In our book we discuss the benefits of cryo-blanching. The smaller the ice crystals the smaller the holes punctured in the ingredient and the finer the texture we ended up with in our results. In some cases we did not need to freeze the ingredients all the way through to appreciate the results of the freezing. In our quest for great French fries we applied our cryo-blanching approach with a calculated goal. We used liquid nitrogen to freeze only the exteriour of our blanched potatoes, making small micro-fissures in the cell walls so that when the fry was fried we would increase the surface area and thus the crispness level. Recently we were able to test this appoach in the wild. The results were outstanding. The potatoes, which we started in cold, salted water, were cooked until tender, cooled, dipped briefly in liquid nitrogen, defrosted and then fried produced the tastiest fries we have yet to cook. It may sound like a long proces but it is relatively easy in practice and produces exponentially higher quality results than the classic technique of peeling and frying twice.
In our picture we have nitro-blanched fries on the right next to simply blanched fries. There is a learning curve involved in experimentation but the results are essential in determining whether the ideas are sound. Once we worked out the kinks it produced incredible crisp and delicious fries and that is always worth the effort involved.
