Off The Deep End

Pulled Pork

2011-11-16T17:46:00.001-05:00

I'm a Southerner at heart even if I don't live below the Mason-Dixon Line, talk with a slow drawl, or closely follow NASCAR. I love BBQ, and in particular, I love pulled pork. Having finally gotten a crock pot, I got a good recipe from a coworker and set out to make some on my own. For those not familiar with pulled pork, you don't just make a little pulled pork. You shred an entire pork shoulder and make many pounds of it. It was really easy to make, but it takes all day to cook. While I enjoyed plenty of it on a bun and slathered in BBQ sauce, obviously some was set aside for deep frying the following night.

Here's the recipe I used:

5-6 lb. pork shoulder/pork butt
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 cup ketchup
2/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup tomato paste
3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
3 tbsp mustard
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp garlic powder
pinch cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
3/4 cup water

Place onion on the bottom of your slow cooker. Place pork shoulder, trimmed of any obvious excess fat, into slow cooker on top of onions. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together all remaining ingredients to form the barbecue sauce. Feel free to adjust salt and pepper to taste, if necessary. Pour half of the sauce over the pork and cover. Set remaining sauce aside. Cook over low heat for about 8 hours (or according to your slow cooker's presets). Remove pork to a large bowl and shred with two forks. Transfer meat back into slow cooker and cook for a few more minutes, until meat has soaked up the sauce. Pulled pork can be held on the "warm" setting in the slow cooker for serving. Serve on soft sandwich rolls, topped with extra barbecue sauce.

The pulled pork was delicious, even though I forgot to add the brown sugar and was out of cayenne pepper. As an added bonus, the recipe left me with plenty of extra BBQ sauce to put on other stuff after the pulled pork was gone.

I wasn't too sure how well this was going to deep fry though, given the messy, runny nature of pulled pork. I also didn't initially know what type of batter to use. Bread crumbs didn't seem like they would contain a ball of pulled pork. Tempura or a beer batter didn't seem right either. And pancake batter seems much more suited to sweets. I though I had a good solution though: cornbread mix. I wouldn't simply coat it in egg and then dredge it through cornmeal though; I would make cornbread as if I were making hush puppies. Cornmeal mix is viscous and I figured that had the best chance of holding in a ball of pulled pork. And if it didn't work, hush puppies would go great with pulled pork regardless.

After making the mix, I experimented with some pieces of salami that were in the fridge, covering those in mix and frying until they looked done. (They obviously were not cooked quite enough, as you'll see in this next picture.) I also made a few plain hush puppies and fried some cubes of sharp cheddar. The salami didn't change much, and cheese was tasty, but not as good as mozzarella sticks.

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.

Have you ever had a plate of nachos with pulled pork added? This reminded me of that. The pork still tastes good, but it seems out of its element — overheated and a little dry.

Hoping to redeem myself from that last experiment, I decided to go a little simpler and fry up a hush puppy, cut it in half, and use it as the bun for a pulled pork slider. The first hush puppy I made for this attempt turned out to be the perfect shape. It had a wonderfully rounded top, but a flat bottom, an ideal bun.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.

I realize posts are getting more and more spread out, which is partially because I'm spending more time frying the really good stuff (mostly fish and mozzarella sticks) and less time experimenting. The Fry Gal and I will be welcoming another guest soon, however, who will be frying up some Asian cuisine with us. While the full menu isn't yet settled, I'm especially excited for the appetizers: crab rangoon and spring rolls.

Deep-Fried Girl Scout Cookies

2011-10-04T12:54:00.011-04:00

A while back, my boss's daughter was selling Girl Scout cookies at our office. Wanting to be a good employee, I bought a few boxes. Why not deep fry them? (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.)

I bought a box of Peanut Butter Patties (formerly called Tagalongs), a box of Caramel Delites (formerly called Samoas), and a box Thin Mints. I also like the lemon ones, but I didn't think those had any potential for deep frying, so I passed on those for now.

Despite the fact that I don't really like shredded coconut, I do like the Caramel Delites. I also love caramel, and I love deep-fried caramel, so I had high hopes for this one. Also, since Elise likes coconut and was helping me out, I figured these could be made a little fancier by coating them with pancake batter and then sprinkling more shredded coconut on top. I imagined they would come out looking like coconut macaroons.

In my opinion, Peanut Butter Patties are one of the more underrated Girl Scout cookies. And I'm still searching for a peanut butter that gets soft and gooey when deep fried. As my readers know, I've tried several peanut butter desserts and candies without any luck yet. I coated these in pancake batter as I do for most sweets.

The Thin Mints are, of course, one of everybody's favorite Girl Scout cookies, so I had to include these. They were dipped in plain pancake batter as well.

I cooked them all for just a couple minutes at 375F.

I think the Caramel Delites had the most potential, even though I don't like coconut. Elise enjoyed the first one, and made herself a couple more. I just tried one. The extra shredded coconut was too much for me, but it did look good, and I can see the appeal if you like coconut. In hindsight, a really good idea would have been to drizzle additional chocolate over these to make them again look like a Caramel Delite. 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 Oreos do. Most of the really good fried desserts are soft and gooey on the inside with a light crisp on the outside, and neither of these turned out like that.

Overall, I would only recommend trying the Caramel Delites — and only if you are a fan of coconut. The other two are better enjoyed out of the box or, in the case of Thin Mints, out of the freezer. When deep fried, the other two tasted and felt the same, just hotter and covered in batter.

It's been a while since I posted, but hopefully I can get back on a good deep frying schedule and, more importantly, back in the habit of photographing my work. I've recently moved, and now that I'm set up in a new Deep Frying Lair, I will try to make deep frying a more regular part of my diet. In the meantime, I have pictures of a few past deep frying exploits, and I'll try to write those up soon. Due to the baseball playoffs, I'll be spending plenty of evenings in front of the TV, and since my team didn't make it (I don't want to talk about it.), I'll try to use that time to write more posts.

Up next is pulled pork!

Guest Post!

2011-03-27T17:45:00.021-04:00

It's been a while since my last post, but that doesn't mean I haven't been frying. I've just been too lazy to sit down and write a post. "Exactly how lazy?" you ask. So lazy that for this blog post someone else had to actually sit down and write the entire thing for me. And even then I didn't get around to posting it for another a week. Anyways, here we go:

You know how they say that behind every great man is a great woman? Hey, what's up, I'm Elise, Bobby's girlfriend. One day during Snowpocalypse 2011, Bobby made me a fried feast.

"Hey, I should take some pictures and make a blog post!" he said. "Are you actually going to write a blog post?" I inquired hopefully."Probably not," he conceded. "You're always right. And beautiful. Have you lost weight?" One thing led to another, and I offered to write it for him. If you want something done, you do it yourself.

(Editor's note: I don't really recall having this cnversation, but I guess an excellent memory is just another of the many great qualities of my amazing girlfriend. Also, within my blog, I kind of want to refer to Elise as "The Fry Gal" a la Bill Simmons.)

Enough with the introductions, let's get to the frying! First, we started off with some simple fried cheese. There wasn't any string cheese around, so we used a block of cheddar that needed to be eaten. I cut it into small rectangles suitable for breading and frying. The night before this, Bobby had made me some fried fish using corn muffin mix and flour instead of bread crumbs. It reminded me of the fried food at Cock of the Walk near Jackson, MS, a wonderful place where pretty much the only things on the menu that aren't fried are the cornbread, the collard greens, and the soda. So I suggested that we try using the cornbread in other situations to see if we found anything good.

The cheddar cheese was interesting to fry. It made the cheese very gooey and almost runny. Now we know why mozzarella is the cheese of choice for frying. The cheddar tasted very good, to be sure, but there wasn't that satisfying feeling of pulling a long string of melted cheese with your teeth. The cornmeal coating was a little bland compared to the bread crumbs. We didn't mix it with flour, so it was just straight up corn muffin mix, which kind of puffed up into a corn muffin when fried. You can see how thick the coating is on the pickle spear below:

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.

(Editor's note: after extensive negotiations with Dave Barry's lawyers, I was allowed to keep in the previous joke as long as I mentioned that his new book will be released on April 5.)

The pickles in bread crumbs were definitely more flavorful than the cornbread, but bread crumbs remind me too much of mozzarella sticks to really fit perfectly with the pickle flavor. They were also a little dry compared to the juiciness of the pickle within. I should also mention that Bobby had the foresight to dry the pickles on a paper towel beforehand, which made them much easier to coat.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.

(Editor's note: My Mom made these and I don't know the exact recipe, but I'm told they are actually really easy to make. Here's a recipe I found online that looks easy enough.)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.

(Editor's note: I always think the peanut butter should get softer than it does when you deep fry it. Reese's peanut butter didn't soften either. A future post will cover Peanut Butter Patty Girl Scout Cookies, formerly "Tagalongs." And if that peanut butter doesn't soften, I'm going to deep fry a PB&J sandwich.)

They were nice and warm though, it reminded me of stealing peanut butter cookies fresh from the oven. We looked around the pantry to find other things to fry, and decided to try dark chocolate Lindt truffles. This didn't turn out so great.

(Editor's note: I was very worried I had given her a bad first impression of deep fried chocolate! She tried a deep-fried caramel cube soon after and loved it and then tried, and also loved, a Cadbury Caramel Egg. So I think those undid any damage done by the truffle.)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!

Deep-Fried Bacon Explosion

2011-01-09T15:26:00.003-05:00

A new food called the bacon explosion made headlines last year, even drawing attention in the New York Times. At first it was just a curiosity that adventurous eaters made for themselves, but like most revolutionary ideas, it was eventually mass produced and made available to the public. This Web site has a step-by-step description on how one is made, and it offers three versions for sale. I bought the one with cheese inside for me and gave another as a gift (they come pre-cooked and sealed in plastic wrap). It comes in a loaf, and can be cooked whole or in slices.

On this particular day, I wasn't up for eating several pounds of meat and cheese, so I cut three slices of it to deep fry. You can't see it well in the cross sections below, but looking very closely, you'd see a spiral of rolled up bacon, Italian sausage, and American cheese. 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.
I didn't particularly like the beer batter I used. It was the same recipe I used before on bluefish. I think I should have left the beer open to get a little flatter, and I think I'm also supposed to let the whole mixture sit for a while, and I'm usually too impatient to do that. I really liked the beer batter I used to fry avocados, but making that was a very labor and time-intensive effort.

The best part of deep frying the Bacon Exlosion was simply adding something to it that wasn't additional meat or cheese. (It's hard to believe I'm writing this.) The batter just added another taste, as did the generous amount of barbeque sauce I added. That really helped dilute what otherwise felt like a major overload of pork.

Overall, this was good, but I can't imagine anyone making a habit of eating these. I'd recommend only partaking in this when celebrating special occasions, such as weddings, bar mitzvahs, or successful bypass surgeries.

Deep-Fried Turkey, Part II

2010-11-10T19:04:00.001-05:00

In my last post, I described how I got a great deal on an outdoor turkey fryer, and shared some of the dangers of improperly frying a turkey. Once the fryer actually arrived, I had to man up and actually do it. While a little nervous, I was very excited to finally attempt one of the biggest conquests in deep frying. This was the first thing I'd tried deep frying that had a reasonable chance of killing me instantly if I did it wrong, as opposed to most of the things I deep fry which are merely killing me slowly through potential heart disease.

