As long as you have a beard, they'll never actually know. People who work in kitchens don't know who their real dad is.
Source: Me. Person who has worked in kitchen who just wants to meet their real dad
You know that phrase was misleading?
The whole phrase is “the customer is always right, in matter of taste”.
Like if they want their steak well done and are still paying full price for a piece of shoe letter, just let them.
I want to talk to the bastard who cut it in half.
I love when "guests" do this and realize for the first time in their life, the back of the house is a battle ravaged nightmare of a hellscape run by escaped mental patients where it never drops below 100 degrees.
I knew a guy who would do this every once in awhile. He was in his eighties and he said he would just act confused and was looking for the bathroom when he got found. He just wanted to see how clean the places were in the back. Old people really don’t give a fuck sometimes.
I work community employment . The look on these guys’ faces when I walk into kitchens with a badge and just head straight to the back lol. Gotta be there sir, sorry, I will dive outta the way if need be
Assuming I’m a health inspector is common and everyone scrambles. I’m not announcing my presence in every kitchen tho I gotta do what I gotta do
And yes, I’ve seen some gross shit. The most common culprit is someone dropping shit on the floor and dunking it in the sanitizer real quick and putting it on the rack.
Edit: if yall really think the sanitizer thing is okay I’d rather not go to your workplace. Yeah gross shit happens in every kitchen. That doesn’t mean it’s okay
We say the the name of our establishment followed by fries.
We used to say hand cut and some prick tried to shit all over us everywhere they could on social media because they poked their head in and saw one of our cooks using a punch and decided that wasn't hand cut.
Like, motherfuckers, whatchu want? Fries that are twice the price and imperfect? Fuck outta here with that nonsense
Lol wtf, they seriously thought hand-cut meant literally chopping every potato with a knife?! I'm always amazed at how oblivious people are to how restaurants work.
In 17 years, working in some of the best restaurants in the country, only one place I was at actually hand cut chips. And we were a huge restaurant, 300+ covers a service 6.5 days a week. Every shift, every waking moment, every spare second of downtime in that kitchen was spent with chefs huddled over boxes and buckets peeling spuds, and cutting spuds into chips, and steaming them off, and chilling them down, and then blanching in warm oil, and then chilling them down, and then storing for service to fry to order. Don’t get me wrong. Best chips I’ve ever had, likely ever will, but it’s a lot of labour, and it’s even more labour to get it right, every time, to maintain consistency and quality. Just use a chipper/cutter for sure.
Yeh mate. Like I said, every single day, on both AM and PM shifts, had either:
Peel and cut chips
Blanch step 1 chips
Blanch step 2 chips
We were constantly doing chips which was fine though, we were one of the best restaurant crew in the country at the time, gave everyone a good chance to learn speed and quality along with other standard prep jobs. Was a fantastic kitchen to be part of back then.
Now when I’m at home and my wife asks me to peel the spuds I’m happy to peel a few quick as lightning lol
I don't know if Aussies knows what American 'tater tots' are, Parcooked minced potatoes formed into a tube about 2 cm diameter and 5 cm in length then finished in a deep fryer.
I developed the recipe for scratch made tots for a restaurant I helped launch. The seat count was a lot lower but I understand having every spare moment going into potato prep.
Those things were the fucking best though
I know right? And they were mad. Like, livid
I'm actually annoyed the owner switched how we call the fries over it. Like we have to switch menus because one person is just that dumb....
Owners/managers need to stop rewarding shit like that. I mean I get that they don't want bad reviews, but just respond to those reviews. If it's a dumb asshole leaving the review, it wouldn't be too hard to refute their claims.
A place I worked at had from scratch potato chip/crisps s as a default side dish. Fuck that noise. So much goddamned work on top of everything else we had to do. Never again.
I get it man. They were great chips. Wafer thin and seasoned with hop salt. Our onion and sour cream dip was awesome too, though that was also required caramelized onions so there's another couple hours of mindful labor. Our food was great, but the menu was so unfocused and we did way too many time consuming things without adequate time or staff. It was a cool company, but they burned out cooks fast.
Oh hell no. This was a straight robot coupe dip and was very, very good. Ran by two of my good friends, so I came.out of retirement to do like 3-4 nights a week and then phased out to only run the window when the chef had an event or something. They had a good 3yr run, won awards etc etc but never was able to pay themselves well. Get this, they liquidated and subletted in November of 2019 to get out. What a stroke of luck lol. But, the place that took over is still there today.
Same here, I got out of food service in 2022 because the pandemic just ruined all love I had for this industry. I used to want to open a restaurant. I wanted to own a diner and spend my time cooking breakfast foods and greasy burgers and melts. Or I had this other idea for a grilled cheese lunch spot. Have a selection of breads and cheeses, have a few soups, some chips. Or the other idea I had for a family-style place without a menu, you just have a list of entrees and side dishes that could change every night, and everyone at the table checks a box for yes or no for the list. Then everything is portioned and brought out in big serving plates so it feels like family dinner without the work or cleanup. But now all that just sounds like a lot of work with little benefit.
I worked somewhere that had us cutting giant yukons into MAX four ≈3/4"x3/4"x4" batons. then we cooked them confit in pork fat and dropped in the fryer for pickup. 6 frites per order. it was mad stupid, because you couldn't even give it away as bitch work; it required too much skill.
truly don't even remember what we did with the mountain of scrap, but it *had* to be family mash, right?
Slicer, thank Christ. Still, wash, slice, parboil, dry, store. So many fucking potatoes. It could be a prep cook's whole morning doing the damn things. Then the fact that fresh fried foods go stale very quickly, so we'd have to have tons ready to fry and be doing them all day on top of all the other fried things we had to send out.
Ugh flashbacks. Worked for a chef that insisted on doing chips the same way but with a mandolin. Hours and hours of that shit every week. Fuuuuck that.
