Don't you have cheap deep fryer appliances in the US? Here they are almost as common as toasters... Can buy them as cheap as 20-30 bucks, and those actually work quite fine. The oil that goes into them is almost more expensive.
Messing around on a stove works for me when going for 'low and slow' shallow frying, especially in smaller amounts of oil, but actually putting a full multiliter pan of oil on there feels like an accident waiting to happen.
Agreed on most commercial fries being junk. Part of that is also that most of them are made from cheap really bland potatoes that just taste like cardboard.
IMO the main advantage of a pre-cook in water is that it allows you to season them properly; salt it like pastawater and you'll get a pretty homogenous seasoning that's superior to just dunking salt on at the end. The main downside to me is that I find the flavor better when more water is evaporated (so it gets more concentrated), so I prefer cooking either in fat or with dry heat.
I was actually somewhat underwhelmed by it. The
texture is good, but the flavor is IMO not that special. Maybe I'm just spoiled, but I usually do a low and slow pre-cook that takes way longer. Almost like a confit in fat (flavorful fat that is; usually duck fat + flavored olive oil). Alternatively I go in the oven. Either gives superior flavor IMO since it evaporates more water which leads to a more intensely flavored end product. Crispyness can be almost the same if you end on high heat.
Agreed on the tater variety. Can also really screw up nailing down your process if you keep switching potato varieties, since the results will be different every time. What i described (low and slow) only really works with waxy potatoes. What's more important IMO is that there's not just a texture difference but also a huge flavor difference. IMO a lot of the discussion on 'how to make good potatoes' is misguided, since it tends to only focus on texture. This might stem from the fact that most potatoes you buy in supermarkets are flavorless, but that doesn't mean flavorful potatoes don't exist. Most supermarket potatoes taste like nothing, just like most frozen convenience potato products. It's definitly worth experimenting to look around and settle on a potato you like.
My favorites in recent times are Charlotte and Gourmandine (basically indistinguishable because Gourmandine is a derivative of Charlotte).
Starting low and slow works, but with some caveats. It will make the end product a lot fatter and the taste of the fat will be more prevalent in the end product. So it's only worth doing it like that if you actually fry in flavorful fat; not in bland junk. It's also not trivial to get a crispy result that way; often easier to just do a lower temp 'pre-cook', then take them out, give it some time to heat up and then finish on high temp.