What To Check For When Buying Frozen French Fries

If you're busy with work, being a parent, or just adulting in general, frozen food can be a godsend, especially if you have young children. Have a bag of frozen chicken nuggies? Pop them in the air fryer or oven. Just bought a bag of frozen french fries? You can put them in the oven or air fryer as well, or deep fry them if you want them to be extra crispy.

Speaking of frozen fries, there's usually not much to think about when it comes to buying them, aside from maybe checking the expiration date and deciding how to cook them. Price, name brand, and fry cut might also play a role for some shoppers. There's crinkle cut fries, steak fries, shoestring fries, curly fries, waffle fries, seasoned fries, and so on.

However, there's something else you should check before deciding whether or not to buy a bag of frozen fries — that is, if you want to have the best taste.

French fries are made from potatoes, which means they're healthy, right? Not exactly. Not all frozen fries are the same when it comes to ingredients. The executive chef of Bourbon Steak at JW Marriott Miami, Gabe Fenton, had a few things to say about the topic. He said it's important to "make sure the frozen fries you're buying are 100% potato and free of any and all additives to preserve the authentic flavor" (via Food & Wine).

Cook's Country conducted some research on frozen fries and compared the ingredients and flavors. According to the study, the fries that contained sodium acid pyrophosphate tasted more artificial while the ones with the fewest ingredients had a much more natural flavor. So if you want your fries to taste fresh, like you cut them yourself, choose the bag that is 100% potato with as few additives as possible.