On a radio interview the other day, the topic of being a fry cook came up. This is because on the campaign trail, former President Donald Trump tried his hand at the job in response to Vice President Kamala Harris’s claim to have worked at McDonald’s as a fry cook. This practice has to be a good thing. We need more politicians to sample what it is like to have such jobs and acquire such skills.
I’ve long had a deep admiration for fry cooks, mostly due to my personal history. Following a long period working as a department-store maintenance worker, a busboy at a steakhouse, and then with a catering company as a dishwasher, I landed a job with a locally owned fish restaurant which was both dine-in and to-go. The house specialty was fried fish and a funny fried biscuit called the hot puff, which was served with honey.
My job was to bus tables. It was not easy because there were long lines of customers waiting to sit down. I stood by the swinging doors going to and from the kitchen with a bucket. The instant customers stood up to leave, I would sweep in to collect plates, flatware, and glasses. All went into the bucket.
Then I took a hot wet cloth and scrubbed the table, finishing with a spray of a cleaning product. I would place the salt, pepper, and napkin holders back in their spot, and the next customers would be seated. This often involved refilling the honey dispenser, carefully, without spilling any.
The key was a careful scrub of the table. It turns out that people can be extremely messy with honey, especially kids. It was often smeared all over the table, which is why the cloth used to clean it had to be very hot. It was absolutely crucial to clean up every spot, leaving no hint of stickiness anywhere. If the next customer sat down and found a sticky mess, they would likely feel disgust and would be less likely to return. For this reason, I felt like I had the most important job in the restaurant.
If the customer line would recede, I would go to the kitchen and work on the dishes, which were forever piling up. The water was scalding hot so one had to wear very heavy rubber gloves that came up past the elbow. When all those jobs were done, it was my responsibility to keep the sinks scrubbed and gleaming and all the plates carefully stacked. In this, I would usually work with one or two others.
Some fifteen feet away from the sinks were the deep fryers. I recall we had perhaps four of them, with one person stationed at each. This is because nearly everything we sold was fried. The oil was deep, incredibly hot, and everyone who worked there had scars to show for it. There was an injury every few days. The guys were proud of that. Quite simply, it was a very dangerous job and I could easily observe the derring-do culture of the guys who worked there. They were forever cracking jokes and fussing with the tools and tasks.
How can I put this? Their job was so much more awesome than mine. It required more skill, more bravery, more attentiveness, and even more speed. The fish seemed easier than the hot puff because they merely had to be submerged in the roiling oil. The fresh biscuits immediately floated to the top so they had to be flipped with special tools. This is when the oil splattered and landed in various spots. I would watch in amazement at their timing and skill. The volume was also very impressive. People would routinely order two pieces of fish and half a dozen hot puffs, which the customers would fill with honey for a pass-out-after treat.
The fry cooks always marveled that people ate those things. In the raw form, the biscuits came in long tubes that had to be unwrapped and then banged on the counter, making a loud pop. They would be separated and put in the fryer one by one, and the cook had to have a good eye as the color turned from white to brown. They absorb an amazing amount of grease, which was once demonstrated to me by smashing a cooked one between two stacks of paper napkins. It’s astounding that people would eat that stuff!
In order to work around all this food, I had to obtain a food handler’s license. This involved a day of training that included watching a film, one of the grossest I’ve ever seen. A guy goes to the bathroom and pops a pimple. He wipes his hands on the towel hanging there. A customer comes in and washes his hands and transfers the bacteria to his hands and goes to the kitchen to handle food. That germ is then transferred to the food which is served. Everyone in the restaurant gets poisoned. I was so shocked by the film that I went through a full year of germophobia.
In any case, I was so proud of my food handler’s license, my first real credential, which I obtained at the young age of 14. It entitled me to get any job at any place that served food. That said, I never made it to the status of a fry cook. Maybe I was too young or maybe too good at washing dishes. Instead of sticking around, I eventually changed jobs and ended up in a men’s store, and then embedded myself in that industry.
In any case, I never lost my admiration of the fry cook. In later years, I bought a fry baby for home and tried to use it. It was too much trouble, so I learned to fry using just an iron skillet and a bucket of lard. There has never been a time when, while frying, I do not think back on those days in the fish restaurant, always with a winsome sense that I could have been a contender.
Years later, it became fashionable to fry turkeys at Thanksgiving. Maybe it still is. Talk about danger! My father, brother, and I went out to the alleyway with a huge steel pot with a butane-burning flame underneath. We filled the pot with several gallons of oil and let it heat up. Then we got a long stick with a hook that held the uncooked turkey. Carefully, while standing far away from the pot, we lowered the turkey into the oil.
To our astonishment, the scalding hot oil shot up high into the air, creating the craziest, greasiest, and most dangerous mess I’ve ever seen. The thing cooked for only 10 or 15 minutes (maybe) and it was done. In the end, the result was... a fried turkey. Sure, it was fine, but we never did it again. Part of the reason: Afterward, we threw the large pot away rather than attempt to clean it. Despite the scene and the adventure of the whole process, it simply proved not to be worth it. But, hey, at least I have the memory!
Maybe you own a fry baby. Hats off to you! I hope when you fry, you eschew all these terrible oils you can find in the store, from corn oil to peanut oil (which is not from a nut but a legume). The only oils you should be using for your own health are animal fats. My choice has always been lard, which was popular before it came to be rationed in World War II, but others prefer tallow. Tallow was what McDonald’s used for its fries before the early 1980s, which is why they were so beloved.
I bought some tallow from the health-food store last month and it nearly broke the bank, even if it was truly delicious. Maybe you can find a cheaper version.
I wish all candidates the best of luck taking on the arduous and scary task of becoming a fry cook. Here’s the thing you can know for sure: In so doing, they will learn a valuable skill that people genuinely appreciate. The same cannot be said for most of what politicians do.
