Hot Take: Soggy Fries Are the Best Fries
Photo by Prateek Jaiswal/Unsplash
In this moment of social and political upheaval, there are issues that deeply divide us, pitting neighbor against neighbor and mother against daughter. Perhaps one of the most difficult and intractable of these issues is the debate over fry texture. I know, I know: It seems like the consensus has settled on crispy fry dominance. Some people crave that crisp you get when you enjoy a fry that was, just minutes before, bubbling away in a vat of probably week-old oil. And as a girl who generally loves texture and crunch, I can totally understand why someone would uphold the crispy fry as the platonic ideal.
But while I understand crispy fry people and do my best to accept them for who they are, I have a confession to make. I, for one, prefer soggy fries. Crispy fries are fine, and—don’t get me wrong—I’ll definitely eat them. But when I am greeted with a delightfully soggy, limpid, flaccid fry dangling out of its paper packaging, I am delighted and entranced. Even better if it’s slightly undercooked and generally anemic-looking. And I think it’s time for all of us to appreciate the blessing that is a soggy fry.
Anatomy of a Soggy Fry
Not every soft fry is considered a soggy fry. For example, crinkle cut fries are often very clearly not crispy or crunchy in any sense. Despite their ridges, they often come out soft and unremarkable, but it’s important to realize that these fries are not, in fact, properly soggy. For one, they’re usually too thick to literally bend from the weight of their oil content. Secondly, those ridges ruin everything—the last thing you should want in a soggy fry is texture.
A properly soggy fry should be thin. In fact, the thinner, the better. It should not be brown or overcooked; even if it has the right texture, too much intense heat on a potentially soggy fry can ruin it. Additionally, the best soggy fries have some length to them. Those little ends that fall to the bottom of your fry vessel are too small to hold their own in the fryer—they almost always come out over-crisped.