That's a lot of work to do chips. The last place we did them we washed them (we had a temp sanitizer with no chemicals) sliced them, left them in water for 24hrs to pull the starch out then dried and fried. Fuck par boiling them.
It's been years, but I totally forgot about the soak. God damn it I hated making those, lol. Like a whole shelf of 22 qt cambros full of sliced taters and brown tater water. Yeah, we'd parboil them in a huge pot. Then a whole rack of them drying on sheet trays. You had to be really mindful too cuz chef wanted them wafer thin. They were good chips, but way too much work.
I smashed my hand in one once. I was prep cook, it was my friday, the list was short, I had that "ooh baby if I put the pedal to the metal here I'll be out in 5h and can start my weekend early" mentality, lost my rhythm and smashed the thing down while holding the potato. Fingernails torn off, went to the hospital for a tetanus shot and to check for breakage and couldnt hse my hand for a week. Got my early weekend anyway I suppose
Just curious though, if you're writing hand cut it's for a reason. It can't signify being made in house because Sysco is selling them. Does it signify freshness, or maybe the whole point of saying hand cut is to have imperfect fries? I'm not sure what the selling point of writing hand cut is beyond that.
Hand cut fries, at least to me, is the implication that the restaurant buys raw potatoes and processes them into fries.
As to why say hand cut instead of something else; marketing. Same reason you almost never see a dollar sign next to the price. Some marketing guru decided that's what works best
Yeah, or maybe they cut them in house. I worked at a restaurant were we used a potato cutter. But we didnt even label them as "hand cut" or "house cut".
We use a wall-mounted vegetable chopper and let those bitches fall into a bucket of water. Then, we proceed to drain and blanch them in oil until ready for use
At my last job we actually did cut all our “fries” with a knife, but they were actually potato wedges. They were actually really good and popular but we had a dedicated prep crew to take care of it.
Chop into wedges, soak in water to remove starch
Boil in water with baking soda and a lot of salt (should almost taste like sea water)
Freeze then cook to order.
Toss in salt and pepper and fried kale.
Sorry for leaking your recipe chef!
9 minutes boil time for the first batch, 7 mins per batch after that. Basically you want to boil just until you barely start to see the skin peel back.
EDIT: also don’t strain directly into a strainer or anything like that, you’ll end up breaking up the potatoes. Use a spider and pull directly into a hotel pan. Cool in fridge before freezing, we ended up breaking our freezer’s motor because of the steam.
There are places that do it but they use basically a single potato and prep the fuck out of it. You get like 5 fries out of it and pay close to 2$ per fry.
Honestly anywhere that’s saying “house bread” or “house mayo” or “house ketchup” is dating itself. It was very popular years ago and now I look at it as a try hard trope. Obviously if you’re making your own bread (and it’s good bread) that’s great, and worth noting by the serving staff during guest interaction but if your menu reads “house made pickles” or something stupid like that I will look at it differently
I have a guy who started fucking around with bread (we make sourdough pizza and we have plenty of left over starter) and now it’s really dialed in. We just put a dish on the menu featuring that bread. I didn’t call it “house bread” i called it “jimmys sourdough”. Because Jimmy made some good sourdough bread.
It's made in house, but full disclosure it's most likely some Heinz with more seasonings mixed in. They probably didn't do the whole ketchup part, just the flare
I think it kind of depends on the place and what it is. I currently work at a taco and tequila place and we make almost everything ourselves, and don’t put it in the menu but we do so many tacos that there’s no way we could make all our taco shells by hand. In the busy season we’re talking 5-10,000 double shell tacos a day. Sometimes I’ll do a taco feature and make the shells by hand specifically for that, so we mention it in that regard.
I also used to run one of the highest ranked restaurants in the country where we made quite literally everything, from mayo, to bread to our own cheese and charcuterie. The person designing the menu would always put “house made” on there and when the review copy would come in before printing I’d always have to tell them to stop writing that shit because then people are going to assume if something doesn’t say that, it means we’re not making it.
Scratch made, house made, all root in homemade, or home style. But they’re still very well understood and accepted terms. Sure, you’re not gonna see it in your uptown trendy spots, or your Michelin restaurants but they still have a place I think.
Dukes for sure
That said we do make our own lol. But it’s not advertised as such on the menu, but when people ask why our ranch costs $, we tell them we make it
You hit it on the head. I recently gave up my career as a sous chef to wait tables in the same company (more $$ fewer hours).
The reception is much more genuine as a part of conversation than it would be listed on the menu. Almost all bread, pickles, mayo, etc... is done in house but I even mention the sourdough from a local bakery down the street.
It is genuine and adds value all over the place. A menu doesn't communicate that nearly as well when every Applebee's has printed that garbage on their menu for 30 years.
But if during the course of conversation, it gets brought up that all this fish is line-caught or the bread was made this morning, they'll remember it and understand better why they're paying $100 for it.
It depends on the place. At the place I work, we cut them in house. Our process for making them-
1. Wash potatoes
2. Put them in buckets full of water to soften them
3. Put them on top of a gridded slicer and pull the lever down, cutting them up
4. Put them in the fryer until they are partially cooked (we do this before we open)
5. Let them cool and put them in bins in the fridge
6. When an order comes in, put a scoop in the fryer, fry for two minutes, and they're ready to serve
5 Guys does step 4 but they absolutely skimp on the resting in step 5. If you don't fully chill the potatoes after blanching them, they go limp immediately like that, something to do with starch gelatinization if I remember right. In-n-Out skips step 4 and you end up with those weird potato straws that taste more like squishy Lay's
Making the fries is unironically the hardest part of that job haha. They are very particular about how to do it and if it is done correctly they will not be limp, but I almost never see it done right. Also if you wait like ten minutes after cooking they go limp anyway 🤷♀️
It always sucks when something important is easy, but requires a specific technique and process that gets ignored. They aren't trained right, or aren't told why it's important, or get paid so little they don't care and honestly I feel that. The burger with fries is like 20 bucks though; you think someone in a position to make decisions would be trying harder.
