Update #1: Added some more details on potato types and cooking times.
I recently purchased 'the fat duck cookbook', which has an outstanding method for making french fries. Unfortunately, the method requires some expensive equipment that most people (myself included) don't have in their homes, so what follows is my attempt to match the spirit of the recipe without actually doing all of the steps.
I have tried this recipe 3 times now and the fries were the best I have ever had.
Following this recipe you will get fries with a nice dark crunchy exterior and a soft interior with good flavour. I didn't need any ketchup when I ate them. :-)
You need:
potatoes (I tried white potato and red potatoes, both seemed to work, red maybe slightly better)
canola oil, or some other neutral oil, to which I added 1 tblsp of bacon fat
a decent thermometer to measure your oil temperature
lots of paper towels
a clean tea towel
peel your potatoes and cut them into nice chunky french fry shapes. you want them fairly chunky.
fill a pot with water and bring to a boil. put your potatoes in the pot. do not overfill, you want about a single layers worth of potatoes, if you have too many potatoes, you need to use a bigger pot. make sure you have lots of water too. turn the heat down to medium or slightly below medium on the stove, you want to still boil the potatoes but not too hard. Boil them as long as you dare - the longer the better - you want the fries as close to falling apart as possible when you take them out. This will take a while, so you have to be patient and be sure you put enough water in the pot!
I boiled mine for 1 hour and 10 minutes.
once the potatoes are ready to be removed, use a slotted spoon and carefully remove them from the water and place them on a clean tea towel and pat off as much water as you can. let the potatoes cool and air dry a bit. You want a lot of moisture from the cooking to be sucked into the tea towel.
meanwhile, put enough oil to cover the fries in your electric fry pan and heat the oil to 250 F. Use a thermometer to measure the temperature of the oil (the dial on my electric fry pan was off by about 75 F !).
put the fries into the hot oil and cook for 10 minutes - they should have a very light colored crust. when you take them out pat them dry and cool. You could store them at this point for future use. Allow them to cool completely before the next application. I've tried this recipe 3 times now and the best one was when I cooled the fries completely, and actually froze them and got them out the next day (allowing them to defrost in the refrigerator).
raise the heat of the oil to 350 F now. put the fries in and cook for 8-10 min until golden brown. (the longer you boiled them in step one, the better the final result will be). remove from the oil and place onto some paper towels, pat off as much oil as you can, then season with some sea salt and table salt and serve.
