Food - Drink
The Unexpected Method McDonald's Originally Used To Make Its Iconic Fries
By AUTUMN SWIERS
McDonald’s fries are one item that the famous chain has served since it debuted in 1949, and according to HowStuffWorks, fries are the most popular item on the menu today. However, while McDonald’s current fry-making process is the big factory operation you might expect, it looked a lot different when the place first opened its doors.
Back in the days of the fast food restaurant's infancy, the now-famous McDonald brothers dried potatoes outside in the California desert air for days at a time before cooking them. The resulting fries “had this extra crispness to them that made them better than any fry you’d ever had,” says food history writer Adam Chandler.
This odd method is how McDonald's became one of the first fast food restaurants to serve fries, which were usually far too labor-intensive to make. Today, McDonald’s potatoes are fed through a fry-cutting machine that slices them at 65 MPH, then the fries are dunked in an “ingredient bath,” dried, fried, and flash-frozen to be shipped.
