The Correct Way to Eat French Fries
And there is only ONE correct way!
I don’t care what Julia Child said or what Martha Stewart says. I don’t care what Gordon Ramsey says. I don’t care what Jacque Pepin or James Beard say. I don’t care what Irma Rombauer or Laurie Colwin say. I don’t care what Fannie Farmer or Craig Claiborne or Alice Waters or Peg Brachen or Betty Crocker or Colonel Sanders or Mollie Katzen or Emeril Lagasse or Rachel Ray say. And I don’t care what your teenage nephew says….
There is only one correct way to eat French fries!
The most important factor is that the French fries and the ketchup remain utterly separate until that very last second before the French fry is dipped into the ketchup and then quickly placed in the oral cavity.
It is all about the contrast!
The joy of eating a French fry is in experiencing the contrast of taste, temperature, and texture. It is the sudden combining of a potatoey, hot, crispy French fry and tomatoey, cold, wet ketchup. The taste, temperature and texture are all in sharp contrast to each other and therefore simultaneously awaken the widest spectrum of oral sensations. Those sensations are both extremely contrasting and joyously complementary.
If you have a plate of hot, crispy French fries and you squirt ketchup all over them you have ruined the experience and greatly limited the wide spectrum of oral pleasure. As the ketchup sits atop the fries it gets warmed by the fries and you no longer have cold ketchup. And the French fries are quickly cooled down by the ketchup and are no longer hot and they are no longer crispy because the ketchup makes them soggy. So you loose the contrast of hot and cold and you loose the crispiness. You may not lose too much in taste but all the joyful contrast of temperature and texture are gone.
You end up with a lukewarm, soggy mess!
Yuck!
The ketchup should always be served ON THE SIDE and it should always be very cold, cold, cold, straight out of the fridge. It is for dipping, NOT smothering! The French fries should be served on a warmed plate so that they stay hot, hot, hot.
After liberally dipping a hot French fry into the cold ketchup then inserting it into one’s oral cavity it is best to close one’s eyes and focus on all the contrasting elements, savoring the full complementary spectrum of gastronomic euphoria. Upon mastication feel the broad spectrum of sensations slowly meld into an elegant one-ness. Light up as many neuronal synapses in your noggin as you can. Let it be an intensely focused experience. Be fully present with the French fry and ketchup.
After swallowing, take a deep breath and repeat the procedure.
Now that everyone knows the correct way to eat French fries please allow me to further educate everyone on the correct idiosyncratic way to spell, ‘ketchup.’ It is the way that I have been spelling it throughout this article. Ketchup begins with a ‘K.’ There is no ‘cat’ in ketchup! No cat! Ketchup is spelled the way that it sounds so it should be really easy to remember the one and only correct way to spell the word. (When at the grocery store only buy ketchup that starts with a ‘K’ and never “that other stuff.”)
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