The secret to making crunchy, fluffy chip shop-style chippies at home

When you really need to learn how to create golden, crunchy, fluffy chips, you head to the place that has chip fans queuing down the street every weekend.

“This is where the magic happens,” says Joe Grimshaw from St Kilda’s Northern Soul, a St Kilda takeaway serving northern English and Irish chip shop classics (including the spice bag with its own cult following) so popular that the small shop goes through about a tonne of potatoes every week.

Also chipping in with their essential tips, Kerri Farrell and Catherine Ramage, more commonly known as The Spud Sisters, third generation potato farmers and provedores.

So, what are the key factors to producing perfect chippies?

The potatoes

Starchy potatoes make the best chips. Good varieties include Sebago, Russet, Maris Piper, Gippy Gold and Innovator. If you catch Spud Sisters at a farmers’ market or head to their website, you may also find Fontane, another good chipping potato.

Northern Soul prefers Innovator because the large, rectangular potato allows for long, even chips. But for about four months of the year, usually in peak summer, they can be harder to source before the new harvest comes in.

“Making chips from scratch is challenging because potatoes are a seasonal crop,” says Grimshaw. “If we were buying a frozen product to cook, it would be the same year-round but we need to keep adjusting. There’s a bit of an art to it.”

He looks for firm potatoes, which signals freshness – “bouncy is a bad sign” – and he tests each new batch for sugar content. If the sugar content is too high, the outside of the chip may caramelise before the inside is cooked.

The peel

Northern Soul uses a rumbler to peel the potatoes to about three-quarters skinless, before removing any spots or blemishes by hand. “A little bit of peel-on gives our chips a rustic look and feel,” says Grimshaw.

For home cooks, Kerri Farrell is inclined to suggest skin-on. “You don’t have to peel,” she says. “It’s up to your preference but I would always leave the skin on.”

The cut

Until a recent investment in a chipping machine, the Northern Soul crew were hand-cutting 800kg of potatoes a week. Now they tip potatoes into a large hopper with a blade at the bottom and nice, fat chips emerge at a fine clip.

At home, you’ll want a long, sharp knife that extends beyond the length of the potato for smooth cutting. Smaller pieces mean crunchy bits: a positive. You can adjust the cut size depending on desired finish.

“You’ll get more potato flavour with chunky hand-cut wedges, so I’d lean to a Sebago or Gippy Gold for those,” says Farrell. “But if you want fries, there’s a lot of edge and not much middle: Russet and Innovator will crisp up nicely.”

The rinse

Starchy potatoes are good but you don’t want starch coating the exterior of each chip. It will make your chips oxidise before cooking, turn your oil claggy and risk gummy clumps of chips rather than solo travellers. Whether you’re doing 1kg or 20kg at a time, place chips in a colander and rinse until the water runs clear. You can also soak them in cold water for 30 minutes or more, then drain.

Drying and cooling

Frying wet chips is a no-no. At Northern Soul, the rinsed chips are dried for at least an hour before their first cook. Spud Sisters recommend patting chips dry then cooling.

The first fry

Northern Soul uses a mix of canola and sunflower oil but any neutral oil will do, and beef tallow is a delicious option, too (ask your butcher or seek tallow at health food stores).

An initial fry moves the chips from raw to just-cooked without colouring them. At Northern Soul, this blanching step is at a lower temperature, somewhere between 140C and 160C, depending on the potato.

“We’ve changed temperatures for this step 10 times this month,” says Grimshaw. This stage takes between five and 10 minutes, depending on how new the oil is, and how dense the potatoes are.

When they’re cooked, the chippies are shaken vigorously in the fryer basket to rough up the edges a bit so that there are different textures after the final cook.

At Northern Soul, the chips are rested for at least five minutes before the second cook. At home, Spud Sisters suggest cooling blanched chips in the fridge or freezer in a single layer before proceeding. They can be cooked from frozen.

‘A little bit of peel-on gives our chips a rustic look and feel.’

The second (and third) fry

This is a hotter step, closer to 180C, for about three to four minutes, or until the chips are cooked as desired. When cooking at home, this is where you toss them with salt and start eating.

At Northern Soul, the chips are racked over the fryer at this stage and given a third, short, sharp flash fry to order, just before seasoning and serving.

“We look for a nice, thin shell, a little bit puffy, and a creamy inside,” says Grimshaw. Northern Soul balances the desires of its northern hemisphere customers, who love a soggy chip, with the Aussie hankering for crunchy. “We are somewhere in between.”

Home hacks for air fryers and ovens

Not every home cook wants to fill a saucepan with oil. The air fryer and oven are good options, too. “For an air fryer, you want something with a bit more moisture,” says Farrell.

Cook them in the oven in a single layer at 180C for 20 to 30 minutes, tossing halfway.

The payoff

“There’s nothing like a really nice chip,” says Farrell. “It’s a creature comfort, a homely treat, a family favourite that everyone enjoys. If you get it right, it’s gold.”