The Science Behind Why Sugar Will Make Your Baked French Fries Crispy
Talk about the ultimate comfort foods and french fries with their crispy deliciousness are sure to be included in the top five lists of most people. Nothing can beat the flavor of a potato fry that boasts a firm and crunchy golden brown exterior and a soft and gooey, melt-in-your-mouth interior. But what happens if you are on a health kick and don't want to eat a boatload of deep-fried potatoes but are still craving it? The simplest solution is to oven-bake them at home.
Baked French fries certainly offer the advantage of being healthier than their deep-fried counterparts, but it is tough to ensure they stay as crisp as the latter. Some people believe that steaming them first leads to the crispiest oven fries. But today, we have another surprisingly easy and sure-shot hack for you to try in order to make your baked french fries super crispy. All you have to do is coat them in sugar and watch this ingredient do its work through the process of osmosis, which means reducing the amount of water in the food, leading to it becoming crispier.
Let's talk about the science involved
As mentioned above, osmosis is the name of the procedure by which sugar helps to make baked fries crispy. In this way, it is similar to salt as that ingredient is known to absorb water from vegetables. Since the idea is to remove the excess water, with the consistency of what is left being crisp and firm, you should coat the potatoes in sugar and leave them in a colander for the excess water to drain out, for this hack to work. The sugar will help the draining process move faster.
The sugar added to the potatoes also helps them to become golden brown — which is the delightful color we seek while cooking the perfect french fries. This process of browning is known as the Maillard reaction, named after the chemist who discovered the process in 1910, Louis-Camille Maillard. This chemical reaction takes place when under heat conditions, amino acids come in contact with sugar of the 'reducing' kind, which is usually present on the surface of food and not inside it. Adding sugar to your potatoes acts on the same principle, leading to a crisp and tasty french fry.
The method to use when coating french fries in sugar
When you are looking to make a perfectly crisp batch of baked french fries, and want to use sugar to do so, here is the method we recommend that you follow. Once you have preheated the oven to 400 F, cut your potatoes in the shape you desire. At this point, coat them with sugar by sprinkling it liberally on the fries. Once they are coated completely in sugar, put the fries in a colander and leave it in a place for 30 minutes so the excess water can drain out.
Once the fries are drained, you can pat them dry to be extra sure that no water is left behind. Then, on a rimmed baking sheet that has been treated with olive oil, you can lay out the potatoes, and season them with ingredients of your choice such as salt (which can also be helpful to balance out the taste of sugar), garlic powder, pepper and more olive oil. This mixture should be baked for 30 minutes before the pan is rotated. At this point, you can bake the fries further for 15-20 minutes to see the golden brown color emerge.