Tragedy!

Sad news to report...

My deep fryer broke!

It all happened like this:

Like any good American, I was celebrating my independence by deep frying some Twinkies. From the start, something seemed off. The deep fryer seemed to take forever to get up to temperature (375F), but it finally did, and the light went off. (Maybe it didn't actually take too long, but I definitely thought it took too long at the time. I must admit that I get a little impatient when waiting to deep fry, though, so my ability to judge time could be compromised in those situations.) I put in a Twinkie, and it started to cook, but it didn't cook nearly as fast as they are supposed to. Meanwhile, the light stayed off, when normally it would go back on at this point as it worked to heat up the oil again.

The first Twinkie cooked well enough, but the second one struggled. It probably took seven or eight minutes, when they are usually ready in just a couple minutes. Also, while the second one was cooking, I prepared a marshmallow in pancake batter for my first attempt at deep frying one of those. (At some point, I'll deep fry a whole s'more.) When I dropped the marshmallow in, basically nothing happened. Meanwhile, I couldn't get the light to come back on at all. I flipped the switch to "off" for a while and then turned it back on, but still no light.

The two Twinkies were good, and people who tasted them loved them, but when I tried them, I could tell they (especially the second one) weren't cooked as well as they could be. That actually made me feel good; I realized that over the last few months I have refined my palette for deep-fried fare and can now tell a poorly cooked Twinkie from a properly prepared one. The marshmallow was a total loss. It never really cooked at all, and the slightly warm oil just made the marshmallow melt into a sweet puddle of goo.

Over the next week, I tried the deep fryer a few more times, but it never again turned on. I was obviously crushed by the news, which is why it took so long to write this up, but I have come to terms with it's untimely demise, and I have learned to take some measure of comfort in the fact that at least it died doing what it loved.

Luckily, it is still under warranty, so I have mailed it in, they have received it, and I will, hopefully, soon get a free replacement.

I am sorry to disappoint with no exciting new deep frying adventures, but my next post will cover a deep-fried dinner out where I was researching something new to try at home. A friend told me about a specialty at a nearby restaurant that sounded too good to pass up.