Since my roommates and I couldn't polish off a turkey on our own, I invited a lot of friends from around town to an early Thanksgiving potluck. I provided the turkey and a pumpkin pie, and I asked anyone coming to bring another Thanksgiving dish. I had a lot of interest, so in anticipation of a big crowd, I set out to find the largest turkey that the fryer could safely hold. The instructions said up to 20lbs, so I played it safe with a 19.99lb. turkey.

I bought it six days before the potluck, so it would have time to completely thaw. The thing was solid as a rock when I got it. I read that you should give 24 hours of time for every five pounds of turkey. This built a couple extra days into the schedule, because, as everyone says, it's VERY IMPORTANT TO FULLY THAW A TURKEY BEFORE DEEP FRYING IT! Even with this extra time, there was still some ice inside the turkey on the morning of the potluck. I finished off thawing it by putting the turkey in a watertight bag and submerging that in cold water for an hour. This is a faster way to thaw a turkey, but you want to keep the actual turkey dry, because if not the bird can end up tasting watery.

To prep the turkey, I took out the bag of organs and the neck from the inside. Then I trimmed off excess fat and skin around some openings. I also had to make incisions around the thigh joints so oil can drain out well. And, of course, I had to remove the pop-up timer. After that, I prepared a Cajun rub to put all over the turkey. I found this recipe online, which had nearly unanimous good reviews and was very easy to make. Even though this recipe said it was for a 12-14 pound turkey, I think I used a small fraction of the full amount, and it was plenty for my much larger turkey. I would definitely cut this recipe in half next time and still expect to have a lot left over. When it was done and put on the rack (the instructions stress: legs facing up!), I had a magnificent looking bird. 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.

Once the oil got up to temperature (350F), I had two guys steady the pot (with oven mitts on), then we turned off the flame in case any oil did bubble over. Then I slowly started lowering the turkey into the pot. 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.

I knew this would be a tough thing to coordinate. By this point a ton of other dishes had shown up, and the reality set in that as much as I might want to, we simply weren't going to be able to deep fry everything. Among the things we didn't get to deep fry that I'll have to revisit some other time are baked beans, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and pecan pie. We enjoyed all the dishes, even those that didn't get deep fried, however, and that probably helped balance out all the deep-fried stuff we did eat.

First we tried to deep fry a sweet potato and carrot puree. It was very soft, so it was tough to clump into any sort of shape that could be easily deep fried. Through a lot of trial and error, we found something that worked though. We'd put a mini marshmallow on a bamboo skewer, and dip that in the puree. Then, we'd carefully dip that into a tempura batter. If done correctly, it created a nice bite-sized ball with three distinct layers to it. The tempura batter was really delicious. It was very light and cooked to a nice golden brown very quickly. Even once we'd found this technique, it was still somewhat difficult to make it work consistently. Nonetheless, this is something I really want to try again. The warm, expanding marshmallow covered in fried sweet potato was a really cool variation of candied yams.

While those were cooking, we set up another pot of oil on the stove and cooked tostones (fried plantains). These were shredded and clumped together into small, flat fritters and then twice fried. They were really good. I didn't have one served with guacamole on top, but that got great reviews from the crowd as well.

Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of a lot of the things that I wanted to. It turns out when three different parts of your house are in danger of bursting into flames at any moment, you are a bit more on edge than normal. I ended up doing a lot more supervising than photographing. Luckily, others in attendance have passed along some photos in addition to the few I took.

We also deep fried some asparagus, (and maybe other veggies, but I only tried asparagus) which was very good. Again, we used the tempura batter, and it added a nice light crispiness, and the flavor of the asparagus still really shined through. 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.

One drawback of cooking a turkey this way is that there are no juices available to make gravy with, but I had our local cooking expert, Norman, make a ton of gravy for the meal, and that was great on everything.

Everyone else seemed to enjoy the turkey as much as I did, because we went from this:
To this:
In under half an hour.

With all the oil left in the outdoor fryer, I wanted to get some additional use out of that, so we kept that fryer on and used it to deep fry mashed potatoes and stuffing. This again took some experimenting, but the solution we settled on was packing each tightly into a ball, and then coating it with flour egg, and breadcrumbs. I had actually expected not to use this method, which is my standard (and favorite) coating for deep frying, but it was the best of all the ways we tried.
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.

People generally liked the deep-fried stuffing more than the mashed potatoes, but I was in the minority here. I enjoyed the creaminess of the center of a ball of mashed potatoes, while I thought the stuffing was a little drier once it got deep fried. A little gravy fixed that problem easily though.
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 stint at the Orchards Hotel, I was really happy to get to share deep frying with a lot of people. I think both the adventure of frying the turkey and the actual results were a big hit with everyone. We finished up the meal with pie and ice cream, but unfortunately I was out of energy to organize deep frying those. That's OK though, since, as it was, people were nearly comatose from a full thanksgiving dinner.

Since I got this turkey fryer almost totally paid for by http://www.cookware.com/, I need to review it for them here. As you can probably tell from above, I was very happy with it. When I bought it, I chose the least expensive one so I'd barely have to pay anything out of pocket. I was concerned that I might regret this decision, as others cost up to $200, while this one was only $59. I hoped the price difference wouldn't be due to an obvious lack of quality.

Looking back, I'm glad I went with this one, because it did everything I expected it to do. I'm not actually sure what else I would have gotten in buying the expensive ones besides a slightly larger pot and a basket, which would be great for frying or boiling smaller stuff. Mine didn't have the basket, but the rack it came with is all you need for deep frying a turkey. For any of these sets, you do have to have your own propane tank also.

I assembled the fryer in only about 20 minutes while watching NFL Countdown one Sunday morning. The assembly instructions could have been a little clearer, but it really wasn't hard to figure out.

The other instructions were actually great. It described all the important things to keep in mind when deep frying a turkey, and it gave cooking times, marinade ideas, etc. It also gave similar information for deep frying chickens and other stuff.

While cooking the turkey, the deep fryer had everything I needed, and some stuff that I didn't end up using, but will be useful some other time. The thermometer clearly shows what are dangerous temperatures for the oil and what is safe. While a lot of people were nervous, and we even had a fire extinguisher ready, I felt safe the entire time, thanks to all the tips I got from everyone, the detailed instructions, and the preparation I put into it.

Finally, I was quite surprised cleanup went as well as it did. Some of my pots are permanently dirtied from deep frying in them, but this pot and the rack looked basically as good as new after I cleaned them. The pot is huge, so you'll probably want to clean it outside with a hose if you can. I had to fumble around with it in the sink, which was tricky, but that's not a complaint about the fryer.

For future uses, I can imagine using it for plenty of other deep frying, like a turducken, but also for things like boiling shrimp, crabs, lobster, etc.; cooking a lot of corn for a BBQ; making huge batches of boiled peanuts; and cooking giant pots of chili.

So there you have it, a very positive review, pretty much like everything I review on this site. Maybe I'm just very easy to please, maybe my standards are very low, or maybe I'm really happy to get discount merchandise, but I'd say it's a good turkey fryer at a good price, and I had a fun time frying what turned out to be a very tasty turkey. I'd certainly recommend this one to anyone looking to deep fry a turkey this Thanksgiving. Be safe, follow the instuctions, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Deep-Fried Turkey, Part I

2010-09-12T00:23:00.014-04:00

Nowadays, more and more families are opting to make a deep-fried turkey the pièce de résistance on their dining tables at Thanksgiving. Last Thanksgiving, I hoped to join this movement, but it can be very dangerous without the right equipment. Numerous video abound on YouTube illustrating these dangers. In fact, when you type in "deep fried turkey" at YouTube, they automatically suggest adding "blowing up", "explosion", "fire", "gone wrong", "accident", and "disaster" to the search.

Luckily, the growing popularity of my blog has opened some new doors for me. I was contacted recently by a large Internet retailer and given a chance to get a large discount on a product of theirs if I review it for them on my site (and provide some advertising, which you may have already noticed). I immediately searched over the deep frying equipment they offered, and found this very affordable beauty. I haven't ordered it yet, but it looks like it is a good size and has all the tools I need to finally deep fry a turkey.

Since I haven't done it yet, I won't claim to be an expert, but the consensus seems to be that you should never try to deep fry a turkey indoors (hence the outdoor turkey fryer). You also need to have the right sized pot for the turkey and the right amount of oil. And, most importantly, the turkey needs to be completely thawed and dried off. If you leave any water or ice on or in the turkey, it will boil pretty much instantly and the expanding water will push the oil up over the sides to overflow, burning anyone nearby and/or igniting into a ball of fire when it hits the heat source.

Here's what it looks like when you do it correctly.

My goal for the review post will be to not only deep fry a turkey, but also to deep fry a bunch of the traditional Thanksgiving side dishes as well. I think deep-fried stuffing would be great, and deep-fried mashed potatoes should be absolutely divine. I wonder if I can deep fry gravy? That seems a little excessive. . . but that's probably what doubters said about deep-fried butter and deep-fried beer — both of which have debuted to considerable acclaim at recent Texas State Fairs. I'd also like to deep fry cranberry sauce, one of my favorite Thanksgiving sides, and, of course, prepare some deep-fried pumpkin pie for dessert. I'll probably have to invite a lot of people over to help me eat all this.

That will be my short-term goal; hopefully, I'll complete all this before Thanksgiving, so I can have a post written and available for anyone to reference while deep frying with their families over the holiday. And farther down the road, a long-term goal will be to one day prepare a turducken and deep fry it. . .

OK, fine, since I didn't actually fry anything this post, here's some YouTube clips of turkey fryers exploding:

The fire extinguisher is less than effective.

The child running around freely in the background made me very nervous at first.

This one almost looks like a mushroom cloud.

Why would you fry this close to your couch?

Actually, most of the really good turkey fryer explosions I found on YouTube were made on purpose. That's probably a good thing.

Deep-Fried French Toast, Breakfast Corndogs, And Bacon

2010-07-31T18:48:00.006-04:00

Since breakfast is the most important meal of the day, I've been meaning to do more morning deep frying. The Toaster Strudels, beignets, and cinnamon buns were all excellent, but none of those really count as a complete, balanced breakfast. So this time I hoped to fry a few more traditional breakfast foods.

There was a fresh loaf of challah in the house, which is a great start for French toast. I figured this was probably an easy thing to deep fry, since you already cover it with an egg wash (and a bit of cinnamon) anyways. I'd just drop the pieces of bread into the oil, and it should take care of the rest.

It was, in fact, just that easy. The bread floats on top of the oil, and could be easily flipped after a couple minutes.

And it also tasted exactly the same. It didn't look quite as nice as French toast prepared the traditional way, though. Probably the best advantage to deep frying this would be that the oil heated it all perfectly, while you might get uneven cooking on a frying pan. But, using a griddle, that shouldn't ever be a problem anyways.
We also had a lot of breakfast sausages, as they were on sale earlier in the week. So, I cooked up a batch of those and some bacon. I cooked these thoroughly before deep frying them just to make sure they would be safe to eat, as deep frying doesn't always cook the center fully. Once the sausages were cooked, I put one on a popsickle stick, dipped it in pancake batter, and deep fried it. I only left it in for a minute or two, because I didn't want the outer shell to be too crispy; I wanted it to have a fluffier pancake-like texture and taste.
This was really good, and amazing with maple syrup. I can't say much besides it tasted exactly like you'd expect sausage wrapped in pancakes to taste: excellent. I highly recommend it.

Next up was bacon, which I was very excited to deep fry for the first time. Fried bacon has made a big splash at state fairs around the country, and you can also find deep-fried chocolate-covered bacon now and I'm sure even newer innovations are out there.

