It’s the Fry Gal here, back for another guest post! (Editor's note: Since I did pretty much no work on this post, I'll at least add some occasional comments in parentheses.)
A lot of the food that makes it to the blog is classic Americana — the kind of thing you'd find at a state fair. Fried turkeys, fried fish, mozzarella sticks, fried Twinkies, etc. However, frying is not a purely American art form, as we found out in one delicious evening!
A frying enthusiast and avid reader of Off The Deep End suggested an Asian frying night, and Bobby and I were more than happy to participate. So, after stocking up on spring roll wrappers, fish sauce, and bean sprouts, our project began!
First on the menu: crispy spring rolls. Let me preface this by saying that we thought everything was going to be much easier than it actually was. Like a whole lot easier. Bear that in mind while we explore the carnage in the pictures below.
We found a recipe for spring rolls here. The filling was surprisingly easy to make and would actually make a great side dish. Next it was time to deal with the wrappers. Spring roll wrappers start out as big, thin circles that break at the slightest provocation. Not unlike whiny children or small animals, they become much easier to work with after you hold them underwater for a while.
First, we slapped some filling on them.
Remember that part where I talked about carnage? Here's what it looked like:
It tasted delicious, mind you, but the problem in presentation came from the fact that we overstuffed the wrapper. Also, I don't think we rolled it up tightly enough. I’m using the royal "we" here. (I actually felt OK at that step, as I've had some practice rolling similar things in high school and college... like burritos, crepes...wait, what did you think I meant?) Once we figured that out, here was the end product:
Next on the menu, crab Rangoon! I think these turned out really well. You can find our recipe for the fillings here. We couldn't find any wonton wrappers at the grocery store, so we again went with the spring roll wrappers. (A couple dollars gets you a stack of wrappers about half an inch tall, which, it turns out, is probably 25 trillion of them. Not knowing this, and worried we might run out, I of course bought two packages. Also, I had a choice of buying 6oz. of crab meat for about $8 or 8oz. of "imitation crab-flavored seafood product" for $2.99. I think you know which one I chose.)
We learned our lesson and used only a little bit of filling. We also wrapped them up dumpling-style and dipped them in an egg wash before going into the fryer. Here's what they looked like before:
Aaand the delicious after:
Bonus gooey money shot:
So what went right? (It's fake crab meat and cream cheese. What could really go wrong?) Well, for starters, the smaller size and improved wrapping technique worked really well. If we had any leftover spring roll filling at this point, I think we'd re-do those using what we learned. Also, the egg wash gave it that nice, golden-brown color you want in your fried goods, and also really helped to seal up the Rangoon. These were delicious and very easy to make.
(Seriously, these were amazing. I think there is a lot smaller margin for error in making spring rolls. For these, you just needed to wrap a blob of filling with the wrapper in any way you want. It didn't matter if it wasn't rolled up cleanly. Also, I think we could have made dozens of crab Rangoon with the amount of filling the recipe called for.)
Next, our guest brought some Italian rice balls after a failed attempt at Asian-style rice balls. They were awesome!
Before and after in the same shot:
Next were some actual dumplings, made by our guest's mother.
Before, on the brink of transformation:
After, delicious and bubbly:
The outside was very perfectly crispy and chewy, and the inside was very flavorful.
So that was our adventure, hope you all enjoyed the ride! Everything was delicious and we'll have to make it again sometime, especially those crab Rangoon. Special thanks to Michele Rhee for her treats and her great idea!
There are still a lot of spring roll wrappers in Bobby's pantry (We used plenty and broke a lot more, but I'd say there still at least 48 trillion left.), so if anybody knows what we should do with those, you know how to reach us.
I kept the pulled pork in the fridge. I'd thought about freezing some so I could shape them into balls more easily, but I just stuck with the fridge. I tried to ball up a little bit of pork tightly and surround it with corn meal mix, but this wasn't very easy or effective. I ended up with a ball of pork and cornmeal mix all jumbled up and dropped this into the fryer. What you see below was the result.
It didn't maintain its shape, but at least it all held together in one clump. It was not terrible, but deep frying didn't do the pulled pork any favors. It dried it out too much. If I'd been able to fully enclose it in within a hush puppy, that probably would have helped, but overall the pork starts out so succulent that it's a shame to fry off all that moisture.
I added some extra BBQ sauce to the slider.
This was delicious and really felt like the way pulled pork should be enjoyed. Thinking back, it might be worth it to try deep frying pulled pork again using flour, egg, and breadcrumbs. While I initially worried about that coating not holding a ball of pulled pork together, I realized that in my one attempt deep frying macaroni and cheese, using the breadcrumb mixture created a nice mortar that I could use to ball up a small handful of elbow macaroni quite effectively. This might still dry out the pork too much, but maybe I can combat that by adding extra BBQ sauce.
(Unfortunately, these pictures didn't come out great. As you will see in this post, I did not use my hiatus from blog writing to get any better at photography.)
The Peanut Butter Patties were fine, but nothing special. As usual, the peanut butter didn't soften. I'm going to need to do some actual in-depth research on this to see if there is anything I can do to make peanut butter improve through deep frying. The Thin Mint also was OK, but the classic minty flavor we all love wasn't complemented particularly well by the batter or the heat. I guess this makes sense when you realize that people usually freeze Thin Mints.
