Mysteries Revealed: The Life of A French Fry

Doubtlessly, you have consumed thousands of those potato by-products known as "French fries" without giving the slightest thought to the long and arduous process by which they are prepared. This dark and mysterous pathway shall be illuminated by the light of my experience in a little McDonald's restaurant in the heart of America.

Let us begin the journey.

The shaping of the fries is a part of the process not known to me, but I imagine it involves slicing potatoes into thin strips a few inches long and freezing them. These frozen fries are placed into brown paper bags. About six brown paper bags are placed into a cardboard box. Thousands of cardboard boxes donate their residence to these paper bags with frozen fries.

These boxes, bags, and fries arrive at the restaurant via the truck. Or should I say, the Truck. I have never seen the vehicle mentioned in writing, but it is referred to so uncompromisingly as "the Truck,"---never "a truck," or "the supply truck," or "the big truck," but simply, "the Truck,"---that one almost imagines it has reverently been entitled to a capital letter. The Truck is as necessary to the life of the restaurant as the ships were to the early colonists. It brings not only fries, but meat patties, chicken, cups, lids, sauces, ice cream, apples, grapes, lettuce, pickles, onions, cheese, buns, nuts strawberries, toys, stickers, straws, napkins, cookies, croutons, syrup, coffee filters, coffee, fry bags, take out bags, burger boxes, tray liners, bottles of water, containers of milk, containers of chocolate milk, apple juice, salad dressings, forks, knives, trash bags, and a host of other things that I have forgotten or am not yet aware of.

The cardboard boxes containing the bags containing the fries are taken from the Truck and carried into the walk-in freezer. A reinforced steel door opens into the first room, which averages 38 degrees Fahrenheit and holds the aforementioned items that need to remain cooled. A second reinforced steel door opens into a second room, which averages 11 degress Fahrenheit and holds the aforementioned itmes that need to remain frozen. This is where the fries are kept.

(On a completely unrelated note, it feels very good to walk into the walk-in after you've been standing over the fry station or grease vats or grill.)

When fries are needed, a lucky employee is chosen to carry a box from the freezer into the fry hopper, which is a large plastic container shaped somewhat like an upside-down triangle with tiny metal doors at the bottom right. The cardboard box is opened. The brown paper bags are opened and dumped into the fry hopper.

Below the large plastic container is a sort of mini conveyor belt for metal baskets with handles. The fry hopper is somewhat intelligent, and it knows when there is a basket on the top ledge of the belt, and it opens its tiny metal doors and drops fries into the basket. The basket then slides down to the end of the bottom ledge of the belt.

Another employee, or perhaps the same one, takes the basket by the handle and places it into a vat of pure grease. This is known as "dropping a fry basket." The employee presses a timer on the side of the vat, which is set for three minutes and ten seconds.

The employee waits three minutes and ten seconds.

The timer beeps and flashes "PULL." The employee pushes the timer (to stop the irritating beeping) and pulls the basket up and dumps the hot, cooked, fresh fries into the adjacent fry station. He pours salt from a salt dispenser onto the fries.

There are empty bags of small, medium, and large fries. The employee takes the desired bag in one hand, and with a little metal container in the other, sccops up fries and funnels them into the bag.

The bag is then placed onto a tray or into a bag, depending on the method of your order.

You pick up a fry with your fingers, and place it in your mouth, where it passes in and out of your body. But we will leave the details of that process unexplored.

Edmond the Hun