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Comment by Zircom | Hacker News Reader

Chains like McDonald's almost certainly don't cut their French fries onsite, they'd get them delivered already cut and frozen.

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I've worked in a McDonalds. My experience is outdated by a few years, but I don't think I ever once saw real food prep happening in store. Every ingredient is processed at the factory, sealed up and shipped to the store with timestamps and dates for when it expires and should no longer be used. Even the cookies arrive partially baked, with the store doing a minimal final round of heating, all for efficiency. The store workers are basically just doing final assembly for the vast majority of products, and the fries are certainly no exception.

Eggs? I think the round eggs are still cracked and cooked on site?. The scrambled square ones come pre-made, though, IIRC.

Depends on the menu item. The scrambled eggs arrive plastic sealed, arranged in a 2d array. The eggs for McMuffin's are are a regular egg, cracked open on the spot.

Yep Places like McCain foods do this on an industrial scale that brings the cost so far down that even McDonalds wouldn't be able to compete with. They're still likely going to be doing so much business that they'll be getting a favorable contract for it but it'd still be silly to build out all of that themselves.

This may be inaccurate now - but a few years ago I stopped at Idahos potato museum. If I remember correctly - the McDonald’s fries are actually a product of a lot of food scientists hard work. There are multiple types of potatoes involved that are turned in to potato product. Those are then mixed together in a specific ratio before they are reconstituted into fry shape. I think even the combination of oils and temperatures are very specific to McDonald’s.

No, they're mostly just cut potatoes. They get a coating with some stuff in it you wouldn't find on homemade fries, and the cooking is of course quite standardized. But nothing like mixing multiple varieties of potato and reshaping them as fries.

You might be thinking of Pringles.

In other words, they're probably processed soon after harvest and don't have these issues when frozen.

This is correct. McDonalds fries are delivered in a bag, frozen. There are chains that fresh cut their fries, but they definitely advertise it when they do, because it is not the norm. (In-N-Out, Five Guys)

In-N-Out is so infuriatingly proud of doing fries wrong, not parboiling or double frying them, and then crowing about how great it is that they dump just-cut potato into the fryer and serve it to you. Of course you have to pile on a bunch of other stuff to make them good, so the 'secret menu' is essential.

Sometimes putting something in a fridge or a freezer is part of the cooking process, but there's all this stigma around it and bonus points given to things for being "fresh." Fries that get chilled between rounds of cooking are part of what changes them from "deep fried potato" to "french fry".

Five Guys and that peanut oil though.. that's the stuff.

I suspect they pre-boil their fries too. It's the secret to amazing fries.

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