Welcome To The Show: My Professional Debut

As detailed in my last post, I was offered the chance to deep fry Halloween candy for the Orchards Hotel in Williamstown, MA. They were throwing a Halloween party with karaoke, a buffet, lots of candy, and my deep-frying expertise. In the week leading up to the event, I practiced the candy bars I knew, I tried a bunch of new ones, and I was confident and ready to go.

I got to the hotel mid-afternoon, checked in, got comfortable, and got mentally prepared. I had a bag full of supplies and my good deep-frying scoop. The party started at 7, so around 6:30, I went down to the bar and the chef's took me into the kitchen to get me ready. The restaurant manager, all the chefs, and everyone else was really welcoming. They had been hearing about this for a few weeks, and were excited to finally meet me. They also gave me a chef's hat and got me a coat to wear, so I was fully suited up and ready for action.
During the rest of the pregame warm up time, we played around in the back with the big fryer, testing out some of the candy bars I hadn't tried yet. Meanwhile, much of the staff was all crowding around to watch me in action and sample stuff. This was really fun; we deep fried Twizzlers by tying them in a knot at one end, dipping that in buttermilk pancake batter and holding it in by the long, unbattered end. These got much softer but were still chewy and very good. We also deep fried a bunch of Twix bars, because I made one, and after the manager's reaction tasting it, everyone wanted to try one. Then I got out the chocolate and the marshmallows to attempt to make a s'more.

I was going to jam the chocolate inside the marshmallow somehow, dip that in batter, and then crush up a graham cracker and roll everything in the graham cracker pieces. The head chef showed me a cool trick though, and I've actually used this a lot since learning it. He made a whole s'more and dipped it in the batter. Then, he carefully lowered only one end into the oil. After a few seconds, the batter has cooked a little and solidified, holding the whole thing together. It also puffs up, so the whole thing floats, and, when let go of, the entire s'more flips over in the oil, cooking the other side. The entire thing still wasn't the most beautiful dessert ever made, but it did stay together and was an amazing chocolaty, marshmallowy, delicious mass inside all the batter. After a little bit of playing around, the party was ready to begin, and we set up the table out front where I'd be working. The restaurant manager had brought in another deep fryer from his house that I could use out in the party, and if it ever got too crowded, I could use the bigger one in the back to prepare a bunch of stuff at once. The small one could easily fit several things in at a time, so I could keep up with all the orders OK. We laid all the candy out in front on the table, and we just let people dig through the pile, find something they wanted deep fried, and then hand it to me and I'd take care of the rest. Here's what my work station looked like:
While setting up everything and getting ready to go, one of the chefs asked me to prepare a special dessert for a girl in the restaurant who was there celebrating her birthday. I kept it simple and made a sampler plate with a Milky Way, Twix, Reese's cup, and Snickers. I even got to go out and personally present the dessert to the birthday girl and tell her a little about deep frying and my blog.
As seen above, I cooked just about everything that night on bamboo skewers, because then it's easy to roll the candy or fully submerge it to cook everything evenly on all sides. And you can easily pull them out of the fryer one at a time as they are ready. You can also hand them off while they are still very hot.

The whole night kind of runs together while I was out there deep frying for everyone, but here are some of the things I remember:

I snacked on candy pretty steadily throughout the evening, but the chefs also cooked me a delicious steak for dinner (not deep fried). The Orchards Hotel really took care of me while I was there.

One party goer was enjoying everything I had, but disappointed there were no Almond Joys. Coconut is one of the few foods I don't really like, so I hadn't thought of trying that or buying any, but she went out to a nearby convenience store, bought one, and brought it back for me to fry up for her, which she greatly enjoyed.

Another guest had me jam a Tootsie Roll inside a marshmallow and deep fry that. She enjoyed it thoroughly. I never tried this myself, although I did have a deep fried Tootsie Roll which was soft and melty and much easier to eat than normal.

A number of guests requested deep-fried Butterfingers, even after I warned them about the center fusing together into a solid core. They usually actually seemed even more interested to try it after learning that. And everyone enjoyed them.

Sadly, I didn't get to try a York peppermint patty, but those who did have them enjoyed them.

Whenever anyone asked for a recommendation, I would suggest something with caramel. I think those are the best. That said, I deep fried a Nestle's crunch bar, and that was good. The crunchy rice bits kind of float all around inside the mass of melted chocolate. Similarly, when eating a deep-fried Kit Kat, I could feel the wafer layers sliding around on each other. A lot of people asked for deep fried Hershey's. These were good, although compared to everything else a little plain, in my opinion.

The emcee at the karaoke table kept plugging my blog all night, which was awesome, and he kept coming over to get more deep-fried candy during all his breaks. I also gave out a number of my postcards for all those interested in learning more about deep frying.

Throughout the evening, I saw a lot of return visits by happy customers, and I got a lot of compliments on everything. Overall, I deep fried an impressive amount of candy over four hours. The pile was pretty much gone by 11pm.

Ashley's mom, was at the hotel, but she didn't join in the deep frying. That's too bad, because then I would have deep fried with all the members of her family. Her dad enjoyed the food, but the sugary smell was too much for him by the end of the night.

In the end, I don't think there was a single unsatisfied customer. My first foray into professional deep frying was an absolute success. I want to give a big thanks to everyone at the Orchards Hotel for really welcoming me and for helping everything go as well as it did. Perhaps the word will spread and I'll land other gigs, but I have nothing planned at the moment, which is fine with me. Sure, I'll miss the big crowds, fancy hotel rooms, steak dinners, and groupies, but for now it's back to deep frying for love of the game.