Beer French Frys

We eat a lot of potatoes in the summer. I usually cut them into planks, brush them with olive oil and sprinkle on some garlic or grill seasoning before Mrblocko tosses them on the grill.  These are so super tasty, especially when Mrblocko gets them nice and crispy brown.  Yum!  But as summer winds down, as delicious as the potato planks are, we all start to get a bit tired of them.

As the weather is finally below steamy boiling hot, and almost, dare I say chilly,  I've been wanting to use the oven more.  I thought we should switch things up, and give these Beer soaked frys from edible perspective a try.

I sliced up 3 large yellow flesh red skinned potatoes the size of baking potatoes.  This made a lot more fries than I expected.  The above picture is of the leftover fries after one meal.  We totally pigged out on fries and still had at least one huge serving of fries left.  Blockette and I ate these fries the next day.  They weren't nearly as tasty the first time around as they got a bit dry reheating them on the skillet.

The leftovers were probably on the dry side because I baked  the fries the first time for 70 min.  The recipe says to cook them for 40 min to 1 hour.   We like our fries really brown and crispy though, so I just kept checking on them until they looked the desired color.

I soaked the taters in Fat Tire Ale.  There was no particular reason for choosing this beer other than it was the only Ale on sale when I went to the grocery store.  I had baked with Fat Tire before so, even though I don't drink beer/ale, I knew it would yield some tasty results.

The blogger over at Edible Perspective said that half the beer gets absorbed into the potatoes. I was curious if this was indeed true, so I measured the remaining beer after the tater's 15 min dip in the hops-y hot tub. Almost exactly half the beer was left.  Pretty cool.  Yup.  Those spuds were nice and sloshed.

I was worried that perhaps Blockette wouldn't like the fries.  She is fickle when it comes to food cooked with alcohol.  She totally surprised me and said, "These were the best fries ever.  Better than from a store." I think she meant restaurant, but whatever.  She loved them and that's all that mattered.

Mrblocko and I really dug them too.  We agreed that these won't ever take the place of planked potatoes on the grill in the summer, but they are a nice change of pace when the weather is cool enough to use the oven.

The Edible Perspective posted a sweet potato version that I am going to have to try as well.  I just realized that I've never made sweet potato fries from scratch before.  I'm going to have to remedy that with a batch of drunk sweet fries in the not too distant future.


Garlic Salted, Beer Baked French Fries from Edible Perspective [serves 4]
1 bottle New Belgium Somersault beer [or similar]
3 russet potatoes [~1 3/4lbs]
3 cloves garlic, minced
3T olive oil
1-1 1/2t salt
1/4-1/2t black pepper

Preheat oven to 425F.  Scrub potatoes, and cut per instructions above. leave the skins on. In a large bowl, soak the cut fries, in 1 bottle of beer. Let soak for 15min, tossing 1-2x. Drain beer and toss with olive oil, garlic, salt + pepper, until well coated. Line a large baking sheet with parchment [optional, but nice for quick clean up!] and spread the fries, in a single layer on the pan. Use two pans, if needed. You don’t want them stacked. Bake for 40min – 1hr, depending on how crispy you like them, tossing 3-4 times. Add more salt + pepper to your liking.