Can you recreate Chick-fil-A waffle fries at home? We compared two viral recipes

Our team is dedicated to finding and telling you more about the products and deals we love. If you love them too and decide to purchase through the links below, we may receive a commission. Pricing and availability are subject to change.

Can you make homemade waffle fries in an air fryer? A better question, can those fries be as good as the ones from Chick-fil-A, which is basically the waffle fry holy grail?

Here are In The Know, we love making fast food items at home — whether it’s McDonald’s McGriddles or Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap Supreme. To tackle homemade waffle fries, though, we knew we’d need some help. Thankfully, we had the “Fry Daddy” for that.

Shop: Presto ‘Fry Daddy’ Electric Deep Fryer, $24.99

Credit: Amazon

Want more videos like this? Subscribe to our new Snapchat series, Tried It!

The TikTok-famous Fry Daddy is a full-on fast food restaurant in one tiny pot. You just plug it in, pour some oil and get cooking. It seemed like the perfect way to try recreating Chick-fil-A’s famous fries.

To make our Fry Daddy fries, which we called “fancy fries,” we did all the work ourselves — including using a mandolin to cross-cut potatoes.

Meanwhile, we compared those fries to our air fryer recipe, which we called “dorm fries” since they’re so simple, you can literally cook them anywhere. To pull that off, we just dumped a package of freezer aisle fries into the air fryer, and them according to some of our favorite viral recipes (10 minutes at 400 degrees).

So, which waffle fry reigned supreme? To find out, check out the video above, or keep reading below.

What’s better: Waffle fries in an air fryer or ‘fancy’ hand-made fries?

To figure out which homemade waffle fry recipe is really better, we compared them on three points of criteria: taste, convenience and appearance. Here’s how each recipe fared.

Taste: Unsurprisingly, our “fancy fries” (which we double-fried in peanut oil, just like Chick-fil-A) does, tasted amazing. These got a perfect 5/5 for their crispy, salty, chewy flavor, since they were practically as good as the real thing. Meanwhile, the air fryer fries were a little mushy and not salty enough, so we gave them 2/5.

Convenience: Obviously, the dorm fries are about as easy as it gets. Still, we gave them a 4/5 here simply due to the wait time, which is almost as long as using the Fry Daddy. Our fancy fries, meanwhile, got a 3/5.

Appearance: Nothing looks as good as Chick-fil-A’s fries, but our hand-cut, crispy-gold “fancy fries” managed to get close. We gave them a 4/5, while the dorm fries managed a 3/5.

Final tally: Fancy fries = 12/15; Dorm fries = 9/15

So there you have it. Neither recipe was as good as Chick-fil-A, but when it came to taste and appearance, our fancy fries came pretty close. We have the Fry Daddy (and salt, lots of salt!) to thank there.

In The Know is now available on Apple News — follow us here!

If you liked this story, check out this video on the viral cooking gadget that can do “anything.” 

More from In The Know:

We tried TikTok’s “miracle” carpet cleaner

I understand why over 18,000 Amazon reviewers love this touch desk lamp

TikTok loves this metal straw that folds into a keychain — and comes with a cleaning brush

12 tech gadgets that made my life so much easier during lockdown

Listen to the latest episode of our pop culture podcast, We Should Talk: