I’m suspicious of french fries.
Historically, I’ve never been the biggest fan of potatoes. Don’t get me wrong, there are far more offensive foods out there (I’m looking at you, sauerkraut), and I’ll eat potatoes in a variety of forms if I have to, but I don’t particularly enjoy them. I’ve never in my life been excited to see a potato. We do not all like to waltz with potatoes, no matter what the VeggieTales theme song would have us believe.
Given this, there is absolutely no earthly reason that I should enjoy french fries as much as I do.
It’s no secret that in the first five or so minutes after a french fry is pulled from the fryer, it is enchanted by some unholy magic that transforms it into the tastiest morsel ever to pass through your lips. Let it sit for even a millisecond longer than that, and the spell wears off; suddenly it’s a tedious chore to finish off the upsized side of fries that you stupidly spent an extra $3 on because you were “Really Hungry™.”
Now, everyone seems to have the same question: why are french fries so great at first, and then so not-great after a few minutes? Well, to put it simply for all the navel-gazing troglodytes who have given me grief over the course of my life for not paying tribute to the Almighty Spud, it’s because they’re just potatoes now.
See, that dreary “meh” flavor that you get from lukewarm fries is just what a potato tastes like without whatever voodoo is imparted onto them by the bog-witch who lives in the fryer. (I used to be a manager at McDonald’s, so you can trust me to bring you only the most accurate insider info. You’re welcome.)
“Well, Ian,” you might say, “that’s just the process. I could deep-fry a bucket of gravel and cover it in salt, and you’d probably think that it was the bee’s knees, too.” And that may be. And now I’m also suspicious of gravel.
French fries are a massive, inexplicable deception. The potatoes are trying to trick us into thinking that they’re far tastier than they actually are, and I, for one, would like to know what their end game is here.
P.S.
And while I’m on the subject of food, I’d like to call out the abomination known as gluten-free spaghetti. Never in my life have I been treated to such an unpleasant dining experience as when I had the misfortune to ingest those glorified rubber bands from hell, and that includes all the times I’ve swallowed my own vomit. In fact, given the choice between consuming any amount of gluten-free spaghetti again or smothering a plateful of actual elastic bands in marinara sauce and chowing down, I’d take the rubber bands in a heartbeat. The texture’s the same and they’d taste better.
Maybe I just need to start deep-frying my spaghetti.
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