Looks can be deceiving! The reconstituted and re-warmed fries above look pretty normal and good for McD's but... they were completely inedible and went into the trash.
Actually, everything ultimately went into the trash. Regular readers know I never ever ever waste food and always come up with new ways to use leftovers, failures, etc. but these, my friends, were inedible.
It was still so fun to trial and error these though!!!
Today I started out with freeze dried Filet O'Fish and Fries from McDonalds. Already purchased completely freeze dried. Now, when I bought these a couple years ago, they hadn't been done before, and even this company was the first to do them - and therefore, had no experience and no reheating directions. They took pre-orders before embarking on this little trial of their own. I was game for trial and error so I bought some.
Today was the day to try to make them.
I knew it would be tricky - already doing the cheeseburgers a couple days ago. I thought I had learned some good tricks from the cheeseburgers and knew what to do, but these fish sandwiches were... a whole different kettle of fish. Ha ha. See what I did there?
Upon opening the dried sandwiches... they always look much better than they are. Picture a piece of light weight wood - like balsam - and this sandwich made from it. Or cardboard. It's that.
I decided to use the instant pot to steam them this time rather than setting up the double broiler method I used on the cheeseburgers. Good in theory but I think the double broiler method was much better as the pressure cooker still wanted to cook them. I only did 5 minutes on these and they looked fine, but were hard and very much like shoe leather.
Meanwhile I was doing one of the buns this way: I wrapped in wet paper towels, steamed in the microwave for a minute and then put into a ziploc air tight bag for about 30 minutes. I thought this would work but... not really. It didn't change much from the state it was in when I took it from the microwave. The sides were all soft and reconstituted, but the middles were not. Spritzing hot water directly onto the centers softened them up though. Steaming/spritzing worked better than the Ziploc.
The fries were done a couple ways. Here I poured some freeze dried, directly from the package, into the steam basket of the pressure cooker. It ended up being a fail anyway.
These fries were poured over and soaked in boiling water. It honestly was just like reconstituting dehydrated hash browns from the Costco or Sam's boxes of dehydrated potatoes. Once rehydrated, they were just... like frozen, thawed fry shapes you buy at your grocery store. Ready to be deep fried - not at all edible in this form.
One of the seemingly best ways of rehydrating the buns was when I quickly dipped them directly into boiling water for 1 second and removed. Still not great though. the edges are mushy while the very center is still a little hard, and it isn't enough to soften the cheese, which is still sharp and solid.
Dipping the buns also made the little bits of pickle and onion from the tartar sauce come off in the water). Not that there WAS any tartar sauce... that was gone during the freeze dry process.
Here is why they were inedible. Note the hard, brown, shoe leather like texture. Tough - like chewy jerky.
This is how they were when they were in the solid dry form... and they did not reconstitute well with any of the methods used. It seems the freeze dry process with the solid cooked fish to start ruins the fish from ever reconstituting well no matter the style. I am thinking maybe if you put it into simmer water for 20 minutes but then the breading falls off anyway and you are left with a tough little piece of dried fish that has a little moisture (maybe?) so it would be inedible that way anyhow.
Photos of the finished trial and errors......
The two trial and error fries, side by side. The fries COULD be reconstituted and eaten but you had to soak them in boiling water and let them set about 30 minutes. Then drain and pat dry or let set till dry. Then heat oil and completely re-deep fry them.
Basically you start from scratch as if you just cut your own potatoes up or used frozen fries from the store. You have to re-salt them and there is little to no flavor of 'McDonalds' in them at all.
It was really fun to mess around with these but in the end, yuck. I think I still have another bag or two of these in food storage so perhaps another day I'll try again. In the meantime, the McD's cheeseburgers can be rehydrated and eaten but I don't have much hope for their fish.
