Next Process for making frozen potato French fries

Introduction After harvesting, potatoes are used for a variety of purposes, and not only as a vegetable for cooking at home. In fact, it is likely that less than 50 percent of potatoes grown worldwide are consumed fresh. The rest are processed into potato food products and food ingredients, fed to cattle, pigs and chickens, processed into starch for industry, and re-used as seed tubers for growing the next season's potato crop. Global consumption of potato as food is shifting from fresh potatoes to added-value, processed food products. One of the main items in that category goes by the unappetizing name of frozen potatoes, but includes most of the French fries served in restaurants and fast food chains worldwide. The production process is fairly simple: peeled potatoes are shot through cutting blades, parboiled, air dried, par fried, frozen and packaged. The world's appetite for factory-made French fries has been put at more than 11 million tonnes a year. NextPreviousEnd

Processing Requirements Desirable characters Higher dry matter content : 20% and above Low reducing sugars:Less than 250 mg/100g f. wt NextPreviousEnd

Kufri Frysona Indian potato varieties suitable for making French fries Adapted to North Indian plains Yield potential of 40 t/ha Resistance to late blight and wart, suitable for making French fries Adapted to Warmer regions/seasons Yield potential of 40 t/ha Resistance to hopper burn, mite, wart and tolerant to heat Kufri Surya Kufri Frysona NextPreviousEnd

Method for making frozen French fries Peeling & Trimming Cutting & Sizing Blanching Drying Par Frying Freezing & Packaging NextPreviousEnd

Peeling & Trimming Potatoes are washed thoroughly with clean water and then peeled. Normally steam method is used, in which a whole lot of tubers are put into a pressurized hot tank. After enough time, the pressure is quickly released and the potato skin is removed. After the potatoes come out of the peeler vessel, they're sprayed with high-power water jets to remove any peel still clinging. Peeling losses depend upon the morphological characters of the potatoes. In shallow eyed tubers, peeling losses are much lesser than deep eyed tubers. Peeling losses are minimum with smooth potatoes. Peeled and washed potatoes are trimmed manually during which process residual skin, eyes and green portions are removed. NextPreviousEnd

Cutting & Sizing Peeled potatoes are cut into sticks, lengthwise so as to get long cuts. The cross section of the sticks ranges between 7 and 12mm and is generally 10mm. the length of the strips can be 5-7cm. Mechanical slicers or strip cutting appliances of different capacities are available for this purpose. For ensuring minimum damage to the French fry strips, water knives are being used. Potatoes are transported by water and pressed against knives mounted on pipes. The sticks are graded for size. Too short and thin sticks are removed, as also the discoloured ones. NextPreviousEnd

Blanching The sticks are blanced in water at 70-95C for several minutes to inactivate the enzeme. The procedure also results in removal of some of the sugars from the surface of sticks, resulting in uniformity of fry colour. NextPreviousEnd

Drying After blanching, sticks are partially dried to remove excess moisture. If the French Fries are meant to be deep-fried, the water content should be around 70-75%; if they're to be cooked in an oven, %; for microwave French Fries, it's about 55-60%. NextPreviousEnd

Par-Frying The "par fry" is a cooking stage where the strips are cooked for a about a minute and a half in oil that's a bit hotter than normal French Fry cooking temperatures. All frozen French Fries are par-fried at the manufacturing plant before you fry them completely at home. The sticks are fried at 180C for about 2 minutes or at 150C for about 5 minutes. NextPreviousEnd

Freezing & Packing The final step is blast freezing of the strips. Blast freezing is a method that freezes the French Fries which travel down on the wire conveyor using air cooled down to about -40C. This prevents them sticking together and helps protect the flavour. After the processing is done, the French Fries are bagged and/or boxed and shipped out to their final destinations (distributors, restaurants, supermarkets) where they are then cooked to order. Previous End