Veggie Night

I made a big list of vegetables I wanted to deep fry at some point (a subset of the HUGE list of all foods I want to deep fry). At the top of the list was zucchini. In my high school, the cafeteria made deep fried zucchini sticks, which everyone really liked. Actually, even better were the vegetable sticks, which just had a bunch of ground up vegetables mashed into stick form and deep fried. They also deep fried okra occasionally, but okra is tougher to find up North. Since I was deep frying zucchini, I got some squash too, because I figured there were some economies of scope there. I rounded out the meal with broccoli and cauliflower, which I have also had deep fried before and enjoyed. Other vegetables that I'll deep fry at some point include: corn (one of the ingredients in the above-mentioned vegetable sticks), green beans (one of my roommates raved about these), okra, and a few more.

I found this recipe for zucchini and squash, which called for just dipping the two in a cornmeal and flour mixture. That sounded good, since that's how I cook fried fish, but I was surprised in didn't include an egg wash in the process. Nonetheless, cut the veggies into sticks and discs and tried it out. These were good.

Then I went back and made an egg wash and just inserted that step into the process for round two. These were also really good. This time the outer shell really reminded me of the fried fish I love cooking. Others eating with me were split on whether this was better or worse than the first batch. We were also using ranch as a dipping sauce, and I thought that was very good with all of these.
Then, I tried using breadcrumbs. I couldn't find a recipe that called for breadcrumbs, but as you have no doubt gathered from my recent posts, I LOVE dipping stuff in egg, then bread crumbs and deep frying it. It hasn't failed yet. This batch blew the others away. It wasn't even close. As much as I liked the first two preparations, these were outstanding. I just skipped the recipes for the broccoli and cauliflower and just dipped these in an egg wash, then breadcrumbs. Also, I bought the biggest container of breadcrumbs I could find at the store, so I should be stocked for a while. Of the broccoli and cauliflower I prepared for deep frying, I steamed half of it before deep frying and the other half just went into the fryer raw, so I could test whether that had any effect on the overall taste.

Both batches were excellent, and there was no discernible difference between steaming the stuff beforehand or not.
All of this was so good with the breadcrumbs, that I had the epiphany that looking up all these recipes and trying all these different preparations might be over thinking it all. I think it breaks down like this: There are normal foods and there are sweets. All the sweets can probably be covered in pancake batter and deep fried and all the normal foods can probably be just dipped in an egg wash and then covered in breadcrumbs. for deep frying. All the other in-depth recipes may be unnecessary. Sure, there will be occasional other things to try, but I think this is a good, general rule of thumb.

While contemplating how good everything is with breadcrumbs, I thought, "I really want to deep fry a pickle in breadcrumbs. Wait...I have pickles! I'll do this right now!" And I did. I didn't worry about the detailed recipe I followed last time, I just dipped it in the egg, then the breadcrumbs and fried it. It was awesome! And totally easy! It's in the foreground of the picture below.

Since I know you all look to me for thorough research on all things deep fried, I'll keep looking at other recipes when frying new things. But I am going to be partial to the ones that involve breadcrumbs. And don't worry, I still want to try other types of batters, like beer batter.

For dessert, we deep fried a few more Oreos (why not?) and a Cadbury Caramel Egg, so I could get a picture. In the first picture, there's a normal (half) Cadbury Caramel egg next to it. I was about to deep fry that one, but it just looked too delicious and I started eating it on the trip from the fridge to the deep fryer. The next one made it into the deep fryer intact, and was very delicious.

Next time, I'll put my new breadcrumb deep frying theory to the test with fried fish. This is a tough first challenge, because all my life I have made fried fish the same way. It will be quite a shock if I like this new way more. We'll see what happens...