on the sidefrench fries

Potatoes cut into even batonnet or julienne strips, dried, and deep-fried. Beside wings they do three jobs: they soak the sauce that drips, they stretch a small order into a meal, and in several cities they become the plate the wings sit on.

The fry arrived at the wing counter already carrying its own argument about fat. Beef suet was recommended as the superior frying medium in the older literature, and Belgian practice calls for filtered cattle fat — blanc de boeuf, ossewit. McDonald's fried in a mixture of 93% beef tallow and 7% cottonseed oil until 1990, when it changed to vegetable oil with beef flavouring. Horse fat was standard in northern France and Belgium until recently.

Inference — that switch is the same argument a wing shop has with itself, one fryer down: the fat is the flavour, and the fat is also the thing a chain answers to a nutrition panel for.

Cut even strips and dry them. Fry twice: a first bath at about 160 °C / 320 °F to cook the potato through, then a second at about 190 °C / 375 °F to crisp the outside. For thin 2–3 mm strips the first bath runs about three minutes and the second only seconds. Salt out of the oil. Beside wings the fries usually come out of the same oil as the wings, which means they taste of whatever else that fryer has been doing.

Wingstop lists fries among its sides alongside fried corn and veggie sticks. In Washington, D.C. the fries take mumbo sauce; in Chicago they go under the chicken and take mild sauce; in Atlanta they turn up as loaded fries under lemon pepper. Inference — wherever a city has its own wing sauce, it also has a fry that carries it.