Triple Cooked Chips
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| Course | Appetizer, side dish |
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| Place of origin | England |
| Created by | Heston Blumenthal |
| Serving temperature | Hot |
| Main ingredients | Potato |
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Triple Cooked Chips are a type of chips or deep-fried potato that were developed by English celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal. Blumenthal began work upon the recipe in 1993, and eventually developed the three-stage cooking process for their preparation. The preparation process involves the chips first being simmered and then cooled and drained of water using a sous-vide technique or by freezing, deep fried at 130 °C (266 °F) and again cooled, and finally deep fried again at 180 °C (356 °F) The result is what Blumenthal calls "chips with a glass-like crust and a soft, fluffy centre".
Chef Blumenthal said he was "obsessed with the idea of the perfect chip", and described how, from 1992 onwards, he worked on a method for making "chips with a glass-like crust and a soft, fluffy centre."
He went to great lengths to achieve this, researching the starch content of many different varieties of potato and experimenting with drying chips by microwaving, desiccating or even individually pinpricking them. Eventually Blumenthal developed the three-stage cooking process generally known as Triple Cooked Chips, which he identifies as "the first recipe I could call my own."
Previously, the traditional practice for cooking chips was a two-stage process, in which chipped potatoes were fried in oil first at a relatively low temperature to soften them and then at a higher temperature to crisp up the outside. Heston’s recipe involves simmering the potatoes first in water for 20–30 minutes until they are almost falling apart and have developed lots of little cracks across the surface, at which point they are drained and as much moisture as possible is expelled by placing them in either a freezer or sous-vide machine. This additional stage is designed to achieve three objectives. First, cooking the potatoes gently in water helps ensure they acquire a properly soft texture. Second, the cracks that develop in the chips provide places for oil to collect and harden during frying, making them crunchy. Third, thoroughly drying out the chips drives off moisture that would otherwise keep the crust from becoming crisp. Blumenthal describes moisture as the "enemy" of crisp chips.
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