French Fries is an important part of a burger meal and making them fresh is the obvious choice if you want the best quality fries. See my blog about how to make homemade fries here.

When you prepare a burger at home you should of course always try to make your own fries, but sometimes you just don’t have the time and that’s when you might consider buying them frozen.
This test is to evaluate how the frozen variety of fries taste and also if there is any difference buying name brands or just the normal supermarket brand.

I went to my local Kroger and bought the following frozen fries:

3 bags of name brand Ore-Ida all priced at $3.49
3 bags of Kroger Brand all priced at $1.79

Here are the contenders:

Ore-Ida Extra Crispy Fast Food Fries (737 grams)
Kroger Shoestring Fries (793 grams)

Ore-Ida Zesties, seasoned fries (907 grams)
Kroger French Fries (907 grams)

Ore-Ida Steak Fries (793 grams)
Kroger Steak Fries (739 grams)

Homemade fries have to be fried twice, once at a lower temperature and one more time at a higher temperature.
The important thing to know about frozen fries is that they are already fried one time at a lower temperature, thus you will only have to fry them once out of the bag. Also, since they are frozen, they will lower the temperature of the oil more dramatically than fries that are made fresh. This means that you don’t want to put too many frozen fries into the oil at one time.

I used a deep fryer for this test. You can use a deep pan and fry them in that, but it is such a big mess to handle the oil and much more dangerous since the oil has to be handled much more when it is hot. I recommend getting a deep fryer if you want to make fries on a more frequent basis. It will give you the best results in the end.

Using a deep fryer

I fried them according to the instructions and until they were nice crisp and lightly browned. Once I took them out of the oil, they were instantly seasoned with sea salt and I let them cool for one minute before the taste.

Here are the results from my test:

1. Extra Crispy Fast Food Fries (Ore-Ida)

These had some seasoning outside, probably mostly salt. I tried a few without adding salt, but they still needed seasoning.
Overall these were good decent fries although there was nothing special about them.

Outside: Medium-high crisp
Inside: Soft
Color: Light
Overall taste: 6.5 out of 10

2. Zesties (Ore-Ida)

These were heavily seasoned on the outside. They are not telling you what kind of seasoning but it is definitely more then just salt. They still needed salt to get the best taste out of them. If you like the seasoning these were the best fries from Ore-Ida.

Outside: Super crisp
Inside: Soft
Color: Darker
Overall taste: 7.5 out of 10

3. Steak Fries (Ore-Ida)

These are the bigger and thicker kind of fries you get a pubs etc. I am not a big fan of those because there is too much potato taste on these kinds of fries, mostly because the soft inside part is larger. These fries had a weird aftertaste that was tough to explain. It was like the interior was a little dry and also tasted like cardboard?

Outside: Medium crisp
Inside: Soft (major part)
Color: Light
Overall taste: 5 out of 10

Shoestring Fries (Kroger)

These are super thin fries and cook in no time (2 minutes). Even though they were done, they were still only medium crispy and the interior was tough. These fries were not very good.

Outside: Medium crisp
Inside: Slightly Tough
Color: Light to medium
Overall taste: 5.5 out of 10

French Fries (Kroger)

These were just normal French fries. Nothing special, no seasoning, just normal fries. Funny enough these were the best fries out of all of them.
The consistency and crispiness were just the best. These fries were really good and very comparable to homemade fries.

Outside: Very Crisp
Inside: Soft
Color: Light
Overall taste: 8 out of 10

6. Steak Fries (Kroger)

These fries were pretty much the same as the Steak Fries from Ore-Ida only priced at less than half. They didn’t have the weird after taste though.

Outside: Medium crisp
Inside: Soft (major part)
Color: Light
Overall taste: 6 out of 10

I was surprised that the name brand failed so miserably. The Ore-Ida fries at best tasted the same as the Kroger brand but at more than twice the price.
Another thing that surprised me was that the quality and taste of frozen fries are if not the same then at least so close to the homemade fries that you might want to consider just using frozen fries from now on.

French Fries from Kroger

The winner was Kroger’s no name brand French Fries and I think they were absolutely delightful and tasty. If you prefer the steak fries, Kroger’s no name brand Steak Fries were also the winner over the name brand.

Overall, save your money and get more than twice as many fries buying the no name brand fries.