According to a blog post on Ree Drummond’s site, the secret to perfectly crispy homemade french fries is letting them soak overnight. After cutting the potatoes into thin strips, she places them in a bowl of cold water and covers it before sticking it in the fridge. While she says you only need to let the potatoes soak for about two to three hours, she prefers to let them sit overnight.
There’s real science behind her method, too. Drummond explains that soaking the potatoes before frying them removes some of the starch that coats the outside of the potato. If you put them in the fryer before soaking them, that starch messes with the texture, meaning you can end up with fries that are either too crunchy on the inside or too crispy on the outside. By letting them sit in water for a few hours first, you’ll get french fries that are golden on the outside and nice and soft on the inside. There you have it, another helpful hack from The Pioneer Woman!