For the bacon, we tried both the pancake batter and egg and breadcrumbs. Most liked the bacon better in the breadcrumbs overall, but in this meal, along with French toast and sausage, I'd say the bacon in the pancake batter was a better fit because it too could be dipped in the syrup.

The breadcrumb coating tasted great, as the saltier coating really went well with the savory and salty taste of bacon. To be fair, I didn't try dipping this in the syrup, but I don't think it would have worked. This would have been absolutely amazing with a biscuits and gravy breakfast. I think this would also be the right way to prepare the bacon if you're having eggs.
I know blog posts have been a bit sparse over the summer, but I've had a few deep frying adventures lately, so I should be able to pick it back up soon. My next post is a fun one. I took one of the most unhealthy things I've ever eaten and I deep fried it. Stay tuned.

Also, deep frying got a little love in this past week's episode of Jersey Shore. Snooki tries a deep fried pickle and calls it "a life changing experience." Check out the video here (go to about 10:47), and read my post of deep fried pickles here.

One Fish, Two Fish, Deep-Fried Bluefish

2010-06-20T19:10:00.002-04:00

As you may remember from previous posts, there was, at one point, 17 pounds of bluefish filets in my freezer, and much of that was still there over several months later. Because fish probably shouldn't be kept for that long, and because my roommates and I wanted to put other stuff in our freezer, we decided to get rid of a lot of it. We'd already baked plenty of it and made fishcakes a couple different times, but this time I wanted to just try deep frying the fillets.

I didn't have the highest expectations going into this, because bluefish is a very oily fish, and I thought that deep frying it in more oil might be overkill. Nevertheless, we had to use it up somehow. I used a beer batter this time instead of normal breadcrumbs or corn meal with which I have deep fried freshwater fish. No particular reason; it just seemed like the right decision.

I used this recipe for the beer batter and used a Yeungling Lager again for the beer:

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

Blend flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Add eggs and beer until mixture is light and frothy.

I cut each filet into about four pieces that would fit better in the fry basket. I cooked a few pieces at a time and kept them in for 6-8 minutes or so. These pieces were a little thicker than other types of fish I'd fried before. The fish certainly looked fine when it came out:

Bluefish has weird darker sections of meat that I think taste fine, but apparently some people don't like because some bluefish recipes say to remove it. I kept it, and you can see the striking difference in the two cross sections here:
This fish was fine, but, as expected, very oily. That said, my roommate and I still enjoyed it hot out of the fryer and dipped in either ketchup or tartar sauce. The beer batter tasted good, but I either didn't let it sit long enough or didn't let the beer get flat enough, because small bubbles could be seen in the batter and were noticeable on the cooked fish if you looked closely. The recipe I used didn't call for letting the batter sit, but a lot of them do. Beer batter should have a smoother appearance if made properly. I don't think it affected the taste, but it probably changed the texture slightly. It still had a crunch to it, but the oil from the fish made it a bit softer than it would have otherwise been.

Also, since we had so much and we wanted to get rid of it, we made a lot more of it than we probably should have. You can see our sizable pile of fish below. I usually am fine with eating fried fish out of the fridge the day after, but this fish got even oilier after cooling down and the coating got soggy. It really didn't keep well. I ended up eating a lot of it in hamburger buns with plenty of tartar sauce, like a poor man's Filet o' Fish sandwich (which is already a poor man's fish). It disguised the oily taste enough, but I would not recommend deep frying any more than you would eat at a given sitting.

Furthermore, it pains me to say it, but maybe deep frying isn't the best way to cook this fish. The fishcakes are great deep fried, but if you are just eating bluefish filets, I'd recommend baking them. There are plenty of good recipes out there.

In any event, the good news is that I do have space in my freezer again. . .

A Deep-Fried Eggstravaganza

2010-04-28T20:16:00.010-04:00

I've been wanting to do this post for a while. . . My friend, Hal, has repeatedly requested deep-fried hard boiled eggs, and I thought that it'd be fun not just to deep fry a hard boiled egg, but to eggsperiment (See what I did there? Get used to it.) with all sort of types of eggs.

While Hal was visiting, we deep fried some hard boiled eggs with a Sunday morning breakfast. We initially tried both a pancake batter shell and a breadcrumb shell. The consensus was that the breadcrumbs were a better eggsterior, although in both cases, the actual egg tasted pretty much the same.

Eggsibit A: Hard boiled egg with pancake batter

Eggsibit B: Hard boiled egg with breadcrumbs Armed with that knowledge, for Easter this year, I decided to finally have the event I'd been looking forward to: an Eggstravaganza where I'd deep fry eggclusively eggs.

For the Eggstravaganza, I stuck with the flour, egg, and breadcrumb coating, but I planned a bunch of different varieties to try. I hard boiled six eggs to start, and turned two into egg salad and two into deviled eggs. The remaining two I saved for Scotch eggs, which I was quite eggcited to try.

The deviled eggs were made with a little mayonnaise, dijon mustard, and the egg yolks mixed together and put back into the egg whites, with a little paprika sprinkled on top. There are more eggsotic recipes out there, but I kept it simple.

To make egg salad, I diced up the eggs, added in mayo, mustard, relish, salt, pepper, and paprika. For both the deviled eggs and the egg salad, there are a lot of recipes out there. Just find one that looks good to you.

Once the eggs were prepared, I brought the oil up to temperature (375F). I carefully rolled the deviled eggs in the flour, egg wash and breadcrumbs. Then I put them in the oil for a couple minutes.

The eggs salad was a little tough to coat with batter because it kind of fell apart as I rolled it in the flour and egg wash. But once it got into the breadcrumbs, it could be reshaped into bite-sized pieces easily enough. They took just a couple minutes in the oil.

Eggsibit C: Egg salad

These were eggcellent. I think egg salad in a breadcrumb shell is a clear improvement on the egg salad sandwich. It didn't drastically change the egg however. And a few friends who sampled it enjoyed it as well.

Eggsibit D: Deviled eggs These were eggstraordinary. A few people tried them, and they were even better received than the egg salad. Everyone eggstolled their virtues. These were also ready in about 2-3 minutes. The yolks of the deviled eggs were what separated them from the egg salad. All of the real flavor was in one spot, surrounded with the egg white and a crunchy shell. The yolks were very soft and warm, while the egg white stayed a little cooler.

The Scotch eggs were the main course. For these, I removed the casing from two sausages, and I packed the meat all around two hard boiled eggs until none of the egg was eggsposed. One sausage was just about eggsactly the right amount of meat for one egg.

Eggsibit E: Scotch eggs

The first one I made was slightly undercooked (not something you want to do with pork!). Keep the egg in the oil for a while to really get it cooked through properly. For the second Scotch egg, I kept it in until the outer shell was really dark. That one was cooked though better, but I still could have it left in longer. I would recommend about 10 minutes to get it thoroughly cooked. Also, my deep fryer wasn't quite full enough to submerge the Scotch egg, so I had to keep rolling it around to make sure all of it got cooked.

The Scotch eggs were eggceptional. Sausage and egg is a great combination anyway, but this was eggstra tasty with the added crunch of the shell. Yet again, the egg is protected from getting too hot by the sausage eggsoskeleton surrounding it.

After the Scotch eggs, I wanted to eggspand into non hard-boiled eggs. So, I carefully poured the remaining egg wash (essentially scrambled eggs) straight into the fryer. It went crazy. It eggsploded, bubbling wildly, and then solidified into a layer on top of the oil.

Eggsibit F: Scrambled eggs
Despite how messy it looked, it was surprisingly easy to eggstract this clump of egg from the deep fryer, and it was just a super oily, overcooked mass of scrambled eggs. A few people tried it, but it was not a high-point of the evening. Whatever; I'm no eggspert.

The final test was cracking an egg and carefully pouring the insides straight into the oil. This one sunk all the way to the bottom, with small streams of egg white rising to the top. After a minute or so, it all floated up, and learning my lesson from the last attempt, I was careful not to over cook it.

Eggsibit G: Fried eggI removed this in good time (probably about a minute and a half), and it looked and tasted like a fried egg. The yolk was still runny, just like I like it. Also, after how the scrambled eggs turned out, I patted this one down with a paper towel to remove as much eggcess oil as possible.

Finally, I finished up with a Cadbury egg for dessert. It's a dessert I've made before, and it was eggsquisite, as always. I was a bit eggsausted at this point, so I didn't get another picture.

While I wish I could say I spared no eggspense and eggsplored all the possibilities, there are a lot more types of eggs, I didn't get to try. I also didn't think of eggplant until afterwards. But all in all, the event definitely eggceeded my eggspectations.

The Double Down

2010-04-14T19:07:00.006-04:00

Whenever I read news articles about cities banning trans fats, uproar over fast food, calls for bans on food advertising, etc., I get bummed thinking that all the fun I enjoy on my blog with my deep fryer will soon enough be legislated away. But every once in a while, something comes along that again makes me proud to be an American. The KFC Double Down was one of those things.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Double Down, it is a "sandwich" consisting of two strips of bacon, two slices of Monterey jack and pepper jack cheese, and "Colonel's sauce," surrounded by two boneless chicken filets. My initial thought was that replacing bread with fried chicken was an idea that will one day rank right up there with injecting cheese into a pizza crust in the pantheon of deliciously unhealthy innovations. (Note: For the health conscious fast food enthusiast, you can get the Double Down with grilled chicken filets.)

Initially, KFC piloted the sandwich in only Providence, RI and Omaha, NE. While I was close enough to try one then, scheduling conflicts kept me from making the journey to Rhode Island. I feared I would regret missing this opportunity, as all the blogs and news articles spoke condescendingly about such a gluttonous creation.

Eventually though, true American values won out, and KFC cleared it for a nationwide release. I was joyously watched the countdown timer on the KFC Website ticking away the minutes and seconds until I could enjoy a Double Down. After locating the closest KFC to me, I realized I could walk to one for lunch this past Monday, the very day it premiered.

While I feared there might be lines around the block and riot police out in force to keep a hungry mob at bay, as I walked up to the KFC, it was just business as usual. The store didn't even have signs up for the Double Down! What if they didn't have it yet!? While standing in line, I scoped out the other customers, and sure enough, one diner appeared to be eating something surrounded by chicken using only his hands. My fears subsided, and I eagerly awaited my turn in line. I, of course, ordered the fried Double Down, not the grilled one, as grilled chicken lies outside the jurisdiction of Off The Deep End.

As I pulled my Double Down out of the box, it was an imposing site. Unable to find a clear attack point, I had to clear my mind and just dig right in. It was intense from start to finish. You know how sometimes you take a bite that is mostly bun and it can be a nice, brief change of pace from your burger/chicken/whatever? Well with this sandwich, there was no such respite. Each bite brought more and more chicken to drown out the other flavors. The bacon was completely overpowered by the chicken. The cheese tasted fine, but it was only slightly melted, and the Colonel's sauce added a little to it, but overall was forgettable.

This thing was also incredibly greasy. Despite my best efforts to eat carefully, I somehow ended up with several grease stains.

Finally, the experience of eating a sandwich with no bun/bread was disorienting. I've heard that while scuba diving in caves or tight spaces or at night, you can get disoriented and briefly be unsure which way is up. This was kind of how I felt eating the Double Down. About two-thirds of the way through it, I realized I had somehow unwittingly finished one of my pieces of chicken, making the rest of my meal an open-faced Double Down.

