I tried making Michelin Star Chips in an Air Fryer

It might not look like it, but we're about to turn these frozen slabs of potato into the best chips in the world. And I'm absolutely serious as I add in some ground nut oil to our fryer that we've called Tuck. Well, you guys still didn't get that pun and warm it to 130 C, which does seem a little bit low, but this is a throwback recipe. Today to a recipe I did on the very last day before I moved out of the original Virgin kitchen, I discovered Heston Blooming Towels thrice cooked chips and they were absolutely out of this world. I cannot explain to you that perfect balance of the fluffiness in the middle of the potato and this absolutely sensational crunch on the outside. The crunch, the best chips, fries, whatever you want to call it, I have ever, ever had, homemade restaurant, wherever they are, just absolutely out of this world and well worth the effort. So why is Tuck at 1:30 C? Why are those potatoes frozen? What potatoes are they? Can I make it in advance? We'll answer all that in just a bit because today we're going to use Hue to see if we can make those Michelin star chips in a £20 air fryer. And I'm very, very confident we can, even though we're using duck fat, but we'll come on to that. So I've got our potato chunks here, which have been frozen. In fact. There you go. But notice how they're actually kind of dry. I don't quite get the science behind that, but maybe we'll talk about it in a bit. But all I'm doing is putting them into the fryer basket. They're frozen, so they brought the temperature down slightly. But look, they are just gently bubbling away. And this first fry is to get just the lightest encasement around the outside and lock in the fluffy centre. Right now it feels like the mildest, delicate, most tender frying I've ever done. So we're just looking to lock in that potato. But why groundnut oil? Well, apparently groundnut oil, which as we know from the past is also known as peanut oil, has quite a high smoke point. Of course it's not the only oil with a high smoke point, but apparently by having that it means it can reach high temperatures and get that ultimate crispy texture and groundnut slash. Peanut oil is quite a neutral flavour, so it's perfect for chips. But This is why I'm worried for it doing it in the air fryer. You'll see. To make the potatoes as fluffy as possible, we boil them. That's hot. I thought I'd just sort of show you what you do is by having it slightly fluffy, you create these almost like it's like sharper glass like edges. I guess that's what I want to say. Glass edges that doesn't, no one wants to eat glass, but the fluffy potato is locked in. But we're going to double crust these up. These aren't done yet. But of course, the worry with that, especially with the air fryer is with them being so delicate and then just bubbling around in the air frying. You have to stir them. Look, this one has like still got a fluffy middle. It looks more like a canoe. But of course, I'm still going to fry that. So as I put these back in my freezer, so while they're in the freezer for a minimum of an hour waiting for that final fry, let's roll it right back to make those chips for the air fryer. So we completely understand what's going on here. OK, so these are are the same potatoes that those potatoes which are still potatoes, are they chips yet? What at what point they become chips? I think they're chips now, right? Anyhow, this is what these wants were these are Maris Piper potatoes. In certain countries, you might not get them called this. It's basically quite a starchy potato and it's quite a good way of showing that I could actually peel it as well. But I'm just I'm feeling like being lazy today. Well, I don't know if it is lazy, I just quite like having the skin on sometimes. So there might be, as we saw on those other ones, the odd trace of potato skin on there. But I'm trying to get 3 fat credit cards and I should be able to get three out of each of these credit cards. So this to me is where these are chips and not fries. I don't know how that translates into America if they're all the sort of same thing, but you'll see why these are starchy potatoes in a moment. OK, but can you see on the knife there? I'll try and get the reflection right. You see all that dried on there? The moisture on here too? That's got a lot of starch in it. We want to get rid of that because starch is gummy when you're frying chips. It's like the enemy. It can really affect the crispiness. So this is how we we get it off. Let's just fill that up with water. If I do this, look how cloudy that water is. OK, So if we just run it under the tap a few times and keep disturbing it like this until the water's clear, there we go. And actually, as you boil them, some more starch might come to the surface. There we go. There's these little starch puddles. If I really wanted to get them all out, I will take that one out now. I've got you. I'm not that fussed. However, such is the intensity of Heston Blumenthal's research into this recipe to find the ultimate way of like getting the moisture out of these potatoes. For the thrice cooked method, he actually tried pin pricking them, microwaving them, dehydrating them, but ultimately stumbled upon this method in the end. In fact, this is I've got nothing else to do right now, so I am just going to scoop up that extra starch. I mean, do not, you