Here's How Restaurants Get Fries To Stay Crispy For So Long

Is there anything more perfect to a foodie than a delicious, golden french fry? The love for this potato creation certainly runs deep. Across the nation, Americans hoover up 5.6 billion of them every year, both at home and when eating out, per a 2025 survey commissioned by McCain Foods. However, just as restaurant fish and chips taste better than homemade, french fries cooked by the professionals are always crispier compared to our own efforts. Moreover, they stay that way for a lot longer. It begs the question: Is it us?

If you've invested in a state-of-the-art air fryer and own enough different kinds of oil to open a store, you could be forgiven for producing a floppy french fry or one that lacks crunchy staying power. Don't despair. Lynne Just, consumer test kitchen manager at Hamilton Beach Brands, Inc. and Mike Buononato, chef and VP of culinary at Creative Food Solutions, spoke to our sister site Chowhound, revealing a few tricks of the trade that pro chefs use to turn out crispy fries every time.

One of the most important factors is the type of potato, and the amount of water versus dry matter they contain ... well, matters. Both Just and Buononato recommended Kennebec potatoes, as they're not a "wet" spud. That means they "absorb less oil than a russet in the frying process, thus producing a crisper fry," said Just. Another restaurant hack is coating the fries in a thin layer of modified food starch or cornstarch. According to Buononato, they "create a stronger, more brittle surface and slow down steam from softening the crust."

It's worth keeping in mind that even the crispiest french fries aren't supposed to stay that way forever. They just need to retain their crunch from the restaurant kitchen to the table. After around 15 minutes, even they start to soften, by which time we're all happily tucking in anyway. If you want to repeat the feat for your fam, here's what you need to do. First, as the experts advised, choose a potato variety with minimal moisture, then soak them in cold water to cut the starch level. Another way to get the crispiest french fries is to blanch them first — that means boiling the potatoes in water for a few minutes, then plunging them in cold water to stop the cooking process.

Whether you soak or blanch, the potatoes must be thoroughly patted dry before going into very hot oil. If they're too wet, they'll generate quickly-expanding steam, potentially causing the oil to spill over. Whether you dredge your french fries in a coating or not is up to you, but to achieve the same crispy results as your fave restaurant, it's best to cook them twice. The first round, the oil needs to be heated to around 325 degrees Fahrenheit — a robust digital thermometer will remove the guesswork — before cranking it up to 375 degrees for the second fry. If all that sounds like too much hard work, panic not, as you can also potentially get the crispiest frozen french fries with this unexpected hack.

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