because they're a whole lot of work. Quarter-inch square is fairly easy to hand-cut, and you can use one of those old manual machines and nobody need be the wiser. Shoestrings on the other hand are tedious in the extreme with a knife, and while there might be cutters for those that fit the old machines I haven't seen any.

These really need the proper Belgian treatment, too, with double frying. There's a reason why these are the pride of a good French bistro but hard to find in a burger joint; it's a combination of hard to do and expensive to do.

[PegS]

Right. As Will basically said 1) fries need to be double-fried to avoid limpness and 2) I doubt the lack of, uh, hand cut-ness had anything to do with the quality of this or the last batch you had. Shoestrings are very thin and it would take a whole lotta work to make them with just a knife when the patron isn't going to notice the difference anyway.

[Will Owen]

Yes. We had some shoestring fries at Noir in Pasadena a few weeks ago, and while they had an excellent flavor they were EXACTLY like shoestrings, only not so chewy. They were stuffed into a little pot like a bunch of toothpicks, but they kinda slumped over the sides of it instead of standing tall. Very odd, and I'm sure it was entirely due to a single trip through the fryer.

[Zeldog]

A mandoline with a julienne cutter is perfect for making shoe string fries. And they come out perfect with a single frying if the oil is hot enough and you don't overload the fryer. Maybe that's because my shoestring fries are pretty thin (about 1/8 inch). A bit thicker and double frying might be necessary.

[Will Owen]

I'd double-fry them just to get them perfectly crisp without burning them. The ones at Noir were almost black; the perfect ones at Saint-Amour in Culver City were a perfect gold, perfectly dry, and perfectly crisp even after they'd gotten cold. Guess which ones I'm getting again.

[pikawicca]

I think that the reason we see these so infrequently is that they cool down very quickly, due to their thinness, and most diners do not want cool fries.