Our World Famous Fries® are made from quality potatoes, including Russet Burbank, Ranger Russet, Umatilla Russet and the Shepody. The suppliers we work with first peel, cut and blanche the potatoes. They then dry, partially fry and quickly freeze the fries for our restaurants.
McCain Foods make McDonald's French fries to our gold standard specifications, which means that they are not quite the same McCain fries you find in the freezer section of your grocery store. Our cooking process is also different from how you might cook fries at home.
Yes, if you really want, but it will be the same price as if we cooked them first. One bag is four baskets, and a basket is, if I remember right, two large fries or a bit more, so call the bag 8 large orders of fries and ring it up accordingly.
"It's because McDonald's cooks their fries with beef flavoring mixed within their vegetable oil," divulged the content creator.
And for all the naysayers out there, no McDonald's fries are not chemical potato goop shaped into fries. Instead, they are made up of potatoes, vegetable oil (which contains canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, and natural beef flavor with wheat and milk derivatives), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and salt.
In addition to frying and seasoning the fries, McDonald's coats them in dextrose, a form a sugar.
According to McDonald's, their world famous fries start with Russet Burbank or Shepody potatoes, grown from U.S. farms. Russet Burbanks, grown mostly in the Pacific Northwest, are ideal for frying and baking, making them the perfect fit for those golden fries.
On its website, McDonald's explains that when its “suppliers partially fry our cut potatoes, they use an oil blend that contains beef flavoring.” “Natural beef flavor contains hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk as starting ingredients,” the company notes on its site. In hydrolysis, water breaks chemical bonds.
Fried foods contain extra trans fats
That oil likely contains trans fats, an especially unhealthy kind of fat that's cheap to make and helps food last a long time. Trans fats are overwhelmingly bad for your health, so much so that the FDA banned them in 2015.
We use a blend including canola and sunflower oils to cook with. Like all vegetable oils, it's cholesterol free. We use only 100% Aussie grown beef to serve you the best beef burgers, sourced from farmers across the country. Our Angus beef is 100% Aussie grown.
Here's the Secret…
Fortunately, the solution is pretty simple. Just ask for fries without salt! “If you order a burger or fries always ask them without salt or the seasoning on the burger,” a former McDonald's employee wrote on Reddit. “They will have to make them fresh since they always put each on them.”
They're flash frozen before they get to the store
Before being packaged, the fries are dried, partially cooked and flash frozen. This maintains the color and crunch. They're then sent out to McDonald's franchises around the country. Love their McNuggets, too?
In the videos that followed, Jones and his friends went to Wendy's, Popeye's, and Kane's and got free fries. This might have been staged, but the truth is that, according to McDonald's representatives, free fry refills are not a standard policy in McDonald's restaurants, hence free refills on fries is not applicable.
In a statement given to HuffPost UK, a McDonald's spokesperson confirmed: “We work with two suppliers to make our world famous fries, McCain and Lamb Weston – partnering with them for over 30 years. Our fries are made to our own unique specifications from 100% British potatoes.”
Fresh potatoes are washed, peeled, cut, and blanched to make McDonald's fries, according to a video from the company. The factory they're made in also adds chemicals to keep the potatoes a uniform light yellow color (but no, that's not behind their addictive flavor).
Acrylamide is a chemical created in certain foods that are cooked at high temperatures. Because chips are sliced so thin and fried so hot, they're even heavier in acrylamide than French fries (which, sadly, 7 out of 9 experts warn against).
The most common potatoes we use for McDonald's fries include the Russet Burbank, Russet Ranger, Umatilla Russet and the Shepody—varieties known for producing a flavorful fry that's crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside.
To contextualise, a McDonald's hamburger packs 250kcal and 13g of muscle-building protein, while a medium portion of fries comes in at 337kcal, 3.3g of protein and 42g of carbohydrates, a macronutrient often linked to weight-gain. Looking for a good reason to go big on your next cheat day?
At the beginning of the potato season, when we're using newer potatoes, the naturally-occurring sugar content is very low and we do need to add a small amount of sugar dextrose to our fries to ensure they maintain that golden colour.
According to Miller, it's actually the saltiness of a McDonald's fry that sends your brain into a pleasurable overdrive. "Eating salty foods triggers the release of dopamine, a happy-hormone, brain chemical that stimulates feelings of pleasure and satisfaction," she explained.
McDonald's cooked its fries in beef tallow for decades
Founded in 1940, McDonald's initially used 93% beef fat tallow for their French fries in an effort to save money, according to a piece on the origins of the favored fast food item published by Atlas Obscura.
Macca's Australia fries contain potato, canola oil, dextrose and mineral salt. There may be traces of sulphites (less than 10 milligrams per kilogram). Golden Arches fries in Australia are cooked in a canola oil blend of containing canola oil, high oleic canola oil, sunflower oil, and a small amount of palm oil.
It is commonly used to represent French fries, fast food, or specifically the fast food chain McDonald's.
McCain is a proudly Canadian, family owned company and with few exceptions, McCain potato products are made from local potatoes grown on farms close to our facilities, which are spread across Canada in Manitoba, Alberta and New Brunswick.