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As two giants in the fast food industry, McDonald's and KFC each have tens of millions of fans. Online, there is no shortage of experienced eaters to compare and evaluate the items of the two giants, from hamburgers to chicken wings to chicken nuggets to cones.

In turn, people find that KFC's French fries will soften and taste sticky after a while. McDonald's fries last longer and taste better. Why is that?

KFC deducts ten points! | | Gifer baked potato, fried potato, mashed potato, steamed potato, fried potato … " Generally speaking, it is difficult to cook potatoes that are not delicious. But if you want potatoes to be at their best when cooking, such as crispy and delicious McDonald's fries, you should also pay attention to the choice of potato varieties.

Potato (also known as potato, Solanum tuberosum) is the fourth most important food crop in the world, after rice, corn and wheat. There are hundreds of varieties in the country of origin alone, and new varieties are constantly being cultivated all over the world, so that there are about thousands of potato varieties in the world. However, studies have shown that their chemical compositions are very different under the colorful skins of yellow, black, purple or red. There are brown potato Russet with high starch content suitable for staple food, and red potato Red Bliss with low starch content.

Would you like a crispy, fluffy baked potato? Waxy potatoes may not be the best choice | pxhere has a wide variety, but potato breeders and food scientists generally divide them into two categories: powdery potatoes (Starchy Potatoes) and waxy potatoes (Waxy Potatoes). According to Diane Mc Comber, a professor at Iowa State University, the sensory team found that powdered potatoes become drier when cooked, with a sense of granular foreign bodies in the mouth, while waxy potatoes are more hydrated and look wetter when cooked.

In other ways, silty potatoes tend to have thicker skins, denser internal adhesion, more starch (about 22% by wet weight) and less moisture, while waxy potatoes usually have thinner skins and lower density. starch content is lower (wet weight is about 16%) and water content is higher.

The powdered potatoes with starch granules on the right can achieve the crisp shell and fluffy inner core when baked, while the waxy potatoes on the left tend to shrink as they are roasted. | YouTube from a cooking point of view, high-starch powdery potatoes such as Russet Burbank are most suitable for baking, frying and mashed potatoes, and are the first choice for making potato chips and French fries. Because of their low moisture content, this means that when they come into contact with hot oil, most of the moisture will evaporate before the surface forms a skin, leaving only enough water to slowly steam the inside of the French fries to achieve the tender taste.

Their rich starch molecules help to form a fixed shape, and because of the high density, the oil does not penetrate into the French fries to make them wet and soft. However, this kind of potato is not suitable for boiling, because the cells of powdery potatoes will continue to absorb water until the cells completely burst, showing a soft collapse.

Waxy potatoes with high sugar content, high moisture content and low starch, such as Red Bliss, can easily maintain their overall varieties and are suitable for quick stir-frying to achieve crisp taste, as well as stewing or other dishes that need to retain their integrity. This kind of potato is not suitable for deep frying because it contains a lot of sugar and will have dark stripes and ugly lines after deep frying.

The powdery potatoes on the left are boiled and dispersed into flocs, while the waxy potatoes on the right are still strong. | YouTube compares cooked powdery potatoes and waxy potatoes under a microscope, and the researchers found significant differences between them. Starch particles in powdered potatoes begin to gelatinize at about 58 °C, while waxy potatoes do not begin to gelatinize until about 70 °C. cooked powdery potato cells are almost full of gelatinized starch, and waxy potatoes are only 30-50% full of expanded gelatinized starch.

Using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), the researchers observed that silty potatoes almost full of gelatinized starch absorbed more water, while in waxy potatoes with lower starch content, the expanded starch particles absorbed less water and left more free water.

Potato incomplete Cooking Guide | Flickr knows that different potatoes are suitable for different ways of cooking dishes, how should we choose?

The simplest and roughest way is to judge directly by size: the big ones are powdery potatoes and the small ones are waxy potatoes. Or judge according to the thickness of the skin: the silty potato skin is thick and needs to be cut off with a razor, while the waxy potato skin is so thin that the nails can fall off as soon as they are shaved.

The first choice of the popular McDonald's French fries is the powdered potato Russet Burbank, and over the decades, several other potatoes have been approved for French fries, namely Ranger Russet, Umatilla Russet and Shepody.

As technology changes, more and more potato varieties will join the family. For example, McDonald's approved a Dakota Russet variety bred by Asunta Thompson, an associate professor of plant science and potato breeder at North Dakota State University in 2022.

(Tuyuan gifer) according to unknown sources, the reason why KFC lost a little bit in French fries is because its potato starch content is low.

So, which French fries do you think is better for you?

Cover source: pexels

Reference:

[1] https://www.cookingscienceguy.com/pages/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Difference-Between-Waxy-and-Mealy-Potatoes1.pdf

[2] https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2621.1988.tb09291.x

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye1d9ErNGV0

This article is from the official Wechat account: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids), author: everything.

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