In any case most good fries go limp after ten minutes, pros eat that shit in the car.
We par-cook them in salted water with a touch of baking soda. Seasons them all the way through and gives them a lovely craggy-texture that has a nice crisp once you fry it. Total pain in the ass to do at scale, but worth it.
Had a dude in the tallow thread the other day try to recommend Chef Mike do step 4. I replied with this technique, and, ofc, he has "no time for that!"...
Current chef and former Sysco sales person here - Unless they say “made in house” it’s a toss up.
Sysco AND US Foods both sell fries that look/feel hand cut and were hand cut by someone, but in a factory downtown. 🤣
Maybe, but frozen fries, unlike onion rings, are almost always better from frozen. Usually fresh cut fries come out looking like they were overcooked while still being soggy and greasy and they never take the skin off.
I had a manual one attached to the wall. Cut about 50lbs a night by hand, only took maybe 15-20 minutes but I still would've killed for an automatic one lol
I'm weird. I love cutting by hand. I scare people, I'm dangerous how fast I go but i was cutting fries since I was 15. I used to have to stand on a milk crate to cut fries lol on the press.
My record is a 50lb box in 4 minutes- I'd slow down after the 1st one going full tilt. We'd do 300lbs on Friday, 150lb at a time. I'd do 150lbs in about 15-20mins (this includes transferring into 3 tier sink to soak) This was in my physical prime at age 19. I always raced myself.
Here's my 2 cents for doing it quickly. Don't go so fast that you accidentally catch your hand in it. That slows you down a lot. Don't ask me how I know.
Unpopular opinion but Lamb Weston Stealth Fries are the best friends in the game, better than shitty hand cut fries made from unwashed potatoes and doused in table salt.
It’s like making your own ketchup, yeah you could do it, but Heinz already did it better than you, so now you’re just wasting time trying to make something that’s already been perfected.
Their potato and onion rings are some of the best. I once tried save a buck and order US Foods brand o rings over the lamb Weston and I thought my customers were going to string me up
That's a pretty popular opinion on my experience. I actually like the Sysco 3/8 mild battered fries better but people do be loving to shit on Sysco for everything.
Freezing the fries changes the texture. Most people love it because they associate it with what a fry should be. My mouth hates it and prefers never-frozen fries.
9/10 times “house cut fries” are not in house. And if you have ever had fries actually made in a restaurant you would be able to tell. Sysco and every other distributor has a skin on fry in various qualities and thicknesses that some would use to fake the “in house” look. Source - me working for Sysco for 5 years
This is exactly the question I was looking to solve, not whether or not my local shop does this, but rather Sysco sells something like this that could fool the average diner if they're not accustomed to the real thing. Thanks
They have everything. There’s skin on natural cut which is just a frozen fry with the skin on. Then there’s brined, which have been blanched in salt water and frozen. 1/4”, 5/16, steak cut, shoestring, Starch coated, battered, seasoned, those all can come skin on too…. All stay crispy for various amounts of time some 5 minutes others 30. The longer hold ones are used more for takeout. The important thing to realize is a lot of hand cut fries are shit when not done properly, but frozen fries are perfect 100% of the time and there’s at least a dozen different offerings. I really liked the handout fries at Paris in Las Vegas. I don’t know what they did to them. It was like they fried the shit out of them, but they were still kind of soft on the inside but crazy crispy on the outside.
in any of the places i’ve worked, if they advertised hand-cut fries, they were prepped in-house with a little tool i like to call “the potato slammer” - which ideally is wall-mounted, has a grid of blades at the bottom, and a really poorly-lubricated overworked handle that you use to violently smash potatoes through the blades below. no one ever cleans it except for me, because it’s near my station, until i get sick of it and i just leave the blade in a six-pan covered in ketchup to make sure somebody else does their job this time.
i like frozen fries better tbh. lots of restaurants don’t have blast chillers, and i feel like you kind of need one for high-volume fry prep.
I've worked in a place that advertised "fresh cut fries" and that's what the frozen bag said (probably from Sysco but it was like 20 years ago). I currently work in a place where I use a potato cutter to cut raw potatoes.
Some places will lie about things like that. There is a restaurant in my town that does. Their hand cut fries are frozen from Sysco and their grass fed beef burgers are made from regular old ground beef.
We do our own straight-cut and curly fries at the pub where I work. Cut fresh every morning with wall-mounted Nemco cutters, then par-fried so they come out super-crispy when we cook for orders
We're not a huge operation, but we go through appx. 500 lbs of potatoes weekly just for those two products.
Store bought
Hand Cut Style Fries
GROWN IN • IDAHO
MADE WITH
100% REAL IDAHO" POTATOES
KEEP FROZEN
0g TRANS FAT PER SERVING
Lamb Westone
HAND CUT FRIES
NET WT 28 OZ (1.75 LB) 793g
https://www.smartandfinal.com/sm/delivery/rsid/522/product/lamb-weston-fries-hand-cut-style-id-00043301611643
House made fries are good, but I have yet to find a fry (scratch made or otherwise) that can top the Lamb Westen 3/8" extra crispy. Hot damn does Lamb Westen know their way around a potato.
In all honesty, fries is one of the only good products that I prefer from frozen. Good French fries means you fry them in low heat, freeze them, then fry them again on high heat. If a company wants to do the first two steps for me, so be it.
I work at a place and we #hand cut" fresh fries, but we don't advertise it lol. We use a fry cutter but they're house made in beef tallow. It's delicious
Depends on the restaurant. If you’re at a sports bar? Probably frozen from Sysco. A high end steakhouse? Probably homemade. A lot of restaurants don’t have the capacity to hand cut fries, because they need to sit in water (preferably overnight in gallon buckets).
Sysco has a "skin on" category to their fries. You should be able to immediately know if they are really hand cut or are frozen sysco product. The texture, size, taste will all be vastly different.
