>>>>>>Define 'crispy'. Do you want them to snap when bent like crispy bacon? How crisp is crispy?
>>>>>
>>>>>The discussion started, really, with McDonald's "fries" always being "crispy", so use those as your guide.
>>>>
>>>>But their fries are frozen. Not a good comparison. I have made crispy fresh fries, but the oil had to be pretty hot to start with and could not put many fries in at a time or it cools the oil down.
>>>
>>>That's what started the whole discussion.. after "crispy" was mentioned I countered with 'crispy isn't the natural state of FRESH French fries (and the others said it was).
>>>
>>>I make 1 potato's worth of fries in a batch, with oil near smoking.
>>>Last night I tried the drying them off trick and it made a big difference in the cooking time (much shorter) but not a whit crispier.
>>>
>>>I will be trying the double-cooking method some time in the future.
>>
>>Did you not merit my oven-drying submission?
>
>I did (of course!!) but considered that similar to just patting dry but more work.
>But I'll add that to my list of things to try too.

PAtting dry does not get the moisture out of the chip - merely dries the surface. It's the drying from within that's supposed to make them fluffy inside. Must admit that I've never been arsed to do this myself, but mainly because we don't do real chips anymore (strangely our kids haven't been too struck on them till recently).