One fact is undeniable: this thing fills you up. I'm usually not stuffed after eating fast food, but this was absolutely a full meal and I didn't even order fries (or whatever KFC serves in place of fries) or a drink.

Though it fell short of my, admittedly lofty, expectations, Looking back on the experience, I realize this sandwich is exactly what we thought it was: an edible monument to excess. I started writing this post thinking that I was going to say that this wasn't particularly worth trying, but when I look at this picture, I fall in love all over again and realize, "Aww, I can't stay mad at you!"

Deep-Fried Meatballs

2010-03-28T10:00:00.002-04:00

One night I was preparing a quick dinner of leftovers, and I put together a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. As I got my plate ready, I noticed that the deep fryer was still sitting out from the previous evening. As usual, when I leave the deep fryer out and full of oil, something tends to find its way in there.

I figured that I could bread the meatballs and heat them up in the deep fryer without too much trouble. The spaghetti only needed to be microwaved, so I had time to put a little effort into deep frying the meatballs. If I'd had more energy, I would have more seriously considered deep frying whole clumps of spaghetti. That'll have to wait for another night, however.

Dan makes fancy meatballs. He starts with beef, and he often adds sausage. Sometimes he'll even use a mixture of beef, veal, and sausage. Then he adds bread, onions, peppers, mushrooms, various other spices, etc. and cooks them in the oven. They had been excellent the previous night, and I was looking forward to them again.

I rolled the cold meatballs in flour, dipped them in an egg wash, and then covered them in breadcrumbs. The meatballs then spent a few minutes in 375F oil, and they were ready to go. These sank in the oil, and they weren't in danger of sticking to the fry basket, so the whole process was really easy.
The meatballs were excellent and the breading was right at home with the pasta and red sauce. Unfortunately, I should have heated the meatballs up a little before deep frying them, because they were still slightly cold in their centers.
Was it my best work? No, but. . . can you screw up a meatball? Not really; it was still a fun, tasty way to make leftovers a little more exciting.

Risotto Fritters

2010-03-15T11:54:00.004-04:00

Both of my roommates cook a mean risotto. They usually put various combinations of chicken, onions, mushrooms, broccoli, zucchini, spinach, and Parmesan cheese in it. It's always a great dinner, but the whole process is a little too labor intensive for my liking. As a result, I've never cooked my own risotto, but I am happy to act as the sous chef when they decide to make it. I'm excellent at cutting vegetables, grating cheese, cleaning up, and stirring/tasting as needed.

One area where I could chip in legitimate culinary expertise, however, is by deep frying some risotto fritters. So, one night when Dan was making risotto, I suggested just that. The deep fryer had oil in it and was ready to go, and I expected these to be pretty easy to make, since the process is the standard flour, egg, and breadcrumbs that has worked well for so many other deep-fried specialties of mine.

While the risotto cooked, I started off by making a batch of mozzarella sticks. This time I had mozzarella and cheddar sticks, but I've realized that cooking a batch of cheese sticks has basically become my warm up routine for deep frying now. If there are cheese sticks in the house, I'm probably going to start with a batch of them. Frying a few of these allows me to practice my breading form, and it gets my confidence up, since they are always amazing. I'm not sure how my doctor will feel about this, but I've always been told a proper warm up is important in preventing injury.

After enjoying the warm up exercises, Dan got the risotto totally prepared and ready to eat, so we were ready to make fritters. If you already know how to make risotto, just follow all those same steps; no need to do anything different for deep frying. If you don't already know how to make risotto, look it up somewhere. All I know is it involves a lot of adding chicken broth and stirring. This particular dinner happened a while ago, but it looks like this batch of risotto had chicken, onions, mushrooms, spinach, Parmesan cheese, and maybe broccoli.First, we let it cool down a little, so we could actually scoop it up in our hands and shape it into balls. We aimed for each fritter to be a little bit larger than a golf ball. I read some recipes recommending that we wait until the following day to turn leftover risotto into risotto fritters, because after being refrigerated it is very easy to shape into fritters. We weren't willing to wait that long, however, and once it was cool enough to hold, it could be shaped just fine.

Then we rolled them in flour, dipped them in egg, rolled them in breadcrumbs, and repeated those last two steps for a nice, thick coating. We fried a couple at a time at full heat (375F). They sink, so when I first drop them in, I move them around in the oil for a few seconds, so they don't stick to the basket. After a couple minutes, they were ready to go.

Things that sink in the oil always get such a beautiful even coloring with little work required on my part. That's always a plus.

These were absolutely molten on the inside, but really delicious. It didn't change the risotto in any way, though; it just added a nice crispy shell to the outside. These were also a pleasure to cook, because they stayed together nicely and cooked cleanly without creating any sort of mess in the oil. Since our risotto was still warm, these probably would have been fine after only 1-2 minutes in the deep fryer. If you are using refrigerated leftovers, you might need to leave them in slightly longer. The whole mass of risotto is quite thick, so the centers of the fritters might not heat up as well. Luckily, from what I've experienced, it seems like the breadcrumb coating doesn't burn very easily, so you can keep it cooking for a while the inside heats up without the outside burning.

I'm a bit behind on posts from the deep frying I've already done, but the good news is that means I have a couple posts that should be ready soon. I have the pictures; I just need to get motivated enough to type them up.

And there's more good news: I'm not even close to running out of ideas of things to deep fry. In fact, while typing that last sentence, I just stopped, found a sticky-note and jotted down another idea to add to my big list at home. I also have many of you to thank, as I'm always getting more suggestions.

Wildcard!

2010-02-28T20:16:00.005-05:00

I've had a lot going on in my real life, so deep frying took a back seat to holidays, travel, and work for a while. But hopefully, 2010 will bring a lot of opportunities for deep frying.

My roommate, Dan, has a friend who was a reader of the blog, and he was moving out of town, and wanted to experience this fun first-hand before he left. Since all my deep frying is done for the fans, I was happy to oblige.

A big reason for the success of my fancy romantic dinner post was my attention to detail and careful preparation. This night was quite different though. Dan just told him and another friend to come over with whatever they wanted, and we just figured we'd make it work. I made a beer batter, a cornmeal mix, and had flour, egg, and bread crumbs. Between those three options, we thought we could handle a lot of stuff.

We started with beer battered pickles. I really like the spears, but we decided to try slices, since they had more surface area. These were OK, but I thought there wasn't enough pickle in each bite. Nonetheless, they were quite tasty. For the first few, I just dipped them in the beer batter. Next I coated them in flour and then beer batter. Using the flour first was much better, because it made the beer batter coating much more even.

We then made some mozzarella sticks just to show our guests we actually knew what we were doing. Excellent as usual.

We then moved on to chili. Dan occasionally makes turkey chili for our apartment, and when he does, he buys a ton of ingredients, puts a full day of work into it, and basically fills our biggest pot to the brim with chili. The chili is excellent, and Dan is always very proud of his work. He takes it to Super Bowl parties, potlucks, and other get togethers.

The chili was the only thing that had been prepared for deep frying in advance. We mixed it with cheese and crumbled up cornbread to make the mixture thicker -- at least that was the theory. We then planned to dip balls of that into the cornmeal and fry it.

We had mixed results. I tried it twice and the first one actually worked fairly well. It was tough to form actual balls of chili, and then cover it totally with the cornmeal. I think the cornmeal batter mix was probably a little too thick. My second attempt did not maintain its structural integrity at all. The best picture we got of it was a bit blurry, but you can see a lot of cheese in there and some peppers, beans, and cornbread.

Luckily, not long after this night, I was given a recipe for deep frying chili that involves rolling chili in crushed up tortilla chips as the batter. We'll have to try that next time.

They had also brought some shrimp, which I've been wanting to try, but hadn't actually looked up any recipes for. These were pre-cooked and chilled, like you might serve at a cocktail party. We dipped them in the beer batter and fried them up.

These weren't that great. They were OK, but if you were at a restaurant and you ordered fried shrimp and they served this. . . you shouldn't go back to that restaurant. I'll look up some actual recipes next time I try shrimp.

Next up was Brussels sprouts. I tolerate Brussels sprouts, but I don't go out of my way to eat them, and I've never prepared them on my own. We steamed these first, and we were eating them partly as a break from fried food. (Yea, I know, it sounds crazy, but sometimes you need an unfried dish to cleanse the palette.) After eating a few steamed Brussels sprouts, they dropped one in the deep fryer with no batter at all. I don't have any pictures of that, but maybe that's for the best; as Dan said, it looked like a burn victim. It was shriveled up and blackened. I didn't try it, and I don't think it got good reviews. I think the beer batter might have been OK. Probably a tempura batter would be the best bet for Brussels sprouts.

Finally, we finished up with onion rings. These were actually really good. Dan's friend, James, took over and dipped them in the beer batter and dropped them in the oil one-by-one. In my last attempt at onion rings, they all stuck together in one big clump, but this time they were cooked separately and eaten one at a time. It's certainly not an efficient way to fry onion rings, but they were very tasty. They had a really nice crunch and flavor to them and the onion inside was nice and soft. If I can figure out how to scale this process up, I'll be very excited.
We had some other foods and desserts planned, but with all we'd eaten, we were too stuffed to do more. So unfortunately, we didn't get to apples, bananas, burritos, Twinkies, zucchini, and a few other fairly random foods we had assembled.

We had even put the bananas in the freezer to prepare them for dessert. Though we didn't get to it this time, it gave me a great idea for a future post: deep frying a Bluth banana!

Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Deep Fry Dem Beignets?

2010-02-07T11:40:00.003-05:00

I should start off by saying I'm not a New Orleans Saints fan. And as a Carolina Panthers fan I am generally rooting against the Saints. But, with my team eliminated, I feel OK giving them my support in Super Bowl XLIV. After all, the "Aints" have had a tough history, and the Colts won it all just a few years ago.

I'm also a big fan of the city of New Orleans. I've visited twice, seen the Superdome, walked Bourbon St., and enjoyed Hurricanes, po' boys, and, of course, beignets. In fact, I've enjoyed some of those things a little too much. So, to give the Saints a little support today, I figured this very morning, on Super Bowl Sunday, would be a great time to deep fry some beignets. This is also my fastest turnaround time ever for a blog post, having finished eating them just hours ago.

A beignet (pronounced ben-yay) is a small piece of fried dough. Very simple concept, but also very delicious. They are perhaps most famously made at Cafe du Monde, a coffee house open in New Orleans since 1862. They are open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, only closing for Christmas and hurricanes. No one should leave New Orleans, without stopping by there first.

I'd been too busy this week, to look up recipes or actually go buy any ingredients, but I had a bag of gourmet Southern biscuit mix I'd received as a gift, and I thought this would work perfectly if I mixed it up and deep friend it instead of baking it. Oddly, there were absolutely no directions on the bag of mix aside from "just add milk and butter." In a big bowl, I added the little bit of milk left in my apartment, some butter (I decided on 2 tbsp; less than a lot of my friends might have expected from me.), and mixed it up. It wasn't nearly as well mixed as it needed to be, and I was out of milk, so I had to add additional water instead. I was a little concerned this might mess it up, but I went ahead anyways.

Then I fired up the deep fryer (375F, obviously) and dropped some clumps of batter in there.