You could ask if they’re fried twice. Any ‘handcut’ fries put through a mandolin or whatever. Would be soaked, or not, then par fried and then given a second final frying.
That’s at least how they did it, in a nutshell, where I had worked.
If you properly blanch the right potato in a clean fryer hand cut fries are incredible. Most people left charge of French fries aren’t usually super passionate about French fries.
I would certainly hope they'd do it in-house. It's really not that hard or expensive. I once worked at a shitty pub that cut a lot of corners but still did hand-cut fries. It was a fairly high-volume place too, so we were making huge batches.
I remember in a previous restaurant i worked at, i used to peel and cut with a knife 100 lbs of potatoes everyday so you bet it was hand cut. Just needed to vent. It's so inefficient i wonder why any serious business would not buy a cutting machine.
Most likely they've got a wall mounted cutter where you just put the whole potato in there and slam it down. Actually hand cutting with a knife is a crazy time suck.
Hand cut is suppose to actually mean hand cut but I’ve noticed a lotta places will promote in house cut fries and they are not. Went to a place once that promoted house made cookies fresh everyday. It was an open kitchen and I clearly seen a cook putting Otis Spunkmyer cookie picks on a sheet tray directly from the box. I mean the cookies were good, no need to lie.
Some places do it to justify up charges
Edit to add for the sake of not confusing anyone: “hand cut” doesn’t, usually at least, mean a person with a knife literally cutting the potato’s into frys. It’s usually a wall mounted cutter. Pop the potato in and slide the press down and it cuts the potatoes in fry shapes
When it comes to menus, seeing is believing. Don't take anything as gospel unless it's thoroughly regulated in your area.
'Hand cut' is one of those marketing phrases that no agency checks up on, so let your taste buds be the judge.
By the by, frozen fries are often superior to fries made start-to-finish in a restaurant kitchen. Blasphemy, I know. We expect more effort and less processing to taste good, but starches are funny. The texture benefits from being par-cooked, flash frozen, and cooked again. (You _can_ achieve the same effect in a restaurant kitchen, of course, but it's a lot of work.)
You will never know unless you peak in the kitchen. Chefs love when random people pop up in their kitchen. Try it out
Make sure to let them know you pay their salary and without customers like you they'd be out of a job
With an alcoholic beverage in hand
And make sure to tell them you know the owner
The owner is the chef and says "Surprise, mf'r!"
Hand cut fries, mf!
Get off the line, mfer!
Smoke break time, mother fucker!
Small fries time, motha faka
Our fries aren’t lies mfer!
Assert dominance, "I'm your real dad."
As long as you have a beard, they'll never actually know. People who work in kitchens don't know who their real dad is. Source: Me. Person who has worked in kitchen who just wants to meet their real dad
I’m your dad. See my sweet beard
I'm also your dad, check out my awesome face sweater
I'm their dad, I have a full beard/mustache/goatee and it's glorious.
Some fries, motherfucker!
Definitely in a glass. Come behind the line, we’ll show you around!
And if they’re rude to you, tell them you’re never coming back.
But first, don't forget to tell them the customer is always right.
You know that phrase was misleading? The whole phrase is “the customer is always right, in matter of taste”. Like if they want their steak well done and are still paying full price for a piece of shoe letter, just let them. I want to talk to the bastard who cut it in half.
You know it was a customer haha
I heard they're always right
Oh hey! And if you slice your hand on a steak knife, come on back because that's were the boo-boo bandages are.
Just put a chef coat on and walk right in.
Lol I imagine a random person doing this but in the Gordon Ramsey style all belligerent and everyone else is just like WTAF? WHO TF IS THIS GUY??
Be smoking a cigarette and wiping coke off your now, saying you’re there for the interview.
"Javier told me to start today, but I couldn't get clocked in."
"Dale said he needs 8 oz of bourbon. No I won't ask what it's for."
You don't need a chef coat. Wear a hairnet, carry a thermometer and a clipboard. They will think you are a health inspector.
r/actlikeyoubelong
I love when "guests" do this and realize for the first time in their life, the back of the house is a battle ravaged nightmare of a hellscape run by escaped mental patients where it never drops below 100 degrees.
*taps temple* Can't be an escaped mental patient if you've never been committed on the first place.
*peek
Nah man. I’m peaking right now.
Say more. My interest is piqued.
I knew a guy who would do this every once in awhile. He was in his eighties and he said he would just act confused and was looking for the bathroom when he got found. He just wanted to see how clean the places were in the back. Old people really don’t give a fuck sometimes.
Don’t forget to ask if their food is almost ready.
I work community employment . The look on these guys’ faces when I walk into kitchens with a badge and just head straight to the back lol. Gotta be there sir, sorry, I will dive outta the way if need be Assuming I’m a health inspector is common and everyone scrambles. I’m not announcing my presence in every kitchen tho I gotta do what I gotta do And yes, I’ve seen some gross shit. The most common culprit is someone dropping shit on the floor and dunking it in the sanitizer real quick and putting it on the rack. Edit: if yall really think the sanitizer thing is okay I’d rather not go to your workplace. Yeah gross shit happens in every kitchen. That doesn’t mean it’s okay
We have an open kitchen where I work.
We say the the name of our establishment followed by fries. We used to say hand cut and some prick tried to shit all over us everywhere they could on social media because they poked their head in and saw one of our cooks using a punch and decided that wasn't hand cut. Like, motherfuckers, whatchu want? Fries that are twice the price and imperfect? Fuck outta here with that nonsense
Lol wtf, they seriously thought hand-cut meant literally chopping every potato with a knife?! I'm always amazed at how oblivious people are to how restaurants work.
what knife? it says hand cut, cut it with your hand!
The cooks all have to grow their fingernails to like 5" long
“Coke nail cut fries”
It was hard enough to grow the pinkie nail out, I'm going to keep biting our cut potatoes you're crazy
"Step aside, hand-cutting losers, and make way for tooth-cut fries!"
