If you haven't tried the modernist triple cooked chips, you're missing out. Heston invented it, but there are a bunch of variations out there. I started out with the ChefSteps version, but now have my own approach. Start with Russet or Maris Piper potatoes (depending on where you are).
The technique begins with an initial blanching step to cook the potato and wake up the starches. You want to cook them until they are almost falling apart (and some will fall apart). Doing this in a water bath is more gentle because there's less agitation and bumping around; you'll break fewer fries if you blanch them sous vide, but if you don't care then that's not really necessary. Half the time, I just boil them on the stovetop. If I'm feeling precious, I'll go all-out. Everything's a trade off.
Anyway, after the initial blanch, the fries are drained and allowed to dry. The easiest thing to do is move them to a rack, let them cool down to room temp, and then move them to the fridge to let the surface moisture flash off. Then there's a low-temp fry step. You fry the blanched potatoes at a low temp (like 275F/130C) to start to set the crust and to drive out moisture. Once that's done, you drain the fries, allow them to cool, and then freeze them.
From frozen, it's just a quick trip through some hot oil. By the time the outside looks done, the inside will be thawed. And delicious.
That freezing step is cool because it allows you to do all this pain-in-the-butt work before hand in a big batch, and then you have fancy modernist fries in your freezer ready to deep fry at your leisure. That's the only way I can justify doing all that work (unless it's for a special occasion or something).
There are a lot of variations in this framework. People have put their fries in vacuum chambers, ultrasonic baths, and enzyme solutions to try to produce a maximally crusty and delicious surface. I've tried two of those three, and found the Pectinex SPL pre-soak on the raw potatoes to be the cheapest, easiest way to enhance the surface texture. That's Dave Arnold's trick. But it's not really necessary. None of the fussy Modernist epicycles are really necessary to pull off a delicious triple cooked chip.
Just follow the formula: blanch/boil, fry, fry.
Examples:
3X Cooked Chips with Methocel F50 battered fish. This was a lard fry, if I recall correctly.
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Here are some sliders and fries. I made the slider patties from some freshly ground pastured chuck. Then I froze them. The "pickup" on this meal was to deep fry the fries, then deep fry the burgers. I used my late grandmother's french fry cutter instead of a knife on this one. It is not the best version of that tool, but it keeps the dream alive, so to speak.
Here's a ChefSteps iteration doing thin-cut fries. They have a recipe for the thick-cut ones as well.
Fry fry fry, agent Starling... Fry fry fry...
