Fry me a river

For some completely random reason that will not be explained I have invited a guest speaker to introduce tonight's blog, the legendary Alfred Hitchcock whose name keeps popping up for one reason or another just lately. So here he is again.

Good Evening!

Thank-you Alfred. We could have done with you to introduce last night's horror story. Anyway, this evening I shall mostly be talking to you about the exciting world of chips, and my relationship with them down the years. From chip shops to the latest hi-tech gadgets, this is where it is at.

I became aware of chips at a relatively early age, as both of my grandmothers were a dab hand with the old chip pan. Now I am fairly sure that it is a universal constant, that no matter how much parents battle to get their children to eat healthily, the more laid back grandparents when given free rein for the odd day are quite happy to spoil the little darlings. Perhaps it's a revenge thing. Maybe we worry about it more in our 30s and 40s than we will in our 60s and 70s. Who knows - however, my memory of chiildhood is of parents trying to get me to eat things I didn't want to eat and always looking forward to going to grannies where we got whatever we want - sweets, treats, and fish fingers and chips - cooked the old fashioned way and with lard.

I picture myself in 30 years time, Ollie bringing the kids to me for a weekend and giving me a good lecture about what they should and shouldn't eat, remembering all the battles I had with him, and thinking, yeah, forget that mate, we're having fun! Come on boys off to Maccy D's - you're only here for a day, I won't have to deal with the consequences!

Now as time wore on, and my grandparents got older I went less and less often, and home cooked chips disappeared off the menu. Oven chips were invented - tried and basically spat out. Grim. I was never a huge fan of chip shop chips either - often found them rather greasy. So once I found myself with my own place in the early 90s, it was with great excitement that I made my first foray into the world of deep fat frying.

Basic fryers are safer than the open sort as at least they are enclosed, however you then can't see what you are doing, and making chips is quite an art form. And every fryer is different. Each time I have replaced one, I have had to start again from scratch.

There are a few basic rules to making your own chips - like making sure you wash the starch off, and thoroughly drying them before you start, but even so, getting temperatures and timings right, not to mention double or triple cooking them  and all of that takes time to perfect.

I use Maris Piper potatoes and make my chips crinkle cut using a cutter I happened on purely by chance when I was in a Ladbrokes in Headington one cold day in the harsh winter of '91. The fire alarm went off and I was forced to take shelter from the snow in a small family run hardware shop round the corner. Missing the winner of the 12:40 at Lingfield was small price to pay for the years of pleasure given to me by my £1 crinkle cutter.

My most recent fryer was a more professional one, here's a picture of it.

Two for the price of one. Well not actually
as it cost twice as much as the old one I had.

This is an open fryer, with the advantage of being able to cook two batches separately, handy when the kids are screaming for theirs first. Or being able to cook chips alongside something else as shown here - but quite honestly I never cooked anything but chips as it instantly taints the oil and it has to be changed.

And believe me, that's a big expense. If you are only frying chips you can get away with not changing it for maybe 8-10 uses but that's all after which it really starts to stink. And being an open fryer (that lid stays off) it really does stink the house out. Plus the fact that the price of cooking oil has absolutely skyrocketed in the last few years - more than any other supermarket product I can think of. I have just checked the Tesco website and 1 litre of Sunflower Oil is now retailing at £1.69, that is at least double what it was as recently as 3 or 4 years ago. In fact I have done some research on the internet, and it seems that as recently as June 2007 the going rate for a litre was around 59p in all supermarkets. And there's no cheap alternative - you might find something for maybe around the £1.50 mark now in Lidl or Aldi and that's the rock bottom price.

Now when you consider my fryer held 4 litres, that's nearly 7 quid just to change the oil. No longer economically viable. Plus having a house that smells like a chip shop half the time is not particularly nice. And there are other things too. The thermostats go on these things - leaving it to get dangerously hot, and mine has not been unknown to foam up either leaving the fat about to flow over the edge at 150c+. Not what you need with two little kids around - a river of burning hot lava making it's way across the kitchen. So the decision was made - the fryer had to go.

Even if it did make the best chips ever, as I am assured by all who eats them, I do.

So time to move on...I had become aware that there were a number of new and exciting gadgets on the market that promise to deliver the same great tasting chips but using a fraction of the oil using new technology. All of these can be found on pages 918-919 of the latest Argos catalogue, but basically there are 3 of them, the Breville Halo, the Philips Airfryer and the Tefal Actifry. All of which make various claims as to their effectiveness, as usual I consulted reviews from a variety of sources when deciding which one to chance my arm with. 

Here I ran into a bit of a problem - all 3 had quite a few very bad reviews, along with lots of good ones so I had to do a lot of research. Of the 3, the Actifry came in for some of the heaviest criticism, with reviews referring to the things catching fire (as featured on watchdog), things breaking off, and all manner of horror stories. Most of the complaints about the others were focused more on their ineffectiveness at being able to do what they claimed.

This is where digging deeper is needed. In the end, I identified that most of the issues with the Actifry referred to the earlier models from 2009, and that the newer larger family size one had dealt with (though not completely eliminated these issues). Still it did seem that those who had products that did break were able to claim back on them through the warranty so I decided to chance my arm and go for the new 1.5kg family size version.

No 4 litres of oil needed here - this small spoonful suffices.

Not of course from Argos though, they can whistle for their £220, instead I purchased from Amazon for £150, making a cool saving of £70 - presumably Argos must sell some at that price though to maintain it, still there will always be a few muppets getting ripped off by not shopping around.

OK it's taking a risk, but what's life about if not taking a risk - I've done very well with some of the other gadgets I've purchased. It hasn't actually arrived yet so I will let you know. But if it can make chips that are even 75% as good as the ones I used to I will be happy.

And there are other benefits too. Once you put the lid on this thing and let it do it's work, you don't have to look after it - so you can actually concentrate on other parts of the cooking or answer the door or phone without having to worry about the house burning down. Another thing I noticed in many of the reviews was that apparently there is a huge amount of differences in calories to cooking this way to deep frying - with many people talking about losing stones in weight. Now don't worry fans, I shan't be letting go of my famous shape that easily, but I guess the odd pound or two off won't see me wasting away. 

Also you can use any type of oil you like in it apparently so that's got interesting possibilities. Garlic and herb infused olive oil chips...why not?

Practice makes perfect - I shall have to have a few trial runs and see how it goes, will probably take a while to get right. And as long as I am gentle with it and don't bash about the parts that reviews suggest may be a little fragile - I think this could be the future of the humble chip in our house!

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Jason xx