do not have to do that as proper overkill, but it's fun. It's kind of therapeutic. It's kind of like, yeah, I'm going to earn the these chips. Don't get me wrong, the best recipe for it is if someone else cooks it for you. All right, let's go. Look, you can see there is a nice fluffy edge to that, but these potatoes are delicate. So as one batch of potatoes journey begins, another one will conclude. So I'm just getting tucked back up this time to one ATC. And look, there they are. In fact you can see the colour difference slightly, although this should look a little bit different in a moment. But I've only got 1 board that will fit in my freezer, so these are basically going on there and these will go on another board like this. In you go my friend. Yes, they'll be visiting the air fryer with the duck fat in about an hour. However, for the time being, these have now got an appointment with the 180 C Friar Tuck Hot. Let's go. Oh yeah, that's angry. So this is that final step. Of course, like we said, you could have made them well in advance like we talked about, and fried it in about a month's time. A surprise. Or you guess. Or just have them to yourself. Let's see what they taste like. If it all goes downhill from here, at least this should be rather delicious. Let's get them out. Push them to the colour you want. I'm just quite hungry now. Oh my word. I don't know if you can hear the sizzle. I just held that up and hopefully you can hear the sizzle. You see even the ones that were like obliterated, you can see where the oil has sort of soaked in even more. So that's going to be like proper crunchy. And I had to be honest, I hope I'm not the only person, but when I have a portion of chips, sometimes my favorite ones are like those little crunchy like off cuts at the bottom. They're really good, aren't they? Really should have made more fries. This is massive bowl, but I think these sort of bowls enhance it a little bit more. For these I'm just going to like sprinkle on a little bit of salt. If the air fryer ones work, we might just go a little bit different with it, just as a different coating. By doing that I have probably broken one or two. Honestly. They look at the colour on them. Just gorgeous and all foods are just a very personal thing. People are like they're all the best chips in assume even someone local to me be like you're Barry. They're all right, but they're not as good as Mr. Chippy up in Kingswood. Sorry. That's very, very local reference and hopefully that doesn't exist. That place. Let's try. You must have heard that crunch a perfect square of fluffy potato there. It is absolutely bonkers, fluffy, lighter crunch to look in that fluffiness and then the golden crunch on the side there. And just to show you one of these ones where it's split open, this should be even crunchier. Oh, they're the cheeky ones, those crunchy ones. I think that's probably why I like them because all the oil has really got on that right then Hugh, no pressure. So this was generally £20 and it does the job for certain tasks. Obviously it can't dehydrate stuff and apart from the tippy bucket, which I think my trivet can help prevent, it should be okay. I actually think that duck fat, Oh my word, has a lower smoke point than some oils. I think the other animal fats as well. Apparently beef fat is a really good one to use too. Beef tallow they sometimes call that. And why this over ground nut oil? I think it's just flavour. If you want that, it's just a fat of your choice that you want to cook in, but it is sometimes considered luxurious. Adds a different sort of flavour. However, for this first part. And boy am I going to need kitchen towel at the end. If this does work, the really cool thing is that we can actually set to warm to 130 C like Tuck did in there to warm the duck fat up. I guess we'll just skim over the fact that as I open the door, the temperature's going to drop by the 2nd, but hey ho. Obviously I'm aware this goes against nearly everything an air fryer should be. Maybe I should use like a teaspoon of duck fat oil and hopefully it just mixes around. Or even if there's some duck fat oil spray, I just generally want to see if we can pull this off. So basically, you and I are going for maximum coverage. However, if it's really bad for the second fryer, I could always put a lot less in. We'll see. In fact, why don't I do both 130 C baby, let's get some spuds now. I'll use only a few of these like I say, and then we can try it again with just a little speck or maybe like a few tablespoons of the oil. 130C for 5 minutes is literally what it tells me to do. And remember, that's in an air fryer. A much more actually no. Is that a more intense space than a than a fryer? Probably not. Is it? It is compared to an oven, as we found out. Is this going to work? Who knows well, if you missed the video where we discovered Hugh, it was basically named because it was called Hong Kong. So ROM com Hugh Grant, I know it doesn't really make that much sense. Some of you guys were actually saying Hong Kong is quite a respectable brand and they do like your furniture as well, so they're obviously quite diverse, but it has just passed 5 minutes have increased the timer because not much appears to be happening. It's definitely warm. I'm just worried that those potatoes are going to disintegrate. So I do feel right now that I'm deep frying in an air fryer, you