Wot - no thick cut chips?

I’ve searched high and low - well Carrefour and Leclerc anyway. All the frozen oven cook chips are weedy apologies.

Not truly chunky - but a bit closer?

https://www.coursesu.com/p/frites-classiques-just-au-four-mccain---700g/6375177.html

Look for steak cut chips

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TBH potatoes generally seem to be a struggle here in lots of ways. And the prices for McCain and their ilk - Jane’s right there’s only the steak cut that’s thick and then only thick in one direction and not all sides - those prices will make you blanche.

If I can ever find good potatoes here - and that’s not all the time - then I’ve taken to cutting them myself into chips or sauté-able slices, draining them / letting them dry a bit then running some olive oil to lightly coat them then oven baking in the middle of the oven fairly hot with salt.

Other root vegetables can also be cut up and included in this and any orange vegetable (pumpkin, carrot etc) works really well.

Usually I have to turn them at least once before they’re done and crispy round the edges - or more if a biggish batch.

You can microwave a bit before you start to save baking time - carefully as you don’t want them to break up - kind of parboiling but not essential.

Rumour has it that an air fryer makes excellent chips and I suspect would make my method of making my own cook much faster.

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So does a deep fat fryer :wink:

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I’m still getting used to what’s ruinously expensive and what is worth buying.

Except for when I’m really lazy, my own chips (or cubes of potato) plus duck fat and cooked in the air fryer, with bashed cloves of garlic, are just as good and much cheaper.

What I’m finding weird is the total absence of old potatoes at the moment.

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They are about 3mm thick!

Especially if they are McCain’s Air Fryer chips, works for me, though not often.

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Unfortunately not in my opinion.

Deep fried is far better.

As for McCain’s chips: about 80% of each pack is OK. The other 20% consists of small broken bits or extremely thin bits that cook rock hard.

Hand made is best, especially when a crinkly cutter is used.

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Ah, there’s the clue then, that’s just the way I like them, crispy. :joy:

You mean twigs :hushed:

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Mmmmm crunchy.

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We used to enjoy Sainsbury’s oven chips - especially their triple cooked ones with


beef dripping.

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These are the ones we have once a week, 15 mins in air fryer. There are little bits but they get chucked away. I generally find that french potatoes make crap chips (and roasties).

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I haven’t been shopping for a week, so there may be a shortage I’m not aware of, but Intermarché, Lidl and Netto previously stocked a range of thick cut fries.

Apparently the French are the 3rd biggest producer of potatoes in Europe - so you’d think they’d have a wide choice of varieties to choose from, but supermarkets seem to concentrate on the waxy end of the spectrum which do not chip, roast or mash well (try roasting in olive oil - not at all the same but very nice nonetheless, baby carrots come out nicely as well).

A fluffy/starcy spud is needed and t’ internet says good French varieties are Bintje, Agria, Caesar, Manon and Marabel.

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I’ve got Bintje growing in my tiny veg patch. Will be pulling them up next week.

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Make excellent chips

We get our potatoes from the weekly market and there’s always a good range. We grow waxy ones though because most of the others are maincrop varieties and we grow earlies because of the prevalence of blight here.

We do roast potatoes but not that often, baked potatoes occasionally but most of our favourite potato dishes are great with waxy ones. (Gratin dauphinois anyone???)

I’ve just measured a sample of ten McCain steak cut chips and the average size was 12.5mm x 14.5mm x 88mm. The thinnest was 10.6mm x 9.5mm x 79mm.