Heston's Triple Cooked Chips

As the name of this blog would suggest, I absolutely love chips. Everything from French Fries to soggy vinegar-doused chip shop chips, but none more so than thick, hand-cut, super crispy chips. I have attempted to create this sort of chip before, but never quite got past 'medium crisp' to 'super crisp'.

Ingredients

Maris Piper potatoes
Groundnut / Grapeseed oil
Sea Salt

  
In search of chip perfection, I turned (naturally) to Heston and his golden chip beauties. There is no getting away from the fact that this recipe is a bit of a palaver, but you can prepare up to a certain point in advance leaving the last fry until the last minute. 

Having peeled the potatoes the first challenge was to cut them to the right size and to keep this size consistent to ensure even cooking. My ideal size was as above, however due to annoyingly irregular shaped potatoes (and nothing at all to do with poor knife skills!) I ended up with a range of different sizes as follows:

 Bugger. Resolving to do better next time, I carry on. Rinse the potatoes under running water for around 5 minutes to get rid of the starch.
 

Next cover with cold water and simmer for around 20-30 minutes or until almost falling apart. At this stage I would normally add salt to the water but the recipe didn't say to do this, so I obediently left out the salt.

 Once cooked, carefully remove the chips and arrange on a rack. When cooled a bit place in the freezer for at least an hour.

Then heat groundnut or grapeseed oil (around 10cm deep) to 130° and fry the chips in batches (making sure not to overcrowd the pan) for around 5 minutes.

The chips will still be pale at this stage. Drain on kitchen paper then place on a rack and put back in the freezer for at least an hour. You can prepare up to this stage in advance leaving the last fry until you plan to serve.

                            Finally heat the oil to 180° and fry in batches until golden (about 7 minutes).

                                                    Sprinkle generously with sea salt.

Despite the irregular shapes, these were everything you could ever want from a chip. Fluffy in the centre, super crispy on outside and deliciously salty. Definitely my most successful chip cooking to date and well worth the effort. Let the gorging commence!