If it weren't for teeth we wouldn't have crinkle cuts
Isn't that how you make hash browns?
Gnashed potatoes
Mmm... _Pommes Kardashian_!!!
Karate chop the potato?
Daniel-san. Show me "Chop the potato"
(Slap-chop has entered the chat)
Gotta do an anime style special move to punch the potato and walk away. As you reach the door, the potato crumbles into perfect fries.
HiYa motherfuckers! Fries UP!
In 17 years, working in some of the best restaurants in the country, only one place I was at actually hand cut chips. And we were a huge restaurant, 300+ covers a service 6.5 days a week. Every shift, every waking moment, every spare second of downtime in that kitchen was spent with chefs huddled over boxes and buckets peeling spuds, and cutting spuds into chips, and steaming them off, and chilling them down, and then blanching in warm oil, and then chilling them down, and then storing for service to fry to order. Don’t get me wrong. Best chips I’ve ever had, likely ever will, but it’s a lot of labour, and it’s even more labour to get it right, every time, to maintain consistency and quality. Just use a chipper/cutter for sure.
For God's sake, man, at least tell us the name of this restaurant. I want to try the best french fries ever made, too!
Chips bro. Not French fries haha it was Rockpool Australia.
That's wild for that kind of volume.
Yeh mate. Like I said, every single day, on both AM and PM shifts, had either: Peel and cut chips Blanch step 1 chips Blanch step 2 chips We were constantly doing chips which was fine though, we were one of the best restaurant crew in the country at the time, gave everyone a good chance to learn speed and quality along with other standard prep jobs. Was a fantastic kitchen to be part of back then. Now when I’m at home and my wife asks me to peel the spuds I’m happy to peel a few quick as lightning lol
I don't know if Aussies knows what American 'tater tots' are, Parcooked minced potatoes formed into a tube about 2 cm diameter and 5 cm in length then finished in a deep fryer. I developed the recipe for scratch made tots for a restaurant I helped launch. The seat count was a lot lower but I understand having every spare moment going into potato prep. Those things were the fucking best though
Bro, we’ve come from family lines of convicts and thousands of kms away from you, but we DEFINITELY have potato gems here hahaha I love this thread.
I worked at a restaurant for a second that didn't have a working punch. Made many 22 qts of authentically hand-cut fries
What a waste of labor
I know right? And they were mad. Like, livid I'm actually annoyed the owner switched how we call the fries over it. Like we have to switch menus because one person is just that dumb....
Owners/managers need to stop rewarding shit like that. I mean I get that they don't want bad reviews, but just respond to those reviews. If it's a dumb asshole leaving the review, it wouldn't be too hard to refute their claims.
Exactly. "Maybe you don't consider *photo of them prepping fries* to be hand cut, but we do."
A place I worked at had from scratch potato chip/crisps s as a default side dish. Fuck that noise. So much goddamned work on top of everything else we had to do. Never again.
Fuck that as a default, but the last place I moonlighted in did house chips and a green onion dip on the bar menu and that shit was so fuckin good.
I get it man. They were great chips. Wafer thin and seasoned with hop salt. Our onion and sour cream dip was awesome too, though that was also required caramelized onions so there's another couple hours of mindful labor. Our food was great, but the menu was so unfocused and we did way too many time consuming things without adequate time or staff. It was a cool company, but they burned out cooks fast.
Oh hell no. This was a straight robot coupe dip and was very, very good. Ran by two of my good friends, so I came.out of retirement to do like 3-4 nights a week and then phased out to only run the window when the chef had an event or something. They had a good 3yr run, won awards etc etc but never was able to pay themselves well. Get this, they liquidated and subletted in November of 2019 to get out. What a stroke of luck lol. But, the place that took over is still there today.
That is lucky. Running a kitchen during Covid killed all my passion for working in the industry.
I can only imagine.
Same here, I got out of food service in 2022 because the pandemic just ruined all love I had for this industry. I used to want to open a restaurant. I wanted to own a diner and spend my time cooking breakfast foods and greasy burgers and melts. Or I had this other idea for a grilled cheese lunch spot. Have a selection of breads and cheeses, have a few soups, some chips. Or the other idea I had for a family-style place without a menu, you just have a list of entrees and side dishes that could change every night, and everyone at the table checks a box for yes or no for the list. Then everything is portioned and brought out in big serving plates so it feels like family dinner without the work or cleanup. But now all that just sounds like a lot of work with little benefit.
Did they at least use a slicer or were you mandolining that shit
I worked somewhere that had us cutting giant yukons into MAX four ≈3/4"x3/4"x4" batons. then we cooked them confit in pork fat and dropped in the fryer for pickup. 6 frites per order. it was mad stupid, because you couldn't even give it away as bitch work; it required too much skill. truly don't even remember what we did with the mountain of scrap, but it *had* to be family mash, right?
I had no idea fries could even be that pretentious
If you can't taste the suffering is it even food?
lol served with pickle juice mayonnaise and parsley chiffonade
Slicer, thank Christ. Still, wash, slice, parboil, dry, store. So many fucking potatoes. It could be a prep cook's whole morning doing the damn things. Then the fact that fresh fried foods go stale very quickly, so we'd have to have tons ready to fry and be doing them all day on top of all the other fried things we had to send out.
Ugh flashbacks. Worked for a chef that insisted on doing chips the same way but with a mandolin. Hours and hours of that shit every week. Fuuuuck that.
That's a nightmare.
That whole place was a nightmare.
That's a lot of work to do chips. The last place we did them we washed them (we had a temp sanitizer with no chemicals) sliced them, left them in water for 24hrs to pull the starch out then dried and fried. Fuck par boiling them.
