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.
UPDATE: MAY 2024
Last night I tried a second bag of fish sandwiches as I was going to be in the kitchen cleaning my oven anyway, so I thought I'd try the long steam process.
This time I placed the sandwiches on a piece of parchment paper, then placed it into the steamer basket of the double boiler and added just a tiny bit (less than an inch) of water in the bottom. I placed the top on, brought it to a simmer-almost-boil, and then turned the heat down to a high simmer while I cleaned the oven.
I tested it at 15 minutes and was very happy with the buns! They were steaming slowly and gaining moisture and were becoming very 'normal' yet still needed a lot more time. The fish were still 100% dried. At 30 minutes I took the buns off the fish, put them on top of the fish patty and laid the fish on the parchment bottom so it would get more moisture than the buns (which were coming along well-ish).
Around 40 minutes I checked.
Although the buns were basically steamed they were not soft and fresh, they were more like... a package of buns gets when you leave it in the freezer for a few months and then thaw them and try to use them.
That weird texture they get when they are soft, yet hard. And crumbly. The buns were not enjoyable and I nibbled them but meh.
The fish. Sigh. Such high hopes because the outside looked great and I could press my finger on them and they were soft-ish. Very 'moist' especially around the edges where it got most of the steam but the inside... nope nope nope.
If you've ever eaten dried fish - dehydrated fish - or fish jerky... that is this.
I was a version of fish jerky and I just don't think fish filets freeze dry and reconstitute well. The sauce was long gone (soaked into the bun and then disappeared almost completely during drying) so there was little or no flavor to my mostly fish jerky.
I actually ended up just dipping the fish filet into the water for a few second and letting it sit to reconstitute... which worked better than steaming! It did soften it a little more... but it still had almost NO FLAVOR.
That's when I realized - usually McD's salt and pepper their filets and I could taste ZERO salt. I looked closely and could not see any salt or pepper on them. Not sure if the company ordered them that way or not but I added my own salt and pepper and that DID bring out a little bit of taste - before that you really couldn't even taste fish, there was little taste of anything.
SO after steaming the buns and dipping the fish into the hot water and letting them sit, then salt and pepper the filet... my end result was to nibble the rare piece of fish that wasn't fish jerky from the drying process but for the most part, you can't make fish jerky back into real fish... and the freeze drying process did indeed make fish jerky. A yellow/tan/brown over dried fish. The rare part where it wasn't, was ok but it was about 1 centimeter of each sandwich. The buns were awful and useless. I had such hope! But they remain a weird texture and break apart, even they seem soft and steamed.
FINAL RESULT: I still say 'fail'. Although I have better hope for the burgers - beef seems a MUCH better product to freeze dry. I haven't done a trial on them yet though.
