Good news for French fry lovers

French fries are a ubiquitous side dish to any fast food or casual restaurant meal, and even find their way onto a few fine dining menus. What’s not to love? A golden, crisp exterior that yields to soft fluffy interior is truly the highest calling for the humble potato. Alas, eating French fries is correlated with a host of negative health outcome – so what is a fry lover to do? According to a new study, use a microwave fryer to limit oil absorption, leading to healthier spuds.

The study, published in the Journal of Food Science, attempted to use a different frying technique that would result in the same crispness while using significantly less oil. The researchers created two microwave oil fryers that used different frequencies. They hypothesized that the microwaves would create positive pressure inside the fries, limiting how much oil they would absorb, while still obtaining the textural benefits of deep frying. The experiment was a success, with both frequencies reducing the amount of oil in the final product with a bonus of taking less time to fry. The higher, 5.8 GHz frequency produced the best results.

This isn’t something you can try at home – at least not yet. Please don’t try to deep fry inside a regular microwave because it could result in an unholy mess and potential severe injury. The good news is that commercial deep fryers could be potentially be fitted with microwave generators, which are not terribly expensive, so this method could be adopted in restaurants. What chain do you think would be the most likely to adopt this technology so they could tout significantly less fat in their fries?