Frying potato with little oil

French fried potatoes (or as the British say, chips) are a deep fried food. In fact, the US term "to french fry" orignally simply meant to deep fry, although simply "french fry" has now come to mean the dish of french fried potatoes.

As such, they inherently are not a low fat or small-oil-volume food.

If you are asking how you can create these with less volume of oil than required for deep frying, the answer is simply: you cannot. There are appliances that claim to "air fry" but I am skeptical of their outcomes.

You can make alternate dishes, which may be very similar, but they will be different. Oven fries are one close alternative--here is a recipe from Tyler Florence of the food network.

You can minimize the amount of oil that penetrates the actual fries by cooking them properly:

• Use a large volume of oil (counter-intuitively) so that when the potatoes are added, the temperature drop is minimized.
• Use a deep-fry or candy thermometer, to ensure the oil is at the proper temperature. This will reduce the amount of oil that penetrates the fry. When proper deep frying is happening, the rapidly vaporizing water expressing from the potato prevents the oil from entering. This is by far the most important factor.
• Make sure the potatoes are dry before putting them into the oil.
• Immediately upon removing the fries from the oil, put them on a wire rack to drain. Paper towels are good, but they leave the fries in contact with the oil, and as they cool, some will enter the fries.

With proper technique, only a small amount of oil from the deep frying will actually remain in the final product.