They took on some great shapes and had a really cool texture. They also fried very easily on the surface of the oil and after several minutes and a few flips, they were good to go. The first one I took out was still slightly gooey on the inside, but after that I cooked the batches longer and they were cooked through very nicely.
Then, as is the custom, I covered these in a generous portion of powdered sugar. Looking back, I kind of dropped the ball by not making hot chocolate (I'm not much of a coffee drinker.) to go with these. They are outstanding dipped in hot chocolate.
But, I was able to enjoy a delicious plate of these as I watched some of the many hours of Super Bowl pregame coverage. Coincidentally, one of the first things I watched on ESPN while eating these was footage around New Orleans, including some shots of the always-busy Cafe du Monde.

Enjoy your Super Bowl parties everyone, and just for today: Go Saints!

Sexy Deep Frying!

2009-12-06T20:12:00.008-05:00

Dining is often thought of as a sensual experience. Gazing into a lover's eyes across a candle-lit table over the smells and tastes of an exotic meal is the kind of experience that kindles the sparks of romance into the flame of. . .

Ah, who am I kidding? I've never been that kind of guy. I once ate 60 chicken nuggets in 60 minutes. My picture is on the wall in a Spike's Junkyard Dogs restaurant for eating six 1/4-pound hot dogs in one sitting. Rather than ambiance or world-class cuisine; cheap, greasy, and/or "all-you-can-eat" are the types of things I look for in a restaurant. It is true that the way to my heart is through my stomach, but ordering me a pizza is likely to be just as effective as a home-cooked meal.

On the other hand, Rachel, author of the blog, Sexy Spoon, is much more in tune with the romantic nature of fine dining. She writes about dating and fine cuisine with vivid and eloquent descriptions. She's also a former classmate of mine, so I thought this would be a fun opportunity to garner respect for deep frying as a culinary art, eat a delicious meal, get a shout out on another blog, and hopefully impress a lovely young lady while doing all this. I want to show all my readers how to cook a classy deep-fried meal for that special someone. Deep frying can be sexy too; it doesn't just have to be associated with the Texas State Fair or adult-onset diabetes.

It wouldn't be easy though. For one, I've never considered myself a particularly good cook, and perusing Rachel's blog showed me that she has high expectations. Also, in a meal like this, we can't just eat each dish while standing over the deep fryer. I had to coordinate the various elements of the meal properly. Finally, presentation matters; I can't just serve it drying on a paper towel like most deep-fried treats.

Given her focus on food, dating, and relationships, I came up with what I thought was a great main course and dessert: deep-fried oysters and deep-fried chocolate-covered strawberries. Oysters, of course, are well known as an aphrodisiac, and chocolate-covered strawberries are a delicious and sensual food. And, if you'll remember my initial attempt at deep frying strawberries, I felt that adding chocolate to that would be a big improvement.

Perfect! I pitched the idea, and she was in. She was excited about both dishes, and she even had a recipe for beer-battered oysters she wanted to try. I wanted something else to round out the meal, so I suggested deep-fried avocados, which I learned are also believed to be aphrodisiacs. With that, the menu was all set.

I had never cooked any of these things before, so I did a fair amount of research on recipes for each of these things. For avocados, this recipe, seemed to be the most commonly suggested way to deep fry them.

Ingredients:
1 cup lager beer or ale (I used Yuengling again)
1 cup flour
2/3 tablespoon paprika
2 cloves garlic; large, chopped finely
1 pound avocados
Vegetable oil for deep frying
Salt -- as needed
1 cup salsa

Directions:
Beer batter: whisk together beer, flour, paprika and garlic until well blended; let stand at least two hours.

Peel, then halve, an avocado into six wedges. Dredge each wedge in reserved beer batter. Deep fry in 375F oil until golden brown, about three minutes. Drain well; season with salt.

For oysters, I looked at a bunch of very different recipes just to get a sense of what options I had, but the recipe Rachel suggested sounded very good, so we went with that one.

Then I looked over several recipes for chocolate-covered strawberries. I chose this recipe because the first comment under the recipe was written by a 13-year old, who said he or she easily made them in 10 minutes. That sounded like something I could handle. I could not find any evidence anywhere on the Internet of anyone deep frying a chocolate-covered strawberry. I had already decided that buttermilk pancake batter made the most sense though.

Before Rachel showed up, I made each of the batters so they could sit for the one to two hours the recipes called for. When she arrived, we were ready to heat the chocolate and dip the strawberries. This was a fun and delicious start to the afternoon, as we occasionally sampled our creations. The rest went into the fridge to cool down in preparation for frying.

Then we were ready to prep and start frying everything else. Rachel cut the avocados, while I started heating up two different batches of oil and boiling the oysters prior to frying them. Because I wanted stuff ready at the same time, I had the deep fryer full of vegetable oil and a pot on the stove full of peanut oil. As you know, I've had problems with deep frying on the stove before, so I bought a deep-frying thermometer, and this time vowed to actually use it.

I don't know what to look for in an avocado, so I picked out two of those big green ones (rather than the smaller, browner, wrinklier ones), but when we cut them open, they were definitely not ripe yet. They were fairly hard and I thought they tasted a little bitter. But after about three to four minutes or so in the deep fryer, they were amazingly soft and tasted like delicious warm guacamole, with no hint of the bitterness I'd tasted before. They practically melted in my mouth and were great dipped in salsa.

Also, having let the batter sit for two hours, I thought this made the consistency of the batter smoother, which led to a more even, golden brown coating than I'd had on some other things I've previously deep fried.

After we each sampled one or two, Rachel took over the avocado deep frying, and I started frying up the oysters. When I dropped the oysters into the oil on the stove, they scooted all around the pot, bubbling wildly. This is probably the most active an oyster ever gets in its entire existence. After cooking a few batches of a couple at a time, I realized I could add a bunch of them one after another, because their bubbling and moving slowed down a lot as they got fully cooked, which took about a minute and a half or so. This made it easy to spot and pick out the ones that were ready.

Then we prepared a nice looking plate of oysters on mixed greens, with cocktail sauce and a freshly cut lemon squeezed lightly on top. These were delicious. We easily polished off all the oysters I had bought. Being from the South, I've been to a lot of oyster roasts in my time, but these were perhaps the best I've ever had. This also made even more excited for future seafood deep frying, especially calamari and shrimp.

After a relaxed dinner, we were definitely satiated, but not too full to skip dessert. We brought the deep fryer back up to temperature and mixed up the pancake batter. We used bamboo skewers to put the strawberries in the oil and cook them evenly. Then, once they came out of the oil, we drizzled some melted white chocolate over them.

My chocolate decorating skills were not great at first. . .

But when I went back later and covered the remaining unfried strawberries, I had it figured out.

The deep-fried chocolate covered strawberries were totally awesome. The strawberries were warm but not too soft, but the chocolate inside the batter was deliciously melted all over it. Then the white chocolate on the outside pushed it over the top. A couple of these each was an excellent finish to a great meal.

As usual, everything was delicious. Not to toot my own horn, but I realized that while doing all this deep frying, I may actually have become a better cook than I'd thought. Despite these being among the more intricate recipes I've tried, everything looked good and tasted great, and I didn't fill the kitchen with smoke while deep frying on the stove. I have clearly come a long way in only nine months of deep frying.

And what'd she think of it all? Well, you can read her account here or find it by browsing under Men who cook are sexy. See, deep frying can be sexy!

Burrito Night

2009-11-18T19:52:00.006-05:00

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.

Welcome To The Show: My Professional Debut

2009-11-11T18:40:00.006-05:00

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.

Dress Rehearsal

2009-10-28T15:00:00.007-04:00

I got a call from Ashley a couple weeks ago, and she had an exciting opportunity to tell me about. You already know she is a fan of the blog, and her sister is a fan of the blog, but it turns out her dad is also a fan. What's more, Bernie English is the general manager of a the Orchards Hotel in Williamstown, MA. In the midst of planning a Halloween event for his guests, he thought a fun way to push it over the top would be to instead push it Off The Deep End.

So, Ashley was calling me up to offer me the chance to drive out to The Orchards in Williamstown and deep fry Halloween candy for a party. I was a little nervous at first, and wasn't sure I could make it work, since it is happening on a Thursday night. I've also never tried deep frying for a large group before, and I didn't know if I could keep stuff coming fast enough for the masses. But, according to Google Analytics, readers on six continents have read my posts. Now here was my chance to bring delicious deep-fried fare straight to my adoring fans. I realized that there was no way I could let this opportunity pass me by. I didn't want to end up like Harry at the end of Dumb and Dumber saying, "Don't worry, we'll catch our break too. . . just gotta keep our eyes open."

I met up with Bernie one weekend when I was traveling up to Williamstown, and we hammered out the details. I also got to meet the chef and I got a tour of the kitchen. I got to see the "small" deep fryer that I'd be using, which was still much bigger than mine, leading to a bit of deep-fryer envy. It did however, allay my worries about not being able to cook enough food quickly. I'm very curious to see the bigger one.

In preparation for this event, I figured I should do some practicing. My roommate, and I decided to cook corn dogs for dinner, and then I bought a ton of candy at the supermarket. I bought so much candy, in fact, that I felt I should reassure the cashier that don't generally eat like this. I won't list everything I bought, because I didn't get around to trying it all . . . but I will eventually.

For dinner, we started with corn dogs. In my last corn dog attempt, all the pieces tasted good, but they didn't stay together at all. I theorized that I should have made the oil hotter. I cooked it at 350F last time, but cranked it all the way up to 375F this time. The batter is the same as last time: a box of Jiffy corn muffin mix made following the directions on the box. And here we go. . .

First try: This one looks more like an ear of corn than a corn dog. But, it stayed on the hot dog, so, this is a good start.

Second try: Not totally covered, but it was a more even coating. We're getting there.

Third try: This time I rolled the hot dog in flour before putting it into the cornmeal. It looks very pretty, with the only real flaw being that crack down the center.

Fourth try: I also used flour on this one, and it looks beautiful if I do say so myself. Again there was a small crack, but otherwise it looked really nice and that crack didn't effect the stability of the corn dog.

Here is a delicious-looking cross section.

What did we learn? Well, corn dogs are awesome, but actually we already knew that. We did learn that 375F is definitely the right temperature, and a light layer of flour on the hot dog is clearly a good idea. Interestingly, it didn't seem like the flour was helping right after applying it, because then the corn meal seemed to slide off the hot dog even more easily. The corn muffin mix starts to stick after a little bit though, and the pictures certainly show a clear difference.

After making four corn dogs, I used the rest of the corn muffin mix to make hush puppies. I didn't quite get the shapes right, but they were good.

Then it was time for dessert. I had sent out an open invitation to a bunch of people to come eat fried candy with me, but aside from my roommates, only my friend Norman showed up. Norman is quite the chef, and is the author of monday night menu, a food blog that is slightly more sophisticated than mine.

I started with a 3 Musketeers bar. This was tasty, but I don't think deep frying added much too it. It might have actually made it a little less fluffy than a 3 Musketeers normally is. I certainly didn't complain eating it, but it didn't blow me away.

Next, I tried a marshmallow. I had been wanting to try this (and eventually a s'more). I stuck the marshmallow on a skewer and rolled it in the batter. The marshmallow expends like you'd expect, so it pushed its way out of the batter shell slightly. This was good, but it didn't change substantially. The marshmallow itself tasted like a marshmallow that had been blown up in the microwave, only it had a delicious coating on it. Looking back, I missed a chance here to put sprinkles or something else on the outside of the batter. I think that could have made a huge difference here.

