Dill Pickle French Fries

I have decided that dinners in our household from here on out must match one of the following two requirements:
1.  Must have something in them that I need to practice for school. 
OR
2.  Must be a test for something to go in my mom's jelly cookbook.  (Side note - My mom makes jelly from wine.  We are collaborating to put out a cookbook where all of the recipes use one of her jellies as an ingredient.  Stay tuned...and go here to see her yummy wine!)

Tonight it was practice for culinary school night.  Thursday in class we practiced julienne potatoes.  I am not the best at this very fine matchstick cut.  Mine usually end up pretty uniformed, but to thick to really be considered a julienne.  Knowing I needed the practice, I figured I would get some potatoes and make french fries using my deep fryer I got for Christmas.  However, I wanted more than ordinary french fries, so I got the idea to try to make dill pickle french fries instead.  They turned out pretty good!  I love dill pickles and I love french fries, so this was the perfect combination.  I didn't get as much dill pickle flavor to come through as I wanted, so I have some adjustments to make for next time.  This is a good starting point though!

Dill Pickle French Fries
Makes 4-6 servings (depending on how many you eat...no judgement here...I think I ate 2 servings myself!)

3 potatoes (normal brown potatoes, nothing fancy)
fresh dill
3 T white vinegar
vegetable oil for frying
sea salt

1.  Peel your potatoes.  A neat trick I've learned in school is to cover your cutting board with plastic wrap whenever your peeling so clean up is really easy.  Why didn't I ever think of that, right?

2.  Slice your potatoes the size you want your fries to be.  I hand sliced julienne potatoes since that's what I needed to practice for class.  Normally, I wouldn't cut fries this small, or if I did I would use my trusty mandolin (the slicer, not the instrument...haha).  But if you want to give it a whirl be warned that slicing potatoes this way by hand does take some time, so plan for that.  As you slice the potatoes, put them in a bowl filled with cold water so that they are covered.  This will prevent them from turning brown (and you need the water later anyway).

3.  Next it's time to chop the dill.  Remove the dill from the stems and run your knife through a few times until the dill is chopped.  It doesn't need to be a fine chop, just smaller than what you started with.  For this run, I used dill from three stems.  Next time I'm going to double that to get more dill flavor.  Up to your taste what you want to go for here.

4.  Dump out the water that your potatoes have been soaking in and replace it with clean, cold water.  Add to the water the vinegar and dill.  Toss well to make sure all the potatoes are even coated.  Leave this to soak for 1-2 hours (toss ever 30 minutes or so).  I didn't have this kind of time, so I only soaked mine for about 30 minutes...another change I will make next time to get more dill flavor to soak into the potatoes.

5.  Heat your vegetable oil to 375.  If you have a deep fryer, GREAT!  It makes this process very easy.  If not, don't worry...just fry in smaller batches in a deep skillet or pot on the stove.

6.  Drain the potatoes and fry in batches for 3-5 minutes, depending on how crispy you like your fries.  Thicker cut fries will need a little more fry time, thinner fries will need a little less.

7.  Season with sea salt and ENJOY!!

OH YEAH...and since I didn't want my family eating only french fries for dinner (why not right?), I made these fabulous Buffalo Chicken Sliders with Blue Cheese Slaw to go along with them.  I only made a few changes to the original recipe.  I used 1/4 c Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Sauce and 1/4 c Frank's Red Hot Sweet Chili Sauce in place of 1/2 c hot sauce so it wasn't too spicy for my little one.  I also just used shredded cabbage for the slaw.  I'm all about simple slaw and didn't want the carrots.  It was all a big hit!  Pair that with a nice cold Yuengling and you've got a winning dinner!!  Everyone in the family approved...even my 1 year old daughter.  Try it out on your family and tell me how it goes!