At a carnival recently, I had the opportunity to try ribbon fries. I would love to replicate this at home, but have no idea how to cut the potatoes like they did. I looked online for a tool, but only found restaurant-style cutters that cost hundreds of dollars. Do you have any tips or gadgets to suggest?

 You have to know the right words to use to find the right tool. In this case, spiral slicer gets you the best results at Amazon.com.

While we are often leery of customer ratings at Amazon*, the Benriner brands appear to have the best ratings overall, although they tend to be among the more expensive (until you get to the multi-hundred-dollar professional units). Our take on the selection at Amazon is that you will more likely be happy with your purchase if you pay $50 or more rather than buying the units that cost less than $50.

*It is a little unsettling how much one or two nut cases can skew the results of really good products that they either don't know how to use, didn’t understand what they were getting, or complain about missing features that were never part of the product to begin with. We are concerned that customer reviews at Amazon turn people away from some of the best products on the market. We don't know what the solution is, however….

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