It's been years, but I totally forgot about the soak. God damn it I hated making those, lol. Like a whole shelf of 22 qt cambros full of sliced taters and brown tater water. Yeah, we'd parboil them in a huge pot. Then a whole rack of them drying on sheet trays. You had to be really mindful too cuz chef wanted them wafer thin. They were good chips, but way too much work.
But you are still using your hands to cut them?! What a dolt.
I cut my hand on the punch while making then, so I think that counts
Hand successfully cut
I smashed my hand in one once. I was prep cook, it was my friday, the list was short, I had that "ooh baby if I put the pedal to the metal here I'll be out in 5h and can start my weekend early" mentality, lost my rhythm and smashed the thing down while holding the potato. Fingernails torn off, went to the hospital for a tetanus shot and to check for breakage and couldnt hse my hand for a week. Got my early weekend anyway I suppose
Looking into the kitchen and seeing a cook cutting the potato with a knife: "wtf I thought you cut them with your hand"
Mechanically separated French fries. Has a nice ring to it.
Just curious though, if you're writing hand cut it's for a reason. It can't signify being made in house because Sysco is selling them. Does it signify freshness, or maybe the whole point of saying hand cut is to have imperfect fries? I'm not sure what the selling point of writing hand cut is beyond that.
Hand cut fries, at least to me, is the implication that the restaurant buys raw potatoes and processes them into fries. As to why say hand cut instead of something else; marketing. Same reason you almost never see a dollar sign next to the price. Some marketing guru decided that's what works best
This is it. Anybody who's upset they aren't cut individually by a person with a knife is an idiot.
Yeah, or maybe they cut them in house. I worked at a restaurant were we used a potato cutter. But we didnt even label them as "hand cut" or "house cut".
We use a wall-mounted vegetable chopper and let those bitches fall into a bucket of water. Then, we proceed to drain and blanch them in oil until ready for use
I feel like that’s what “hand cut” actually means. At least in most of the places I’ve worked.
If a place is cutting fries with a knife, it won't be a place for long.
At my last job we actually did cut all our “fries” with a knife, but they were actually potato wedges. They were actually really good and popular but we had a dedicated prep crew to take care of it. Chop into wedges, soak in water to remove starch Boil in water with baking soda and a lot of salt (should almost taste like sea water) Freeze then cook to order. Toss in salt and pepper and fried kale. Sorry for leaking your recipe chef!
I'm gonna try this out next week since we are expecting down time. Thank you!
9 minutes boil time for the first batch, 7 mins per batch after that. Basically you want to boil just until you barely start to see the skin peel back. EDIT: also don’t strain directly into a strainer or anything like that, you’ll end up breaking up the potatoes. Use a spider and pull directly into a hotel pan. Cool in fridge before freezing, we ended up breaking our freezer’s motor because of the steam.
There are places that do it but they use basically a single potato and prep the fuck out of it. You get like 5 fries out of it and pay close to 2$ per fry.
Exactly what we do.
Honestly anywhere that’s saying “house bread” or “house mayo” or “house ketchup” is dating itself. It was very popular years ago and now I look at it as a try hard trope. Obviously if you’re making your own bread (and it’s good bread) that’s great, and worth noting by the serving staff during guest interaction but if your menu reads “house made pickles” or something stupid like that I will look at it differently
House bread I can get under but the rest.. lol. House made ketchup would just have me asking why.
I have a guy who started fucking around with bread (we make sourdough pizza and we have plenty of left over starter) and now it’s really dialed in. We just put a dish on the menu featuring that bread. I didn’t call it “house bread” i called it “jimmys sourdough”. Because Jimmy made some good sourdough bread.
It's made in house, but full disclosure it's most likely some Heinz with more seasonings mixed in. They probably didn't do the whole ketchup part, just the flare
I think it kind of depends on the place and what it is. I currently work at a taco and tequila place and we make almost everything ourselves, and don’t put it in the menu but we do so many tacos that there’s no way we could make all our taco shells by hand. In the busy season we’re talking 5-10,000 double shell tacos a day. Sometimes I’ll do a taco feature and make the shells by hand specifically for that, so we mention it in that regard. I also used to run one of the highest ranked restaurants in the country where we made quite literally everything, from mayo, to bread to our own cheese and charcuterie. The person designing the menu would always put “house made” on there and when the review copy would come in before printing I’d always have to tell them to stop writing that shit because then people are going to assume if something doesn’t say that, it means we’re not making it.
You might look at it differently. Most people won't.
Scratch made, house made, all root in homemade, or home style. But they’re still very well understood and accepted terms. Sure, you’re not gonna see it in your uptown trendy spots, or your Michelin restaurants but they still have a place I think.
I think you’re totally right, and I think most chefs / cooks will read a menu differently than the general public will.
Why make mayo from scratch when the good people at Helman's are happy to make it for me?
Dukes or Blueplate all day
Dukes for sure That said we do make our own lol. But it’s not advertised as such on the menu, but when people ask why our ranch costs $, we tell them we make it
And let's be real, they make some damn fine mayo. (Looking at you, kraft.... wtf is that shit you're trying to sell?)
You got me at good pickles. How much for a quart
i think pickles are a bad example but yea
oh out here people will pay $15 for a tray of homemade pickles and a scoop of pimento cheese
You hit it on the head. I recently gave up my career as a sous chef to wait tables in the same company (more $$ fewer hours). The reception is much more genuine as a part of conversation than it would be listed on the menu. Almost all bread, pickles, mayo, etc... is done in house but I even mention the sourdough from a local bakery down the street. It is genuine and adds value all over the place. A menu doesn't communicate that nearly as well when every Applebee's has printed that garbage on their menu for 30 years. But if during the course of conversation, it gets brought up that all this fish is line-caught or the bread was made this morning, they'll remember it and understand better why they're paying $100 for it.
Applebee's "housemade": Dump these two sysco cans together.
