These aren’t really a meal on their own, but they make a good side. And as a college student, I know that sometimes it’s three in the morning and you just have to have a plateful of fries. I have to warn you though, cooking french fries takes time. It doesn’t require a whole lot of ingredients and is actually pretty easy to do, but it’s a bit tedious. Still, I’ve done it a few times now, so I figured I might as well share.

As far as ingredients go, it’s basically just potatoes and oil. Usually I assume you’ve got some oil or butter to keep food from sticking, and cooking well, but for this recipe, you really need oil. Recipes online recommend you fill 1/3 of the pan with oil. A good rule of thumb is to make sure the potatoes are covered (or at least mostly covered) with oil. So, you’ve got the potatoes and oil! What next?

Cut up potatoes in nice, french fry sized chunks (you can peel the potatoes first if you want, but leaving the skins on won’t kill you)

Pour oil into the pan

Heat up the pan

Put the potatoes into the oil (if you don’t have enough oil in the pan, add some more)

Fry the potatoes (try to resist constantly poking at them– they grow soft and might fall apart. Wait a bit, till they’re starting to brown, and then flip the potatoes)

Place them onto a plate with some paper towels to soak up the excess oil

Salt/pepper them at will

The step that takes the longest is probably the frying, if you’re trying to get it just right, but the chopping of the potatoes takes a while too. My friend and I usually cut up 4-5 small-to-medium sized potatoes for the two of us. If it’s just you, three small potatoes should be enough.

There are a few variations on french fries. You can garlic them, and have garlic fries. You can pour melted cheese over them, or chilli, or both, and have chilli cheese fries. Or you can just pour out a dab of ketchup and mayonaise like I do.