Why Five Guys Is So Fussy About Where Its Potatoes Come From

If you know anything about Five Guys' burgers and fries, it's that you get so, so, so many fries with one order. A regular order of fries looks fairly reasonable in its tall paper cup, but your bag will inevitably be full of what feels like another half pound of loose fries. It would be annoying if they weren't so delicious — or if Five Guys didn't take such obvious care of its fries. Case in point: The vast majority of Five Guys' potatoes come from Idaho, north of the 42nd parallel.

You can probably guess why most of Five Guys' potatoes come from that state — famously America's potato capital. But why is it important that these potatoes come from above the 42nd parallel (the line of latitude running through the northern United States)? That's because it's prime geography for the crop. Potatoes favor warm days and cool evenings, due to a process in which potato leaves make sugars through photosynthesis during warm days, while the cool nights allow for easier transport of those sugars into the potato itself, where they turn into the starch that makes potatoes so hearty and tasty. Those conditions are more consistent above the 42nd parallel in Idaho, which is why Five Guys insists upon them.

Five Guys, founded in 1986 by Jerry Murrell, his wife Janie, and his five sons (the eponymous "Five Guys"), has long taken every aspect of its food seriously. Its burgers are justly acclaimed, with a perfect lean-to-fat ratio you can imitate at home, and its hot dogs are well-liked, too, even though Five Guys slices them in a weird way. But its fries may be the true feather in its cap, with Jerry Murrell giving Food Republic an in-depth look at how Five Guys' french fries get made.

While the majority of Five Guys' potatoes come from Idaho, not all of them do. "We've perfected the process now, so all our potatoes are Burbanks from Idaho except for two months of the year, when the Idaho potatoes are too soft for us to fry in peanut oil since they absorb too much," says Murrell. "Then we use 'gap potatoes,' Norkotahs out of Washington." (Burbanks and Norkotahs are both cultivars of russet potatoes.) 

Five Guys also hand-cuts its fries and blanches them in water. "You need to blanch the fries to rinse the starch off of them or else the outside will burn up before the inside cooks," Murrell says. And as for those famously overflowing fry containers, Murrell has this to say: "I won't name names, but other restaurants just don't give a satisfying amount of fries. We always give an extra scoop. I say load 'em up and make sure they get their money's worth." Thank heavens for that.

Static Media owns and operates Food Republic and The Takeout.