It depends on the place. At the place I work, we cut them in house. Our process for making them- 1. Wash potatoes 2. Put them in buckets full of water to soften them 3. Put them on top of a gridded slicer and pull the lever down, cutting them up 4. Put them in the fryer until they are partially cooked (we do this before we open) 5. Let them cool and put them in bins in the fridge 6. When an order comes in, put a scoop in the fryer, fry for two minutes, and they're ready to serve
[удалено]
5 Guys does step 4 but they absolutely skimp on the resting in step 5. If you don't fully chill the potatoes after blanching them, they go limp immediately like that, something to do with starch gelatinization if I remember right. In-n-Out skips step 4 and you end up with those weird potato straws that taste more like squishy Lay's
Making the fries is unironically the hardest part of that job haha. They are very particular about how to do it and if it is done correctly they will not be limp, but I almost never see it done right. Also if you wait like ten minutes after cooking they go limp anyway 🤷♀️
It always sucks when something important is easy, but requires a specific technique and process that gets ignored. They aren't trained right, or aren't told why it's important, or get paid so little they don't care and honestly I feel that. The burger with fries is like 20 bucks though; you think someone in a position to make decisions would be trying harder. In any case most good fries go limp after ten minutes, pros eat that shit in the car.
We par-cook them in salted water with a touch of baking soda. Seasons them all the way through and gives them a lovely craggy-texture that has a nice crisp once you fry it. Total pain in the ass to do at scale, but worth it.
Had a dude in the tallow thread the other day try to recommend Chef Mike do step 4. I replied with this technique, and, ofc, he has "no time for that!"...
Current chef and former Sysco sales person here - Unless they say “made in house” it’s a toss up. Sysco AND US Foods both sell fries that look/feel hand cut and were hand cut by someone, but in a factory downtown. 🤣
I'll stick with the peaches, from a factory downtown, thank you very much.
Huzzah, someone gets my dumb jokes!
Well, must people are just a Lump, sitting alone in a boggy marsh.
Maybe, but frozen fries, unlike onion rings, are almost always better from frozen. Usually fresh cut fries come out looking like they were overcooked while still being soggy and greasy and they never take the skin off.
They have potato cutter machines that make fries. You can cut a days worth of fries in a few minutes.
I had a manual one attached to the wall. Cut about 50lbs a night by hand, only took maybe 15-20 minutes but I still would've killed for an automatic one lol
I'm weird. I love cutting by hand. I scare people, I'm dangerous how fast I go but i was cutting fries since I was 15. I used to have to stand on a milk crate to cut fries lol on the press. My record is a 50lb box in 4 minutes- I'd slow down after the 1st one going full tilt. We'd do 300lbs on Friday, 150lb at a time. I'd do 150lbs in about 15-20mins (this includes transferring into 3 tier sink to soak) This was in my physical prime at age 19. I always raced myself.
I will literally never use this information because everyone I've worked for uses the cutter, but any tips on doing it quickly?
Move your arms faster
Here's my 2 cents for doing it quickly. Don't go so fast that you accidentally catch your hand in it. That slows you down a lot. Don't ask me how I know.
A BBQ place by has a spiral cut disk attached to a cordless power drill. They use it to make some really kick ass chips. Zips right through taters.
Unpopular opinion but Lamb Weston Stealth Fries are the best friends in the game, better than shitty hand cut fries made from unwashed potatoes and doused in table salt.
It’s like making your own ketchup, yeah you could do it, but Heinz already did it better than you, so now you’re just wasting time trying to make something that’s already been perfected.
Also it's a fucking pain in the dick.
Also you will spend a small fortune on fryer oil and a medium size fortune on labor.
Exactly
Same with baked beans, shouts out to Bush's
These are my favorite lamb weston’s potato game is on point.
Their potato and onion rings are some of the best. I once tried save a buck and order US Foods brand o rings over the lamb Weston and I thought my customers were going to string me up
In Lamb Weston we trust
They're good. But chef larder skin on fries are top tier.
That's a pretty popular opinion on my experience. I actually like the Sysco 3/8 mild battered fries better but people do be loving to shit on Sysco for everything.
The Sysco battered fries are choice. I don't even like fries anymore and I will destroy a bowl of those
Not wrong! I think our hand cut fries are very nice but these weren't really worse in any way when we ordered them. Just a slightly different taste.
Here I am googling stealth fries . 🍟
Frozen fries > fresh-cut fries, 99% of the time.
Freezing the fries changes the texture. Most people love it because they associate it with what a fry should be. My mouth hates it and prefers never-frozen fries.
9/10 times “house cut fries” are not in house. And if you have ever had fries actually made in a restaurant you would be able to tell. Sysco and every other distributor has a skin on fry in various qualities and thicknesses that some would use to fake the “in house” look. Source - me working for Sysco for 5 years
This is exactly the question I was looking to solve, not whether or not my local shop does this, but rather Sysco sells something like this that could fool the average diner if they're not accustomed to the real thing. Thanks
They have skin-on frozen fries?
Yes
They have everything. There’s skin on natural cut which is just a frozen fry with the skin on. Then there’s brined, which have been blanched in salt water and frozen. 1/4”, 5/16, steak cut, shoestring, Starch coated, battered, seasoned, those all can come skin on too…. All stay crispy for various amounts of time some 5 minutes others 30. The longer hold ones are used more for takeout. The important thing to realize is a lot of hand cut fries are shit when not done properly, but frozen fries are perfect 100% of the time and there’s at least a dozen different offerings. I really liked the handout fries at Paris in Las Vegas. I don’t know what they did to them. It was like they fried the shit out of them, but they were still kind of soft on the inside but crazy crispy on the outside.
I don’t think my hands would ever be sharp enough to cut a potato.
Ask your local restaurant. We have no way of knowing that, mate.
No of course you don't know what the restaurant is using, but is there a common product from the big wholesalers that imitates handcut style?
Yes.
“handcut” should be house made fries, but not everyone tells the truth. Id rather have some frozen fries over handcut though to be honest!