Both the Peanut Butter Patties' and the Thin Mints' centers stayed very crisp even after coming out of the fryer (Remember, the Peanut Butter Patties have that crunchy cookie base that the peanut butter sits on top of.), which also didn't work well with the light crunch of the outer shell. I was hoping the actual cookies would soften up like 
I think the corn mix fit much better with the pickles than with the cheese. Again, it was like a very rich, dense corn muffin surrounding the pickle. Then for the sake of comparison, we coated the cheddar and pickles in bread crumbs. You can see how gooey the cheddar gets:
The center of that was basically hot viscous cheese. "Hot viscous cheese:" Terrible word combination or awesome name for a metal band? You decide. 
Now for some dessert! Bobby had some buckeyes from home that he wanted to fry up. Buckeyes are balls of peanut butter goodness dipped in chocolate. 
I whipped up some pancake batter and we used that to coat them. Then we stuck them on the end of some wooden skewers and put them right into the oil, turning while they cooked to get a nice even coating. They came out beautifully.
With all that peanut butter and chocolate (not to mention the pancake batter), they were very rich. I think we could have let them cook a little bit longer to soften up the peanut butter; it stayed pretty solid after frying. 
The chocolate on the inside of the truffle was basically liquid. When I say "liquid," I don't mean just kind of runny like the cheddar cheese or melted like fondue chocolate. I mean it was about the density of water, but molten hot and chocolate flavored. It was delicious, but it was kind of a weird experience. It probably has something to do with the fat content of the chocolate we used, but overall I'm optimistic about the possibilities for frying chocolate. (Editor's note: Whew!) So anyway, hope y'all enjoyed reading my guest post as much as I enjoyed eating the food! I hope to be involved in many more deep-frying adventures! 
I cooked it thoroughly in an oven first. . .
Then I added a beer batter and deep fried it for a couple minutes.
This thing was unbelievably greasy — although I guess that is to be expected when you are cooking a giant ball of pork and cheese. It's greasy even when you aren't deep frying it, but deep-fried, it was especially a lot to handle. This is one of those foods that you really feel unhealthy after eating. I had to lie down on the couch and give myself a while to recover afterwards.
When the big day finally arrived, I had a good crowd on hand to watch the whole thing. About 25 people showed up. Ahead of time, I put the turkey in the pot and added water until it was completely submerged, to see how much oil I would need. I ended up using about 3.5 gallons of peanut oil. In the research I did, peanut oil was recommended not only for taste, but also because it has a higher smoke point and flash point. So, it could get hotter than canola or vegetable oil and be less of a fire risk. 
The oil bubbled wildly, and the guys holding the pot said they could feel the whole pot shaking from all the bubbling oil. It took around a minute to fully submerge the turkey, going slowly so the oil didn't bubble over. One of the coolest parts was watching the oil flow into the center cavity of the turkey and start spewing out the top opening like a fountain. It looked amazing. I was told by some in the crowd that they thought actually putting the turkey in would be anticlimactic, but they were thoroughly engrossed with the whole spectacle. I stood a full arm's length away while lowering the turkey, and a little oil splashed onto me, but it didn't do any damage other than stain my hoodie.
Once the turkey was fully in and had settled down, we re-lit the flame to get the oil back to temperature. In the picture above you can see that we 1) kept the propane tank and anything else as far away as possible from the oil, 2) did not use a lid, as that increases the chances of the oil boiling over, and 3) covered the hose from the tank to the fryer with aluminum foil. I got a lot of tips from everyone when they found out I was frying a turkey, and this was suggested because fryer spits oil almost the entire time it's cooking, and covering that hose with something like foil will protect it and make my investment last longer. While the turkey was cooking, we made sure someone was watching it the whole time, and other groups went back inside to start deep frying some of the side dishes. 
The turkey was getting close to finished at this point. People loved the smell of the turkey cooking. The creole seasoning really gave off a wonderful aroma throughout the back yard. While the oil actually took a long time to get back up to temperature, after about an hour and ten minutes, we tested the turkey with the meat thermometer, and it was done. Here's a nice, triumphant deep frying action shot of me: 
Though the turkey looks absolutely charred, that blackness was actually due largely to the rub I used. The reviews online even warned me that this would happen, but that both the inside and the skin would still taste excellent. 
I then got to carve a turkey for the first time in my life. I felt like a Dad. Though the knife I had wasn't actually very sharp, I was able to easily cut slices of white meat. And then the dark meat came off with no trouble. I tried some white meat, dark meat, and skin, and all were fantastic. I still liked the dark meat more than the white, but both were much more tender than any turkey I've had before. The skin also was really good, although tougher than normal and with a strong, spicy flavor from the rub. I could have used more of the rub, and even injected it into the turkey in different places, but I didn't want to overdo it on my first try, and the turkey was delicious without it anyways. My roommate Dan and several others passed around a turkey leg until they'd stripped it totally down to the bone.
To this:
In under half an hour.
We used one of the baskets from my indoor deep fryer, and Norman was a great help in watching over people's orders while they cooked and handing them out when they were done.
The solution to the mashed potatoes vs. stuffing debate turned out to be this: tightly pack some stuffing into a small ball, then pack mashed potatoes around that, then bread it and deep fry it. This was fantastic, and pretty much perfect with gravy poured on top. I wish I had tried to put a reservoir of gravy in the center somehow and then deep fried all three things together.
Like my 