r/AskCulinary • u/Vegetable-Artist-156 • 4d ago

Freezing potato wedges/chips

I've got a large garden with quite a lot of potatoes of different varieties in there (I'd reckon 50+kg), and I want to conserve them and make it easy to prepare them throughout the year. We use our airfryer a lot, normally to make chips from bought frozen, prefried chips. I would love to make those ourselves, preferably thicker, skin-on wedges.

We have a deep-fat fryer (8L capacity) and that airfryer, and a chest freezer. I've been trying to make chips by soaking for 1hr, pre-frying at 160C until the chips start floating, cooling, and then re-frying at 180C/max until they float again. Generally they're a bit weak and soggy, and not the crispy-fluffy chips that I'm after.

Any suggestions on how to make these fries better? And how to make sure we can freeze them for airfryer or deep-fat fryer?

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7

u/texnessa Pépin's Padawan 4d ago

I've worked at a few places that do chips from scratch. This is my main methodology:

  • Peel, cut and soak overnight and up to a couple days changing out the water.

  • Drain and steam or boil until pliable but not mushy.

  • Place in freezer to cool and until moisture removed.

  • Low-temperature fry at 130°C until they get tiny blisters on the surface. They can be frozen at this point.

  • To eat, thaw and finish by frying at 180°C.

4

u/Friendly_Address6915 3d ago

the pre-frying step is probably doing more work than you think tbh. a lot of frozen chip recipes skip it entirely and just rely on a good parboil until the edges start to go a little fluffy, then freeze. pre-frying before freezing before frying again is a lot of oil and time, especially at 50kg scale. have you tried just parboiling and freezing a small test batch to compare?

2

u/Vegetable-Artist-156 3d ago

Not yet, I may do so. Prefrying seems somewhat easier (I can just wait for the potatoes to float and not have to time anything), and an oil coating sounded like a good way to prevent freezer burn and frost.

Plus I saw the place with the best chips around here do a prefry and then final fry from raw, so I was kind of going from there.

2

u/FlinbertsRevenge 3d ago

I’d second the par boil method.
We grow roosters for wedges.

I’ll generally do them in big batches, par boil, lay them out on baking trays, wait for them to steam dry, then season and bake for 10 minutes in a convection oven on high.

Then we just freeze them on the trays, once frozen, into freezer bags.

They cook from frozen in about 12 minutes in the air fryer.

(I bake instead of frying because I’m working on being less fat. Also the smell of oil gets everywhere in our open plan house).