The Best Way To Keep French Fries Warm For A Crowd Is Incredibly Easy

One of the sad facts of life is that french fries just don't stay fresh for long. These fried spuds just love moisture, due to their high starch content it takes a lot to keep them crispy. Whether they're home-fried or takeaway, you can always cover the pan with tinfoil or trap in its heat with an airtight container, but these storage mistakes will still inevitably ruin your food and lead to a soggy batch of fries.

Luckily, to make legitimately crispy fries stay oh-so warm and crunchy, there's actually a super easy way to do it. Just leave them on a baking sheet in a preheated oven, at 200 degrees Fahrenheit, until you're ready to serve. (And it's actually a big mistake to eat your food piping hot, so don't eat them straight out of the oven.) Remember to leave the oven door slightly ajar to encourage airflow, and that's all there is to it.

While restaurants might be able to rely on handy gadgets like heat lamps to keep food consistently crisp, most home kitchens just don't have the space for these tools. So, when it comes to keeping fries fresh, just keep them in the oven until you're ready to eat. But hey, if it's a special occasion and you're serving a crowd, you could always invest in some affordable disposable food warmers for peace of mind, or to save some oven space for another appetizer.

Like many other fresh food items, one of the biggest enemies for a batch of french fries is air. When exposed to humid environments, fries absorb the excess moisture that's in the air, turning them from perfectly crispy spuds to limp and soggy mistakes. While this is often the most obvious reason for limp fries, there are other factors that play into this appetizer's crisp factor too.

For example, to further avoid a lackluster end product, never salt fries too early in the process. Hot dishes need time to rest after cooking so they can finish cooking properly. Fries are no exception, and this is why you need to wait before salting a batch. Fries salted right after cooking will end up limp as the salt extracts moisture from the inside and brings it to the surface. For this reason, only salt fries after they've cooled slightly from an oven's heat.

Lastly, be sure to give every spud plenty of space on a pan. Overcrowding in an oven means fries can lay on top of one another and transfer excess moisture, again leading to a soggy batch and making all your extra work all for naught. So don't fall for one of these simple mistakes and stick to storing them in the oven until ready for the crispiest fries.