 The french fries in a red french fry box with the Golden Arches | |
| Type | French fries |
|---|---|
| Inventor | Edwin Traisman |
| Inception | 1949 |
| Manufacturer | McDonald's |
| Available | Available |
| Current supplier | Lamb Weston |
McDonald's french fries, marketed as World Famous Fries, [1] are a French fries product at McDonald's restaurants.
Introduced in 1949, the French fries were cooked in a mixture of 93% beef tallow and 7% cottonseed oil. [2] [3]
In the 1950s, CEO and founder Ray Kroc established quality control measures for McDonald's suppliers, ensuring potatoes maintained a solids content within the optimal range of twenty to twenty-three percent. [4] Kroc also pioneered the practice of "curing" the potatoes to convert sugars to starch, thus achieving consistently crisp French fries. This process involved storing potatoes at medium-high temperatures for several weeks. [4] Additionally, he introduced the "potato computer," developed by Louis Martino, to calculate the precise cooking time for fries, based on the fluctuation of oil temperature during frying. [4] Subsequently, in 1967, Kroc contracted the Simplot company to supply them with frozen fries, replacing fresh-cut potatoes.
In the late 1980s, Phil Sokolof, a millionaire businessman who had suffered a heart attack at the age of 43, took out full-page newspaper ads in New York, Chicago, and other large cities accusing McDonald's menu of being a threat to American health, and asking them to stop using beef tallow to cook their french fries. [5]
After this sustained campaign, including by the National Heart Savers Association against saturated fats and the beef tallow they were using, [6] [7] [8] in 1990, they switched to vegetable oil with beef flavouring. [9] [2] However, vegetable oils at that time were hydrogenated (to make them semi-solid and retard spoilage) which also creates trans-fats, whose metabolic dangers were not then widely known. McDonald's has not disclosed whether its beef flavoring contains meat, but it is known to contain milk byproducts. [10] In 2002, McDonald's paid US$10 million to settle lawsuits that accused the chain of mislabeling its French fries as vegetarian. [11]
The "thin style" French fries have been popularized worldwide in large part by McDonald's and, to a lesser extent, Burger King. [12]
In 2008, McDonald's ceased using trans fats in both US and Canadian markets. [9] In 2013, McDonald's Canada introduced poutine nationwide, after having it in Quebec for 10 years. [13]
In the United States, McDonald's french fries are made using 19 ingredients, which include dextrose, TBHQ, polydimethylsiloxane, citric acid, and sodium acid pyrophosphate. [14] [15] The restaurant uses non-GMO [16] russet and Shepody potatoes.
As of 2019, the french fries sold in Germany use a different recipe, with the ingredients being listed as potatoes, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, salt, dextrose, disodium phosphate and polydimethylsiloxane. [17]
As for the manufacturing process, the potatoes are first brought to the plant, where they are mechanically cut, blanched, partially fried, flash-frozen, and then shipped to individual restaurants of the franchise. [16]