Norman, meanwhile, tried a Baby Ruth, and he really liked how toasty the deep frying made the peanuts. Dan deep fried a Twinkie, one of his favorite deep fried treats, and Tyler got a little creative. He folded up a slice of white American cheese, dipped it in the batter and deep fried it. I should note that Tyler is a very picky eater, and he loved American cheese dipped in pancake batter and deep fried. This gave me a lot of confidence that whatever I deep fry for the hotel guests, they are going to like. He also dipped a colby jack cheese stick in the same batter and fried that. I tried bite of both of these things, and I also thought they were quite good.

Then I tried a Snickers bar and added a little powdered sugar for good measure. This was good, and I've had a lot of debates with people about which would be better, a Milky Way or a Snickers, but this is actually this first time I had tried the Snickers. I always said I thought I would like the Milky Way more, and after trying both, I do, in fact, prefer Milky Way. The Milky Way is a simpler, and it really gives the caramel center stage.

I finished up with a Milky Way covered in rainbow sprinkles. Although it still wasn't as good as the cookie dough, it was totally delicious, and the sprinkles definitely improved an already delicious deep-fried Milky Way.

Norman deep fried a Butterfinger covered in sprinkles, and he liked it, but it turned into a very different candy bar after coming out of the oil. All those flakes fused together in a solid core that Norman was chewing on for a while.

We didn't try a lot of what we had bought, but I was very full and from what we had tried, I was very satisfied that I could deliver a delicious, fattening, evening of snacks to the Orchards guests.

In addition to this round of practice deep frying, I also had officially-licensed Off The Deep End postcards made up to give out during the event. And, I am told a couple of different media outlets will be covering the event. This could be just the exposure I need to get that seventh continent. (Deep frying is very warm, so you'd think it'd be a popular activity in Antarctica.) My write-up will be the next post, and as of press time, the party begins in one hour!

Mars Bar

2009-10-26T17:48:00.000-04:00

After deep frying some fish one day recently, I prepared a Mars Bar for dessert. I had never actually had a Mars Bar before. I also thought they didn't even sell them in the US, but a friend and coworker found one randomly in a convenience store in Harvard Sq. and he thought I might like to deep fry it. And he was absolutely correct; I did want to deep fry it.

I have no idea how it got to Boston, because the wrapper was obviously foreign. You can't really read this, but you probably can tell it's a different nutrition information label:

There is also another language on here, further suggesting this particular candy bar was far from home. I had thought a Mars Bar was basically the exact same as a Milky Way Bar, but then I looked up its Wikipedia page and found out that it is a little different and that Mars Bars are, in fact, not sold in the US.

Deep frying it was pretty straightforward but notable in that it was my first full-size candy bar. Also, in Scotland, I had heard deep-fried Mars Bars was a relatively common thing, so I was happy to have tried that. This Wikipedia article suggests it was never that common a practice, but I am, nonetheless, still glad I've tried it. (You my have noticed that Wikipedia is my primary source of information in the world.) I used buttermilk pancake mix, as usual, and deep fried it until golden brown. It was delicious as are all the candy bars I've done, and very sweet. There was a ton of caramel, which I love, and the chocolate actually tasted sweeter than a Milky Way.All my pictures from this day seem a little blurry, but I think you can still see how delicious this looks. Perhaps my blood sugar had gotten too high and I couldn't hold a camera still.

After frying the Mars Bar, I had some extra batter, and I didn't want it to go to waste. So, I dropped the rest of the batter into the deep fryer, figuring these would be like beignets, the New Orleans breakfast treat. Or at least like a sweeter hush puppy.

You can see it got a kind of weird shape to it. I need to keep practicing dropping dough, corn meal, or whatever into the fryer, because after a few attempts at hush puppies, I am usually able to make nice, round ones. This was OK, but not great. I realized afterwards that I probably should have put maple syrup on it, since it's basically just a oddly shaped three-dimensional pancake. I'll try this again for breakfast sometime, and also I'll try cooking up some breakfast sausages and deep frying those. That should be amazing dipped in syrup. Also, I need to actually make beignets at some point.

It turned out, I was happy to get this practice deep frying candy, because a fun opportunity popped up where I'll soon get to deep fry for a crowd! But more on that next time. . .

DEEP FRIED COOKIE DOUGH WITH RAINBOW SPRINKLES. THE BEST FOOD EVER. SERIOUSLY.

2009-10-10T17:12:00.002-04:00

I went to visit friends in Washington DC recently. I enjoyed a nice long weekend of museums, low-quality baseball (in a very nice ballpark, I might add), and jumbo slice (It’s SO big! This isn't me; it's just a random online picture.). One of those friends I was visiting was Ashley, who co-authored a recent post with me. When Ashley's sister, Brittany, found out I was coming to DC to visit, she decided we should deep fry something. She got together all the supplies for us, but, unfortunately, wasn't able to get a deep fryer for the occasion. Brittany was determined to make it work, though, and, as I always encourage that kind of deep-frying enthusiasm, we decided to make do with oil in a pot, just like in pioneer days.

Ashley: Did you know Bobby died of diphtheria while deep frying and trying to ford the river?

Bobby: I even brought them a deep-frying thermometer as a gift. I thought this might come in handy, because when I used to deep fry fish in a deep pan, the oil always got too hot and my kitchen got really smoky. In fact, I set off the fire alarm in college once while deep frying fish.
We spent a while discussing what to deep fry over drinks (Ashley turned 10,000 days old that day). We settled on calzones for dinner, and then cookie dough for dessert.

The calzones were way bigger than I expected, and the pot we had wasn't all that big. Since I was worried they might not cook all the way through given their size, we microwaved the calzones first to bring them close to done, and then covered them in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs.

The calzone took up most of the room in the pot, and it started bubbling wildly. This was actually a legitimately unsafe situation. A lot of oil spilled over and landed all over the stove. If it was a gas stove we almost certainly would have started a fire. Also, despite procuring a deep-frying thermometer and trying my best to actually use it, the oil got way too hot again. We were aiming for about 375F, and it was probably closer to 450F. As usually happens when I deep fry without a deep fryer, the calzone got very black very quickly. This isn't all bad news though. When I have fried fish in a pan, they turn very black, but they still taste great on the inside. So, we kept it in for a few minutes, and then took it out and divvied it up.
Ashley: I should note here, that that pan will never be the same. But it was also one gazillion percent worth it. Also, I'm not sure we had baking soda in the house, so it would have been a legitimately scary situation had we started a grease fire. Luckily, we didn't. We didn't even set off the smoke detector. Though, our house did smell like deep frying for like 3 days.

Bobby: The calzone was delicious, as you would expect one to be. And the overcooked breadcrumbs didn't harm the calzone too much. For the second calzone, the oil was still too hot, there was a lot more smoke, and this one was even blacker on the outside, and the very edges were a little too burned. The inside did still taste fine though.

We shut off the heat to the oil to clear the smoke a little and prepare dessert. We ran out of eggs and had to go make a run to the store to get some. While Ashley was off doing that, Brittany made small balls of chocolate chip cookie dough and put them in the freezer for a little bit. Ashley came back with eggs, and also Reese's cups and a jar of sprinkles. We also had some crumbled up Oreos. The sprinkles were a very inspired idea. Ashley says she got the idea from Funfetti cake.
Ashley: I feel I should slightly correct the record here. I stock rainbow sprinkles in my pantry because you never know when you will need them. I believe I mentioned this in my last guest post, but I used to eat rainbow sprinkles out of the tub with a spoon. In my mind, they are the sweet version of garlic. You can add them to anything sweet and it is better. Sadly, Chips Ahoy has forgotten this lesson and they stopped making Chips Ahoy with sprinkles. It's as sad as when Trix shifted from the ball shape to the clearly inferior fruit shapes.

Bobby: I'm glad you think that about Trix too! At one point when I was younger Trix was one of my favorite cereals. Once they switched to the fruit shapes, I was basically done with them though.

We dipped the cookie dough in the batter, and then rolled that in the sprinkles and then dropped them in the oil which we were able to properly heat to 375F this time. They floated, and they only took a couple minutes.

These were INCREDIBLE!!! The cookie dough was almost a liquid, inside the coating, and the sprinkles on the outside not only added a beautiful rainbow of color, but a lot of sugar. It's tough to describe, but eating it just made me so happy. These weren't tastes like sweet, sour, salty, bitter, that you learn in school. The tastes here were more like magic, joy, candy, and pleasure.

Ashley: I'm not sure Bobby is doing this justice. When I bit into this thing, I knew it was quite possibly the best taste I had ever experienced. On the outside, you had this sugary candy shell of melted rainbow sprinkles plus pancake batter. But on the inside, you had moist gooey delicious cookie dough. It was like if you could take a fresh baked hot chocolate chip cookie and wrap it in candy. It was amazing. I would have eaten a 100 of them if I could have. Also, I'm not even kidding, I think I actually saw tears of joy in Bobby's eyes when he tasted this thing. These things are so good, I'm fairly convinced Bobby and I should go to the Texas State Fair and try to win their deep frying contest with them. Bobby: Yea, I realize I'm not doing it justice, but I really think that is because the English language doesn't actually have adequate words to describe just how good these were. I thought they were tears of joy too, but those more cynical than me might say the smoke in the room contributed to my tears.

Ashley: Bobby is right. There are no words. I think he is close though when he says the tastes were magic, joy, and candy. But, I'll take his pleasure and kick it right up to euphoria. Also, even though we literally had to take a walk around the block to escape the smoke for awhile, I know those were tears of joy.

Ashley’s roommate, Karen, added this, "Perfect. I just feel like I can never express in words how absolutely, amazingly delicious the fried chocolate chip cookie dough + sprinkles was. It was so far beyond words. When can we do it again?"

We also tried the cookie dough in batter rolled in the Oreo pieces, and that was objectively really good, but it paled in comparison to the sprinkles. We also battered and deep fried a couple of Reese's Cups. I like the chocolate underneath the batter, but the peanut butter never really softens up and gets gooey like I always think it should. This also happened to the Reese's Peanut Butter egg I tried at Easter and one I had at Wildwood, NJ (a future post), so it's not just the way I prepare them. Anyways, these are still really good. Below, I put a few sprinkles on one of them, and none on the other.
A few weeks later, I was visiting family, and my mom asked what kind of cake she should make. I never pick Funfetti, but I had to this time, because of the fresh memory of such a wonderful sprinkle experience.

Ashley: I am so happy to hear you are on the Funfetti train. In case anyone wants my special Funfetti tips, here they are:

1) If you dump more rainbow sprinkles into the batter, you will have extra Funfetti.

2) Get the strawberry icing in the tub. It's just the right thing to do. Believe me.

3) Top the strawberry icing with a few more rainbow sprinkles.

4) Have awesome times.

By the way, I know Cake Batter ice cream is delicious, in fact, it is one of my favorite new flavors, and you can go ahead and have Funfetti batter ice cream by simply ordering the cake batter and some rainbow sprinkles on top. Then, I recommend mixing it all together like a five-year old so the sprinkles are evenly distributed. Again, you will thank me for this tip.

Bobby: Wow, you take sprinkles very seriously. Actually, there are some good lessons to be learned there. I bet there a lot of good deep fried desserts that I'd love putting icing and sprinkles on top of. And also, the ability to roll the batter in sprinkles opens up and entire new world of possibilities that I feel I need to explore.

