Burrito Night

My friend, Dan (Not to be confused with my roommate, Dan, who was also present.), had been wanting to deep fry a meal with me for a while. He had fried Oreos with me once before, but this time he wanted to experience a whole meal.

One main course I had been meaning to try was burritos. I did a little online research and found out that chimichanga is actually just a deep-fried burrito. This probably isn't news to some people, but I didn't realize that. Some also call a deep-fried bean burrito a "bufriedo." Popularized in the John Green novel, Looking For Alaska, the author writes that "the bufriedo proved beyond the shadow of doubt that frying always improves a food." That's an assertion I certainly wouldn't argue against. Bufriedos even have their own Facebook page.

I wanted to start easy with some frozen burritos from the supermarket. Assuming these worked, I'd likely move on to frying a burrito from Taco Bell or Boston's local chain, Anna's Taqueria. And based on Green's description of eating one by the main character (". . . I sank my teeth into the crunch shell of my first bufriedo and experienced a culinary orgasm."), I was optimistic. While buying frozen burritos, I saw they also had frozen chimichangas, so I picked out some of those too. No harm in deep frying a burrito twice, I figured. In all, I got beef and bean, beef and bean red chili, and spicy jalapeno bean and cheese flavors.

I also wanted to try a beer batter for the first time. I feel I have done a lot of research and reporting on the many excellent uses of breadcrumbs or pancake batter, but it was time to try something new. I did a quick search looking for the easiest beer batter recipe, and I settled on this one:

1 cup beer
1 cup flour
2 eggs beaten
1 tbsp. salt
1 tbsp. baking powder
1 tbsp. baking soda

We used a Yuengling Traditional Lager, and although our beer wasn't flat like most beer batter recipes call for, it was at room temperature, which is also important.

I made a big bowl of beer batter, and then we got to work. We had some colby jack cheese sticks, so we battered those and deep fried them.

The first batch was a big mess. They all stuck to the basket and when we tried to get them off, they tore open, spilling out the cheese. Based on the how the batter dripped all over the basket, I should have seen this coming. But, I got a little lazy and had hoped I could just shake them off the metal wiring of the basket before the batter cooked through. Breaded cheese sticks can be lowered into the oil in the basket without sticking too bad, but these can't. We ended up pulling a bunch of empty beer batter shells out of the deep fryer and fishing the cheese out separately. For the second attempt, we dropped each one in on its own and these fried beautifully. They tasted great, and the beer batter was very good. When making the batter, I thought 1 tbsp. of salt was a little much, so I used slightly less, however, we still thought it was a little too salty. Next time, I'll probably only use half a tablespoon. I like the breaded cheese sticks more, but these are still quite good.

Then we were ready to cook the burritos. Like the calzones I cooked previously, I thought these might not cook all the way through in the oil, so we partially microwaved them before battering and frying them.

These cooked very nicely. They ended up a nice golden brown, and had an excellent crunch on the outside. The only complaint I really had was that the inside wasn't soft and gooey enough, and I think that is more a symptom of the low-quality burritos and chimichangas that we started with. As you can see below, they weren't as stuffed full of beans, cheeses and/or meats as we might otherwise like. The jalapeno ones had a nice kick to them though.

Dan, Dan, and I ate a total of six burritos and chimichangas, all of which we greatly enjoyed. This means that a couple Anna's chicken burritos are almost certain to find their way into my deep fryer sometime soon. I'm sad that my deep fryer probably isn't large enough for an Anna's super burrito.

Next up was dessert. At the supermarket, my eye caught a display while in line at the checkout. They had fresh fudge from their bakery. I threw some of this in my cart immediately. Before trying it, I was really excited about this find, and I thought the fudge could possibly rival cookie dough. . .

It didn't. It was really good, but still nowhere close to cookie dough. It was very soft and warm! We cooked small cubes of it on skewers. As they got close to finished, small droplets of liquefied chocolate would start pushing against and through the outer shell (buttermilk pancake batter, of course) to the surface, sometimes bubbling out more forcefully. Again, the skewers really worked wonders to cooking the whole thing perfectly evenly.

I also bought a box of Oatmeal Creme Pies. These were a staple of my diet in high school, so I had to deep fry one of these sooner or later. The deep frying went very smoothly, and the finished product looked absolutely beautiful, like a giant deep-fried Oreo.
However, it actually didn't taste any different. The creme pie was basically exactly the same, just covered in delicious batter. Now, that's a good thing, not a bad thing, but I was kind of hoping for a transformation like what happens with Oreos.

In all, we had a very successful full meal, and I have added a new batter to my repertoire. Beer batter is still a work in progress though. I'll keep tinkering with it, trying different beers and different recipes. I'm especially excited to try beer batter on fish and onion rings. Those should both work very well.

I have been doing a lot of deep frying lately, and, as a result, I am way behind on posts. So, I am going to try to get caught up over the next few weeks. and, hopefully, I will be posting more regularly. My next post is a particularly fun one; it's a romantic deep-fried three-course meal for when you need to pull out all the stops and impress that special someone.