Potato Straws
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash and peel the potatoes.
Cut them into small shreds, about the thickness of matches.
Wash the shreds well and dry them on a cloth.
Fry and serve
Fry a few shreds at a time in plenty of clear boiling fat until they are crisp and deep yellow.
Drain on a cloth and sprinkle slightly with coarse sea salt.
Serve on a folded napkin.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Potatoes
- Their starch crisps and browns in hot fat, forming the straw's crunchy structure.
- Clear boiling fat
- Transfers high heat quickly, cooking the shreds crisp and browning them evenly.
The step that matters
Dry the shreds before frying. Surface water cools the hot fat and turns to steam, which makes the shreds soggy and greasy instead of crisp. Frying in small batches keeps the fat hot.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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