Ashley: I also have breaking Funfetti news. I recently discovered there is also a mix for Funfetti cookies. Just take a minute with that. It means that you could make Funfetti cookie dough, wrap it in pancake batter, wrap that in sprinkles, and then deep fry it. I just blew your mind didn't I?
I blew my own mind. Every time I ponder this (believe me, I've thought about it at least 20 times), I don't even know what to do. On the one hand, I feel like I need to try it immediately. On the other hand, I fear it could never live up to the chocolate chip cookie dough or the hype I've created for it in my mind. It's a real conundrum.

Bobby: Well, I was hoping that the excitement and the delicious results would make you a regular deep fryer, but watching your reaction to cleaning up the oil doesn't give me high hopes for that.

Ashley: I'll be honest, there is one major barrier to me becoming a regular deep fryer. I am an absolute terror in the kitchen and for me "cooking" means mac and cheese, a frozen pizza, or anything that can be prepared in 15 minutes or less using a microwave or toaster oven. You take away the microwave or toaster oven and it gets highly likely that I will burn or scramble whatever I am "cooking." For example, at about this time three years ago, I decided I absolutely had to have apple cider donuts because it was fall. Since you can't buy apple cider donuts in Washington, DC, I did what any reasonable person would do; I decided to make them myself. My mom used to make these delicious churros for Spanish class parties in high school, and that looked easy enough – throw dough in oil then eat delicious food product. HUGE mistake.

First off, I don't know how to cook. Second of all, I was trying to make donuts using the pan method as described above while having no clue about oil temperature or whatever is required to make this work. Third, for whatever reason my dough did not believe in taking your standard donut shape. So I abandoned that and thought, "Hey, I'll throw in these balls of dough in the oil and they will be like munchkins." In the end, my balls of dough were different sizes and they didn't exactly retain their ball shape. As a result, my apple cider munchkins were basically unevenly cooked blobs of dough. They looked so bad that one of my co-workers saw them and asked me if I made fried chicken.

So, in the end, I think we learned from this experience that deep frying has great power, but it comes with great responsibility. If you do it right you get the pure ecstasy of deep fried cookie dough. But if you do it wrong, you'll probably start a grease fire and end up with donuts that look like fried chicken. That's why I leave all of my frying needs to professionals like Bobby.

Rippers And Pierogies, Take II

2009-09-10T09:49:00.006-04:00

One night recently I was looking around for food to cook, and I realized I had one hot dog left (a Ballpark Frank) and pierogies. I also realized that the deep fryer was out on the counter and had oil in it, so that made the decision very easy.

In my last attempt at deep frying a hot dog, I put the hot dogs in 350F oil and left them there for a while. They cooked perfectly well, but they didn't become "rippers" as I had hoped. This time, I cranked the temperature up to 375F and dropped in the hot dog while I set to prepare a breadcrumb batter for the pierogies. My last attempt at pierogies was successful without adding any batter, and this time I expected the breadcrumbs to keep the actual shell of the pierogie softer.

Right away, I had high hopes for the hot dog. When I put it in the hotter oil, it kinda went crazy right away and continued dancing around in the oil the whole time it was in there. Early on the ends opened up a little bit, but it still took a while for a real tear to form. Also, this time the hot dog got darker, instead of keeping its reddish color. I knew this was a good sign, since, I had seen a picture here of a "cremator," which looked like what I was seeing. Then finally, I got what I was looking for: a huge rip right down the whole length of the hot dog! I left it in for another minute or so, but then I was satisfied (and hungry!) and ready to see how it was.
The outer shell was very thoroughly cooked. It was really crunchy, almost like a hot dog cooked over a campfire or on a grill for way too long. The inside was very hot, but still juicy, and along the crack it was slightly chewy — definitely a different texture than most hot dogs have — but not actually too different. Overall, very tasty and very easy to cook, but it takes a while, so this method of preparation will probably not replace cooking hot dogs on the stove for me. I'm glad I can say I made a "ripper" though.

The pierogies went very well last time, but I was still looking to improve them. This time I thawed them, and breaded them in flour, then egg, then bread crumbs. You can keep them frozen if you are dropping them right in the oil, but you do have to thaw them to make the breadcrumbs stick.

These were very good, as pretty much all pierogies are, but with the breadcrumbs, they felt more like an appetiser than a main course of my meal. I didn't have any marinara sauce, but that would have gone well with these. They tasted much like the ravioli that I breaded and deep fried. However, unlike the ravioli, I think I preferred just dropping these in without breading them.

With the summer winding down now, I should be getting back into a more regular schedule, and I can hopefully deep fry more often. My body has appreciated the break from deep frying, but I am looking to pick up the pace and try more new stuff.

For my next post, I braved bad weather and unsafe deep frying conditions in traveling to Washington DC to cook what might be the most delicious deep fried thing I've had yet. It might even be the most delicious food I've ever had. I don't even want to spoil the surprise yet. You'll just have to wait to see what it was. I know it's been deep fried by others before me, but we added an extra twist that really pushed it over the top.

Also, I am proud to announce that anyone is now welcome to email me deep frying suggestions, questions, or comments at thedeepfryguy@gmail.com. Also, I already get a lot of articles about deep frying forwarded to me, and I think I'll try to set up a part of the blog to share these with all of you.

The Artery Clogger

2009-08-18T17:24:00.002-04:00

Amazingly, the very next day after posting about my deep fryer breaking, I arrived at home to find a note from my neighbor. UPS had dropped off a package for me that he had signed for and moved inside.

IT WAS MY NEW DEEP FRYER!

I had already planned a dinner that night, so I couldn't christen it yet, but the very next night I used it to fry up some fish, and it did it's job admirably. So don't worry, loyal readers, I am back in business.

But, for that painful month without a deep fryer, I had to actually leave my apartment to get my deep frying fix. Luckily, I had gotten a great tip about a burger place near me, Boston Burger Company, that sold a 1/2 pound burger that was deep fried, topped with American cheese, bacon, and covered in BBQ sauce. It's called the "Artery Clogger," and it's lucky number 13 on their menu. Obviously, I had to try this.

It was delicious, as if there was any doubt. Let's be honest, the degree of difficulty was not very high here. It's probably not the best burger I've ever had, but it was very tasty, very filling, and certainly unique. It has made me realize that beer battering is a skill I need to learn. That will definitely be an upcoming project. If I have a good breadcrumb batter, a beer batter, and a dessert batter, I should be able to handle everything.

I think they made the right choice to just deep fry the patty and then cover it with everything else, but part of me still wanted to see something like this.
The homemade chips they serve it with are really good too. I'll have to try something like that at home also. And my date and I split some sweet potato fries. These were very crispy, much better than the ones I made.The BBQ sauce was a nice touch. If I make this at home, I'll probably try to deep fry the bacon also. I'd also go with cheddar over American.

I think my favorite part about the whole experience was the waitress' reaction when I ordered it. She seemed genuinely excited that i was actually ordering the deep-fried cheeseburger, like it was a big deal and doesn't happen all that often. She also seemed excited bringing it out to me, and when I completely finished it she seemed impressed and was curious what I thought of it. Sure she was most likely just being friendly to get a better tip, but anytime I can be made to feel manly, courageous, and accomplished just by my choice of burger, that's a good feeling. We chatted briefly about deep frying, and I mentioned that I was doing research for this blog.

I've had a number of encounters with people discussing deep frying, and it has made me realize I should create business cards to hand out with my Web address on them. First I'll need to set up an email address, and I should also come up with a good slogan for the blog. Anyways, I'll keep working on all this, and feel free to send suggestions for a slogan!

All in all, I will definitely go to Boston Burger Co. again. I would also definitely eat this again, but maybe not for a while, because they had a number of other burgers that I want to try. None of the others are deep fried though, so that falls outside the jurisdiction of this blog.

For the next post, we'll get back to home cooked delicacies, although I'm not yet sure what it will be. Also coming up, I'll recount my recent pilgrimage to the southern New Jersey boardwalks, where the hottest new innovations in deep frying are born.

Tragedy!

2009-08-13T15:18:00.000-04:00

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.

Breakfast of Champions: Pop Tarts And Toaster Strudels

2009-07-28T23:41:00.006-04:00

Ashley, a friend of mine, was in from out of town, and she was totally excited about deep frying something. She is probably one of the biggest fans of Off The Deep End. She shares my love of unhealthy eating, I get suggestions from her every week, and I bounce some of my ideas off her as well. We’ll do a little back and forth for this post as we relive our latest adventure…

Ashley: I was only in town for 36 hours, and in between a Red Sox game and an afternoon of beer tasting, we only had time to deep fry some breakfast. That was too bad, because there are an amazing number of deep-fried foods I NEED to try, like a calzone, a Crunch Wrap Supreme from Taco Bell, a cheeseburger on a stick, a Snickers bar, a Twinkie, raviolis, and a Clif Bar (for my dad who thinks deep frying something “healthy” would be hilarious). In short, it’s probably good that Bobby and I don’t live in the same city, because if we did, I would probably be dead in 10 years from all the fried food.

Bobby: We went with a simple breakfast Pop Tarts and Toaster Strudels. We also had bacon on hand and a recipe ready in case we had the time and energy for that, but we didn't get to it this time.

Ashley: I was really a little sad we didn’t get to the bacon. Do you remember that Simpsons episode where Homer tells Bart to butter his bacon? This seemed like that, but better.

Bobby: We started with the Pop Tart, because we figured the Toaster Strudel would be better. Also, I have seen Pop Tarts deep fried before, but I could not find any sign online that this has been done to a Toaster Strudel before. And so, nearing the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, my modest Boston apartment prepared for another historic first.

Ashley: One small step for man, one giant leap towards heart disease!

Bobby: We went with buttermilk pancake mix for both and cooked both at 375F until they looked ready. In both cases, they floated, so we had to be sure to flip them to get both sides cooked properly.
Part of this Pop Tart broke off while dredging it through the batter, but we persevered.
Bobby: While cooking the Toaster Strudel, I decided I’d do something I never do: Put all the frosting packets on these two, leaving none for the remaining four strudels that I’d be eating the following week for breakfast.

I’m a by-the-book kind of guy, so I usually adhere to a strict one packet per strudel policy. I am only human though, and sometimes you do just want to put all six on a single toaster strudel. However, when I do this, I normally eat the first five without frosting and only then reward myself for demonstrating such excellent self control by completely enveloping the last one with frosting.

Ashley: Wait a second, on a regular basis, you use all six packets on one strudel?!?! I salute you for such self-control and commitment to awesomeness. I could never do that. I yearn for that frosting!

Bobby: I wouldn’t say I did it regularly, but every once in a while. I had to do it when my brother wasn’t around, like if he was at summer camp or a school trip or something. Siblings can’t achieve the level of cooperation required to pull this off; it’s a modern-day Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Look at how this one was simply blanketed in frosting!

Come to think of it, given how covered these look with only three packets on each, I have no idea how I ever got all six onto a non-deep-fried Toaster Strudel.

Ashley: There’s a lot I love about being friends with Bobby and I’ve known him for a long time, but I think one of the greatest Bobby moments for me was when he gave me the green light to use all six frosting packets on 2 strudels. I, too, usually adhere to one packet per strudel, but we were trying to do something extraordinary here. Also, I always wished that you got like 12 frosting packets with those strudels. I feel like you squeeze the frosting out and there’s always a little left in the packet and then you try to suck that out in a taste of pure frosting deliciousness and you get some, but it makes you think, “Damn, I wish I could eat more straight frosting.” In case you were wondering, yes I ate frosting by the spoonful as a child (well, as an adult too). I also used to eat rainbow sprinkles out of the tub by the spoonful. You might call me a sugar addict. Back to the strudels, the point here is obviously that using all the frosting was the best decision ever, especially since the fried toaster strudel was much larger than your average toaster strudel.

