French fried potatoes have long been popular as a convenience food, particularly potatoes that have been frozen, and may be easily reheated. Oil has traditionally been the secret behind making a fantastic fry because it tastes good, and creates a pleasing texture and mouth feel. However from a health standpoint, fried foods, including French fries has a terrible reputation among nutritionists since as much as 20% of French fry calories come from oil.
Conventional French fries product is made from specific types of whole raw potatoes such as russet potatoes, processed in several steps starting with steam-peeling and blanching at 160-180° F. for about 15-40 minutes in order to remove natural sugars, to stabilize enzymes and to create a good texture. Blanched, steam-peeled whole potatoes are cut into typical French fries strips, which are inspected electronically for defects. The inspected strips are placed onto shakers in order to remove those pieces, which are too small or misshapen from the main processing line. Blanched strips are coated with a sugar solution for flavor and to give a golden coloring. The sugar coated strips are removed from the sugar solution, drained and placed inside a gas-powered dryer to remove moisture, then coated with a thin batter. The battered French fries strips are put in a fryer for 45-120 seconds at 350-270° F. The fried French fries strips are pre-cooled by placing them inside a freezing-tunnel for 15 minutes to lower the temperature to 0° F., and then placed inside a freezer at −40° F. for 30 minutes, prior to packaging them into bags which are stored into a cold storage.
French fries are conventionally prepared by deep frying the frozen product in oil. Therefore, the conventional French fries at the point of consumption by individual consumers have been fried in oil at rather high temperatures two times, which means that its fat content is between 15% to 20%. It is well known that French fries may contain a large amount of fat (usually saturated) from frying and from some condiments or topping and may be bad for the health of those who consume them regularly. Some researchers have also suggested that the high temperatures used for frying such dishes may have results harmful to health (i.e., acrylamides). In the United States about ¼ of vegetables consumed are prepared as French fries and are believed to contribute to widespread obesity. For example, frying French fries in beef tallow adds saturated fat to the diet. Replacing tallow with tropical oils simply substitutes one saturated fat for another. Moreover, replacing tallow with partially hydrogenated oil reduces cholesterol but adds trans fat. Therefore, there is a need of a method for preparing healthier frozen French fry-style food products.