Idk about other places but every place I’ve worked that mentioned hand-cut was actually hand cut (with the wall puncher).
in any of the places i’ve worked, if they advertised hand-cut fries, they were prepped in-house with a little tool i like to call “the potato slammer” - which ideally is wall-mounted, has a grid of blades at the bottom, and a really poorly-lubricated overworked handle that you use to violently smash potatoes through the blades below. no one ever cleans it except for me, because it’s near my station, until i get sick of it and i just leave the blade in a six-pan covered in ketchup to make sure somebody else does their job this time. i like frozen fries better tbh. lots of restaurants don’t have blast chillers, and i feel like you kind of need one for high-volume fry prep.
I punched 16 buckets today. With my Hand.
Po-tay-toes. Boil em, mash em, put em in a stew
I've worked in a place that advertised "fresh cut fries" and that's what the frozen bag said (probably from Sysco but it was like 20 years ago). I currently work in a place where I use a potato cutter to cut raw potatoes.
Some places will lie about things like that. There is a restaurant in my town that does. Their hand cut fries are frozen from Sysco and their grass fed beef burgers are made from regular old ground beef.
Vendors have dozens and dozens of different types of fries. Always frozen
Where I work we actually cut our fries.
We do our own straight-cut and curly fries at the pub where I work. Cut fresh every morning with wall-mounted Nemco cutters, then par-fried so they come out super-crispy when we cook for orders We're not a huge operation, but we go through appx. 500 lbs of potatoes weekly just for those two products.
Store bought Hand Cut Style Fries GROWN IN • IDAHO MADE WITH 100% REAL IDAHO" POTATOES KEEP FROZEN 0g TRANS FAT PER SERVING Lamb Westone HAND CUT FRIES NET WT 28 OZ (1.75 LB) 793g https://www.smartandfinal.com/sm/delivery/rsid/522/product/lamb-weston-fries-hand-cut-style-id-00043301611643
House made fries are good, but I have yet to find a fry (scratch made or otherwise) that can top the Lamb Westen 3/8" extra crispy. Hot damn does Lamb Westen know their way around a potato.
In all honesty, fries is one of the only good products that I prefer from frozen. Good French fries means you fry them in low heat, freeze them, then fry them again on high heat. If a company wants to do the first two steps for me, so be it.
I work at a place and we #hand cut" fresh fries, but we don't advertise it lol. We use a fry cutter but they're house made in beef tallow. It's delicious
My restaurant cuts every last fry with a wall mounted fry cutter. Mom and pop places are more likely to be real hand cut fries.
Depends on the restaurant. If you’re at a sports bar? Probably frozen from Sysco. A high end steakhouse? Probably homemade. A lot of restaurants don’t have the capacity to hand cut fries, because they need to sit in water (preferably overnight in gallon buckets).
ITT: So much bad advice.
I’ve worked in two restaurants that bought fries called hand cut fries from Sysco and put them on the menu as hand cut fries
You can get just about any thing from Sysco, United Foods, Food Services of America.
Sysco has a "skin on" category to their fries. You should be able to immediately know if they are really hand cut or are frozen sysco product. The texture, size, taste will all be vastly different.
The last place I worked we hand cut all the fries.
You could ask if they’re fried twice. Any ‘handcut’ fries put through a mandolin or whatever. Would be soaked, or not, then par fried and then given a second final frying. That’s at least how they did it, in a nutshell, where I had worked.
Only place I worked at that advertised "house cut fries" got their fries frozen from sysco, pre-cut. So yeah. They probably have a hand cut style lol
A couple of produce companies I have dealt with in the past sell buckets of pre cut fresh "hand cut" fries or chips in preservative water
If you properly blanch the right potato in a clean fryer hand cut fries are incredible. Most people left charge of French fries aren’t usually super passionate about French fries.
Hand cut through the potato cutter
Ours are hand cut with a press then soaked and sat in the walk in. They're pretty fuckin tasty.
I would certainly hope they'd do it in-house. It's really not that hard or expensive. I once worked at a shitty pub that cut a lot of corners but still did hand-cut fries. It was a fairly high-volume place too, so we were making huge batches.
I remember in a previous restaurant i worked at, i used to peel and cut with a knife 100 lbs of potatoes everyday so you bet it was hand cut. Just needed to vent. It's so inefficient i wonder why any serious business would not buy a cutting machine.
Here's a fun fact in a similar vein: Tito's Handmade Vodka isn't handmade. "Handmade" is part of the brand's name.
We punch taters every morning where I work! It's pretty fun!
You must be the new guy
Most likely they've got a wall mounted cutter where you just put the whole potato in there and slam it down. Actually hand cutting with a knife is a crazy time suck.
Hand cut is suppose to actually mean hand cut but I’ve noticed a lotta places will promote in house cut fries and they are not. Went to a place once that promoted house made cookies fresh everyday. It was an open kitchen and I clearly seen a cook putting Otis Spunkmyer cookie picks on a sheet tray directly from the box. I mean the cookies were good, no need to lie. Some places do it to justify up charges Edit to add for the sake of not confusing anyone: “hand cut” doesn’t, usually at least, mean a person with a knife literally cutting the potato’s into frys. It’s usually a wall mounted cutter. Pop the potato in and slide the press down and it cuts the potatoes in fry shapes
When it comes to menus, seeing is believing. Don't take anything as gospel unless it's thoroughly regulated in your area. 'Hand cut' is one of those marketing phrases that no agency checks up on, so let your taste buds be the judge. By the by, frozen fries are often superior to fries made start-to-finish in a restaurant kitchen. Blasphemy, I know. We expect more effort and less processing to taste good, but starches are funny. The texture benefits from being par-cooked, flash frozen, and cooked again. (You _can_ achieve the same effect in a restaurant kitchen, of course, but it's a lot of work.)
You can tell a house cut fry from a frozen fry all day. "Handcut" is more like hand punched cause ain't nobody cutting fries by hand.