How to Make Homemade French Fries

3 large russet potatoes
1 quart vegetable oil
Sea salt
Ketchup or other dipping sauces

Place the potato on the flat side and then slice the potato lengthwise into 1/4-inch planks. Stack two of these planks on top of each other, and then slice into 1/4-inch sticks. Typically, the more narrow you slice, the crispier the end product will be. But be careful not to go too thin! You don't want your homemade French fries to fall apart during the frying process.

Pro Tip: Slice 1/4 inch off of one side of the of the potato. This creates a sort of flat edge for your to balance the potato on, and it will help the potato from slipping when you're slicing. No one wants fileted fingers!

Let the potato sticks soak in the water for about 10 minutes. Then rinse the potato sticks, and then place them on baking sheets lined with paper towels and pat them dry. The process of soaking the potatoes before you fry them is to remove some of that excess starch from the surface. If you don't, you'll end up with unwanted potato debris, floating around in your oil!

While you're waiting for your potato sticks to soak, heat oil in a large pot to about 300 degrees F.

The fries will need to be fried for about 5 minutes; working in smaller batches is easiest. Once the fries have reached that light golden color, remove them from the oil with tongs or a spider basket and place the, onto a baking sheet lined with paper towels.

Let them cool before moving on to the next step!

If you're going to may double fry French fries, which we highly recommend, the oil temperature for the second round of frying should be hotter than the first round. We recommend keeping the oil around 350-375 degrees F for the second fry, but you can play around with different temperatures to see what produces the crunch you're looking for.

While you're fries are cooling from their first fry, go ahead and increase the temperature of the oil. When it is ready, fry the potatoes until crispy and golden, about 3-4 minutes, working in batches again.

Place your fries on a cooling rack placed over a baking sheet. Sprinkle with sea salt and serve with your favorite dipping sauces. These make a great snack to have around for game day, for a quick appetizer, or just to have around to satisfy those comfort food cravings. Here are a few of our favorite restaurant-style dipping sauces. Give them a try:

• Comeback Sauce
• In-n-Out Animal Sauce
• Popeye's Blackened Ranch
• Red Robin's Campfire Sauce
• Chick-fil-A Sauce
• Homemade Sriracha

1. Origin Unknown: While we do know that French fries were invented somewhere in Belgium or France in the late 1600s, stories vary wildly about the precise origins.
    
2. Do Potatoes Cause Leprosy? No, but the French Parliament was convinced that they did in the 1780s, so much so that they completely banned potato growing in France!
    
3. National French Fry Day! French fries have their own holiday -- National French Fry Day, celebrated on July 13th. Will you be celebrating?
    
4. Mega Spud! The Guiness Book of World Records gave the title of largest potato to a monster potato grown in the UK. It weighed just over seven pounds.
    
5. Late Start: McDonald's French fries are one of their most popular sides, but they weren't a part of the original McDonald's menu! The fast food chain didn't start serving them until 1966, a full eleven years after opening.