McDonald’s sells about four million kilograms of fries a day worldwide. With that much demand, traditional spud cutting methods just aren’t enough. Instead, Lamb Weston, North America’s largest french fry producer, slices them at 117 fries per second.
The process begins when the potatoes are brought from the fields and offloaded onto a set of spinning rods. These rods separate the larger potatoes from the small ones as well as dirt, rocks and other debris. From there the spuds are dumped into a system of water-filled shoots that cleans and further sorts them by size. The biggest and best taters are then conveyed through a skinning machine that blasts them with steam for 12 seconds, boiling the water under their skins until the skin explodes off. Once skinned, the potatoes are ready for cutting.
The Water Gun Knife is basically a water cannon aimed at an array of blades. The potatoes are forced through a high-pressure line and launched towards the grid of sharpened steel at 117 fries per second. Whole potatoes go in, shoe string fries come out; just as when Gilbert Lamb first invented the device in 1960 (although his prototype used a fire hose).
[Lamb Weston – Rolling Stone Magazine via McSpotlight – McDonalds]
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