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Even when we buy a five pound bag of frozen French fries, we have a technique for cooking them that produces the best results for us. We always look for the "restaurant style". These are usually already partially browned. While the fries and oil are still at room temp, we put them together and then plug in the frier. Doing it this way has produced markedly less "grease" on the paper towels we set them on out of the cooker.

Being lazy in the kitchen, when we make fries from raw potatoes, we usually have "skillet fries" which go well with breakfast and brunch. But, not too often for these. They are always cooked in an iron skillet with canola oil.

Back in the early 1960's, When I lived in Washington State, I had the opportunity to watch the process for producing commercial fries.

From the field, they wash, blanch, and then skin. Then they rinse again, slice, water soak and blanch, water soak and rinsed multiple times, and then fried in oil for about 1-3 minutes. Then they are quick frozen, QC'd one last time, and packaged. I was only a half hour drive from one of the largest potato processing plants anywhere. We used to to go down there for part time jobs around the grounds and they would make sure we had a 20 pound box of freshly frozen fries when we finished. Oh, yeah, we also got paid for our work.

Today, that same plant is the primary producer of French fries for McDonalds. Things are done slightly different today, but the process still gets the starch levels low and the blanching and brief frying steps are still essential. I really like my French fries. But, if I've gotta use raw potatoes, then most of the time I'll just take mine baked.

BTW, you can use this same method of preparing the raw potatoes to make string-type hash browns, and use a mandolin to do the cutting and get great shoestring style.

Good luck, Robert. It's a lot of trouble and time to do it like the commercial houses, but if you hit the formula just right, it's worth it in the flavor you get.