The Key To Making Wingstop-Style Fries Is All In The Seasoning
While Wingstop specializes in wings (what else?), it's no slouch in the sides department, either. Okay, so the veggie sticks are pretty boring, if classic (the celery ones, at least), but the Cajun fried corn is quite tasty. The best non-wing thing on Wingstop's menu, though, is its seasoned fries, all because of the special fry seasoning mix that combines both sugar and spice.
Our copycat recipe doesn't duplicate the fries exactly, since not everyone has the time to slice up a potato and deep-fry it, not to mention going through all of the cleanup that's involved in this messy process. Instead, Mashed developer Christina Musgrave's shortcut version of Wingstop-style fries starts with a bag of frozen fries that can be baked in the oven. After they're cooked, she adds that certain Wingstop je ne sai quoi with something that she describes as "a blend of sweet and savory flavors" including chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, and sugar (both brown and white). Musgrave feels that this spice blend "really work[s] together with the french fries."
You can recreate Wingstop's specialty fries with a few extra ingredients
These Wingstop-style fries taste great on their own, although Musgrave suggests, "You can use ketchup, ranch, or mustard for dipping." For a more restaurant-like experience, you could also try dunking them in Buffalo wing sauce or a different flavor of wing sauce. Among Wingstop's popular flavors are hickory-smoked barbecue, Korean barbecue, and mango habanero, any of which might work well if you can find reasonable bottled facsimiles of these sauces.
You could also turn your fries into a copycat version of one of Wingstop's loaded fry combos: Add some jalapeño cheese sauce to make Wingstop-style cheese fries or a drizzle of ranch dressing and hot sauce to turn them into Buffalo ranch fries. If you can't decide between the two, you could use both ranch dressing and jalapeño cheese to approximate Wingstop's Louisiana voodoo fries. Throw in a little hot sauce and you'll have your own off-off-menu Buffalo Louisiana ranch fries.