I’ve puked out a lot of words on restaurant brands in grocery stores, just use our search box at the upper left to find articles on Steak N Shake, Fatburger, and many more like products. Seems like restaurant brands will eventually take over the aisles —- I’ll have to switch to a better class of grocery store.
Today I tried frozen fries with the Red Robin brand. For some reason, they are not bottomless like at the restaurant – you will run out at home. The label says “seasoned steak fries,” and that is an apt description. They tout using Red Robin’s exclusive Seasoning, and the product is made for the company by food giant ConAgra (Slim Jims, Hebrew National, Swiss Miss, Hunts, Wesson, blah blah blah).
It’s funny, it’s an accident that I got them. They were crammed behind the frozen fries from Rallys/Checkers at the store. (Lately, I have been hearing all sorts of tales about how food company reps screw with competitors – I know of one pizza company that is often the victim, having their boxes crushed, thawed and refrozen – poor guys). I would have passed on the Rally’s in any case, once I saw the package, they look like one of those extruded fry products, not my personal preference.
Kind of “unusual” or “atypical” at least, the heating instructions for the Red Robin fries – 425 for 30 minutes if you’re doing the whole bag. Seems long, but I always follow the directions the first time. Came out OK at the required heat and time. Pictures below of both raw and baked. Here’s a couple of funny points. I have seen a couple of reviews of this product saying that they were WAY spicier than the restaurant ones, even to the point of nearly being inedible. I didn’t find that to be true, and I’m a pussy about spice ‘heat.’ At least my bag contents were ‘gently seasoned’ with a pretty typical version of seasoned salt. (Although when you look at the pic of the unbaked taters, they do appear to have heavy seasoning).
BUT. As I said earlier, I passed on the Checkers because they were an extruded product, and DAMN, so were these. What are extruded fries? They make a potato slurry, kind of like a wetter version of mashed potatoes, and push the slurry through a mold to make fry shapes before frying. The result is a fairly crispy outside, and a very soft inside. To me, they just bare no resemblance to POTATOES, but I know they are very popular with many people. I report. You decide.
It’s a 22 ounce package, price should be under $4 at your store. Or Wal Mart. Package lists 26 different ingredients to make these “potatoes with salt.” And BTW? I hate that the restaurant segment is taking over the grocery store.
Unbaked Fries
Baked Fries
Red Robin Frozen Fries