As sjtrny already mentioned, it's not a secret and Kenji would not have been stuck not knowing it. What he found interesting was that "McDonald's does indeed use a double fry method, but it's far from the traditional one." It's indeed interesting the method McDonald's has ended up with. I blanched many potatoes as a young lad working in a restaurant. Interestingly, the local farmers who we sourced our potatoes from often came in for lunch and requested single fried fries (unblanched). They were certainly a lot different, mostly not as crispy a crust.
bostik has also already mentioned that Heston Blumenthal covers a method in detail in the fish and chips episode of his In Search of Perfection series. I've only gone all the way with this method once, but it is fairly close to what we did at the restaurant, only we never froze our fries, only refrigerated them. It does make nicer fries than simply double frying, but not by a wide margin.
Fries are a bit of an ongoing project for me. I'm trying to find some reasonable method to have nice baked fries. What I get so far is serviceable, but not nearly as nice as frying them.
Edit: I forgot to add the second reason I wanted to make this post: Kenji has an ongoing series on Serious Eats called The Food Lab. He takes the same semi-scientific approach to certain dishes as in the submitted article. Another good post in the series is on dry-aging beef at home [0]. American's Test Kitchen [1] tends to do the same thing, but they only really share the final result with a few tidbits on their process of discovery.
Have you tried Blumenthal's roast potatoes from In search for perfection? Same goal as in fries, crispy outerior and fluffy interior. No frier needed and they are just - well - perfect and relatively easy to make for a Blumenthal's recipe. My wife was totally in awe when I made them the first time.
bostik has also already mentioned that Heston Blumenthal covers a method in detail in the fish and chips episode of his In Search of Perfection series. I've only gone all the way with this method once, but it is fairly close to what we did at the restaurant, only we never froze our fries, only refrigerated them. It does make nicer fries than simply double frying, but not by a wide margin.
Fries are a bit of an ongoing project for me. I'm trying to find some reasonable method to have nice baked fries. What I get so far is serviceable, but not nearly as nice as frying them.
Edit: I forgot to add the second reason I wanted to make this post: Kenji has an ongoing series on Serious Eats called The Food Lab. He takes the same semi-scientific approach to certain dishes as in the submitted article. Another good post in the series is on dry-aging beef at home [0]. American's Test Kitchen [1] tends to do the same thing, but they only really share the final result with a few tidbits on their process of discovery.
[0] http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/03/the-food-lab-complete-gui...
[1] http://www.americastestkitchen.com/