Chris Young
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2025
10:43 · 1.3M views · Feb 17, 2024
Chef Chris Young shows a simplified triple-cooked method for making crisp frozen fries in an air fryer, based on Heston Blumenthal's technique.
Cited as proof that frozen fries can be excellent with the right cooking method.
3 comments from Hacker News
Yep, for those who have an air fryer, have a look at his air fries video : this video He basically invented triple cooked fries at the fat duck (precooked at 70° celsius then fried twice, with airing/freezing steps in between), and it's a pretty close approximation of them done much simpler.
> They do not behave meaningfully different in any way from a good convection oven, countertop or otherwise, and are less versatile (and yes, cheap convection ovens do have worse circulation, but good ones do not have this problem, or even just have an air fry mode anyway). Chris Young, of Modernist Cuisine and Chefsteps fame, disagrees with you. There’s a difference in the physical construction of actual air fryers vs just fast convection ovens. Every convection oven/air fryer combo I’ve ever seen has the fan on the side, so the behavior and performance is different. See: this video
> My experience is frozen fries are mediocre at best. Probably depends how they’re cooked, see Chris Young’s video as an example. this video