know, so I think we will do a much smaller amount of fat and just shimmy them delicately. OK, I've got one minute left. I don't even see that we yes, one minute left. What did this be? Press a button. Damn you that has had 19 about to have 20 minutes in there and it's just the lightest colour ever. So you can probably see there. It's it's frying it, isn't it? It definitely is. And it's started to fall apart. But I feel like I've almost sort of soaked them. OK, so they are still firm. I was worried that they were just literally going to fall apart. Oh, that one did. Oh no, I don't think putting them in a lot of oil is a good idea. These have been in the freezer again and rather than pouring some in, even though I can see there's a little bit that's sort of gone to one end. Can you see that at the bottom? Oh my gosh, they're sliding if I just brush each bit and obviously that will run off and stay in the bucket and hopefully blow around. Air fryer styley. I've set it to 15 minutes, so 5 minutes less. I generally think this will work better. So yeah, maybe I shouldn't have tried to turn the air fryer into a deep fat fryer. It should get the crunch. But will it bake the centre? That's the only problem. OK, I don't know if you can hear it, probably not, but that is way stronger. It's got a nice coating on it now, a very, very light crispy outer, but they're holding their shape much more. So again, these are going to go in the freezer with our other batch that we just submerged in a massive, massive duck fat bat duck fat VAT. Nice. So I think we've answered our own question there. Classic air frying styley with a little bit of oil in an air fryer. Who would have known? Does actually work way better than submerging it in the oil. So for the final fry at 180 CI, might even push it at 190. We'll see, we'll see. No pun intended, 18190 C, We'll see. Oh, I'm stuck in a loop now. See what I've done just before they go in this back row is actually made-up of the ones that were fully submerged in the oil and you can sort of see how more damaged they are. I mean, there's one or two here that are that where we just had that much little amount of oil. But that is a crazy difference. But they all do have it. It's quite hard to see it on the camera. Just this very, almost like a tree kind of look where there's like this skin, this sort of like bark, very, very light coating that's formed. It doesn't need it, but we kind of had it to one side anyway. I'm just going to drizzle on a little bit more of that duck fat. I really hope this works. The fryer option is feeling way, way safer right now, so I'm going to put 15 minutes just to give it some slack. One ATC. Let's see, I did it again. The CA pun with CS, Let's see. See. Can't wait to find out what happens. You hear that? I can see it's starting to colour. It's not quite at the shaky, shaky territory yet. I'm not going to risk that Mashed potato for everyone, but we are getting there. So hopefully next scene you'll see is shaky, shaky. I can shake him around now, baby. They oh, they might even be done. They smell really cheeky. Got the wire rack out again just because that can catch that little bit of oil in there. Fantastic colour, very hot. That has turned out blooming. Awesome. Oh you cheeky thing. Just like a lovely colour on them. So while I'm just sprinkling these in salt, I went to a restaurant in London which was also a Michelin style, and they made these amazing fries that had Rosemary on. This is the same bowl I shook the chips up in earlier. And yes, for confirmation that I did eat them all. So I'll Chuck in some salt. Here's that garlic powder, freshly chopped Rosemary, pepper and some grated parmesan. Here we go. That's going to give even more flavour. Oh, sorry if this is a little bit out of focus, but these look absolutely sensational. I don't want to hold them for too long so I don't want to go too cold. That's seasoning. Wow. Oh my word. That is incredible. We've got that fluffy middle. I really thought it was going to be baked through in sort of like firmer, but no, you can taste the difference in the fats and the oils. However, I can't really actually identify which one was the first batch that we actually semi deep fried in air fryer. We didn't need to do that. In fact, it was harder to do it that way. It made it more fragile. Oh my word. Oh, the crunch is there, fluffy middle is there. I think it works. And remember we use far a little fat in that. So that is actually a darn site healthier. Just won't talk about the Parmesan or anything else. OK, we set off to achieve that mission. Can you make Michelin style recipe chips in an air fryer? Yes, yes, you can hope you enjoyed the video. Don't forget to check out the rest of the videos here on the channel, including the air fryer playlist if you wish to subscribe if you want to and thank you to the patrons that help support the running cost of the channel so I can stay impartial. No brand deals baby. I ain't being no Formula One driver, but to finish it off as a bonus scene, let's just see with these last remaining ones we had if we could actually deep fry it in there if we wanted to. I don't know what's going to happen here, but thanks for watching you made it this far. Cheers. See you later. Oh my word, Yep, that has worked. I don't want to deep fry any more things in my air fryer though. That's worked, but it actually tastes like fried bread.