Bobby: All in all, the Pop Tarts were really good, and we both enjoyed them, but once the first Toaster Strudel was ready, and we tried it, we completely lost interest in the Pop Tarts. Interestingly, that's how it happens in real life too. As a kid, I always liked Pop Tarts, but after my first Toaster Strudel, I really wasn't interested in Pop Tarts anymore. The Toaster Strudel is just in a whole different league.

Ashley: I agree. The Pop Tart is only better in a situation where you need to eat with one hand, you can’t have sticky frosting hand, or you lack access to a toaster. Basically, you like to see a Pop Tart in a driving situation. Or, apparently, if you are Pete from 30 Rock, in a weird sex situation.

Bobby: True, Pop Tarts are like a good utility infielder; they really come in handy in some situations, but they aren’t usually your first choice to start a game.

To make this more scientific, we probably should have bought strawberry Pop Tarts to compare to strawberry Toaster Strudels. The cinnamon was very good, but there didn't seem to be enough of it. It got overwhelmed by the batter around it.

Ashley: Also, the deep frying sort of hid the fact that the brown sugar cinnamon Pop Tart was frosted. Hidden frosting will never beat lots of frosting!

Bobby: Good observation! We added powdered sugar on top of the deep-fried Pop Tart, but that can’t compare to frosting.

As an aside, I might be interested to deep fry a Toaster Scramble, the first cousin of the Toaster Strudel. These have egg, sausage, cheese, etc. inside them instead of fruit filling. I never actually liked these growing up, which is odd, because I usually consider foods with egg, meat, and cheese on the inside to be a very good idea. I'm not sure what type of batter I'd use if I were to try this. Breadcrumbs don't quite seem right, nor does corn meal, and pancake batter seems just a little too sweet. I'll have to keep thinking about this. Of those three, pancake batter makes the most sense, but maybe I could try a biscuit mix covering the Toaster Scramble.

Ashley: I love your commitment here to what is obviously such an unhealthy idea. I’m going to go ahead and say you should go with the Pancake batter. If we’ve learned anything from the McGriddle, it’s that egg, meat, and sausage go great between two pancake buns. Especially when those buns are infused with syrup. Speaking of bad for you breakfasts, my co-workers are really pushing me to put egg and cheese on a Krispy Kreme (using the Krispy Kreme like a bagel). That’s going to be amazing.

Ashley: Following all this deep frying, Bobby and I just had to lie around for awhile. I have to say, I cannot believe how sluggish I felt following the Pop Tart and Toaster Strudel. It’s like we had just consumed like a thousand calories of fat and sugar instead of a healthy and nutritious breakfast. Weird.

Bobby: See, it’s easy to look back and say you were sad we didn’t get to deep frying bacon, but there’s no way it was happening given how we felt after both of those things. The deep fried food coma is way more overwhelming than your average food coma.

Ashley: Those brief moments of sluggishness were worth the tasty awesomeness of deep frying with Bobby. If anyone else out there is considering guest frying with Bobby, I’d highly recommend the experience. Not only is the food delicious, but you get to watch Bobby’s eyes literally light up with glee as he dumps the oil in the deep fryer and tells you all about the process. He’s a man who really loves his work and it’s always great to be a part of something like that!

Corn Dogs

2009-07-05T17:42:00.000-04:00

I've been excited for this one ever since I got a deep fryer. I love corn dogs. I used to eat a ton back in high school. I think my family used to buy them in packs of 20 or maybe 40; I don't exactly remember, I just know we always had a lot of them around. They microwaved in 1:05, (The package said one minute, but the extra five seconds really puts them over the top!) and they were basically the perfect snack for late night after a party, in the afternoon, and once in a while I even ate them for breakfast. After hearing this, my high school baseball coach once remarked, "You're going to die a very young man."

Upon starting the blog, I realized a lot of stuff gets deep fried on a stick. But, ridiculously, I couldn't find normal popsicle sticks anywhere in Boston. After checking out several supermarkets, a Target, and a craft store, I hadn't found any. This delayed my first attempt at corn dogs until I finally found 50 in a hardware store. Soon after, my Mom found a ton at a dollar store (200 for a dollar!). Aren't Moms great! Bottom line is, I now have 650 popsicle sticks, so that shouldn't be a problem for me for a long time.

Once I had the popsicle sticks, I bumped corn dogs up to the top of my deep frying list. You can find a lot of different corn dog recipes out there. This recipe is amazingly easy -- exactly what I am looking for in a recipe! And it was perfect since we always keep Jiffy corn muffin mix in the house. I'll even post the full recipe here for you:

1 pkg. Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix
1 pkg. hot dogs
Mix corn muffin mix following directions on box. Roll hot dogs in batter. Deep fry.

Rolling them in the corn muffin mix was easy enough, although it was slightly challenging to get a full and even coating over the dogs. Like my last post, I used one Hebrew National dog and one Nathan's dog.

The only problem is that it didn't say what temperature to use. Normally, I would just go straight to 375F with that, but since I had just cooked the rippers at 350F, I decided to put these at 350F as well. I think this wasn't the right call. At first, the corn dogs looked like they were cooking great. But, a couple minutes in, the corn meal opened up and fell off the dogs. I suspect that if I had cooked them at 375F, then they would have hardened a little more on the outside faster, and they would have stayed on. So, although I haven't proved it yet, from this, I may have stumbled upon another rule of thumb for deep-frying: When in doubt, max out the temperature (375F). I am looking forward to trying this again soon, and seeing if that works. If it doesn't work, my next variation will be to roll the hot dogs in flour first to help the corn meal stick.

Despite them falling apart slightly, I enjoyed these a lot. It was a little bit of a letdown, since I had been so excited, but I am now motivated to try these again soon and get it right. Again, I liked the Nathan's dog more than the Hebrew National one, but both were good.

After the cooking the tempura veggies that weren't that great, the rippers that didn't rip, and now the corn dogs that fell apart, I was feeling like I was in a bit of a deep frying slump. To help get me back on track, I used some of the corn meal batter I had mixed to make hush puppies. These were excellent just like last time, and right off the bat, I was able to make nice round ones, so I felt good about that.

I was still left wanting to try something else though. I took a quick look through the refrigerator, and saw some leftover macaroni and cheese. This recipe for deep fried mac and cheese specifically mentioned chilling it overnight before coating and deep frying, so I felt good about this one. Also it is a bread crumb recipe, which I think always get the job done.

When I removed chunks of the mac and cheese from the container, they would start to fall apart almost instantly. When I put them in the flour, they fell apart even more. Then when I moved the loose flour covered macaroni pieces into the egg, they still didn't form easily into clumps. BUT...once I put them into the bread crumbs, I could easily shape them into small little golf ball sized spheres. I cooked these at 350F too (the recipe says so).

These were really good! And, they were made with several day old mac and cheese leftovers. I can only imagine how good they would be if the mac and cheese was a little fresher and a little cheesier. The next day my roommate and I made more of these with the remaining leftover macaroni, and they were again very tasty. So, bread crumbs came to the rescue again in hopefully snapping me out of a mini slump.

For my next post, a friend who is an avid reader of my blog, a blogger herself, and a fellow deep frying enthusiast was visiting from out of town and was excited for the chance to cook something with me. She'll provide some comments as well as we try a new take on two classic kids' breakfast favorites: Pop Tarts and Toaster Strudels.

Rippers

2009-06-24T00:01:00.001-04:00

I get suggestions every day for different stuff to deep fry. One that I have gotten a few times recently is hot dogs. There is a place in NJ called Rutt's Hut, that sells deep fried hot dogs, and it calls them "Rippers," because the hot oil tears open the dogs and they come out ripped, mangled, and delicious. Actually, you'll find very mixed reviews online, but if I ever find myself in Clifton, NJ, you can bet I'll try these out.

I've also heard, but I'm not actually sure whether or not to believe this, that their deep fryers are still using their original oil decades later. I change my deep fryer's oil out reasonably frequently, so I can't imagine leaving it in forever. However, some of the stuff I cook, most notably fish, basically requires the oil to be changed afterwards. Given how clean the hot dogs cooked, I could believe they oil would last a while. But for years? I personally think this is an urban legend.

Hot dogs seemed like a nice quick lunch option, so I fired up the deep fryer and I looked for any specifics on making these at home. I found this site, where a fellow Bostonian was trying to recreate rippers. I got some good tidbits here, such as cook them at 350F, and that certain types of dogs weren't likely to rip. I had Nathan's and some Hebrew Nationals in the fridge, so I decided to try one of each.

I also filled out the meal with a few pierogies. I usually saute pierogies, but there are directions right on the box for deep frying them, so I did that (About 4 minutes at 375F).

After the pierogies, I lowered the hots dogs into the oil, and they danced around in there a bit. I kept watching excitedly hoping to see one tear itself open, but, alas, that never happened. Like the other guy who tried to make rippers, they just didn't rip. In all, I left them in there for a while, at least 10 minutes. Maybe I could have gone longer, but the hot dog smell emanating from the fryer was making me impatient, and they were definitely fully cooked.

Even though the hot dogs kept their shape, they were still really good. I liked the Nathan's one more, as it was plump to start, and it also seemed to plump up more as it cooked. Both had their outer shells become a little tougher and chewier. I did notice a different textures than on grilled, pan fried, or boiled hot dogs. Also, the insides were especially hot and were a bit juicier than most hot dogs I've had. Maybe if I had persevered on, they eventually would have ripped. But in any event, they turned out just as good as any other hot dog if not better.

The pierogies also get super crunchy on the outside, and very hot on the inside. (Have you noticed that everything I cook gets crunchy on the outside and very hot on the inside?) Be careful not to cook them too long, or they get too tough.

I actually just got an idea while writing this post: What if I had deep fried a frozen hot dog? The rapidly melting and then boiling of the water in the dog would possibly cause the type of tearing and shredding I am looking for. I'll have to be extremely careful If I try this, because people putting frozen turkeys into deep fryers is the reason that is so dangerous. The steam takes up far more space than the ice, and as it shoots out of the deep fryer, it brings a lot of hot oil with it. There is a good New York Times article about it from last Thanksgiving. But, since a hot dog is much smaller and displaces less oil, I think this might be worth looking into.

My next post also deals with hot dogs, but it's one I have been wanting to try for a long time: Homemade Corn dogs!

In the meantime, keep the suggestions coming!

Dumplings

2009-06-18T18:10:00.009-04:00

For this dinner, a friend and I got together all the ingredients for dumplings. We decided right before that we'd do spring rolls another time, so sorry to get your hopes up last time. But, we did make two different types of dumplings: pork and shrimp. Although the pictures all look the same, so I guess that doesn't really make it up to you.

We also set out to deep fry some more vegetables, but this time in a tempura batter. I got started on that, while the dumpling materials were being prepared. I used this recipe. I had three recipes in front of me, and I picked the one that seemed the second easiest (or second hardest for those glass-half-empty folks) of the three.

I cut up the veggies, mixed up the tempura batter, and got started deep frying and...these weren't that good. They weren't bad, and dipping them in soy sauce helped a lot, but they didn't take on the golden brown color described in the recipe, and the tempura itself seemed a little bland. The first batch was also really thick, because the recipe said not to over mix the batter.

But, I went back and mixed it very thoroughly, and kept at it. This next batch was a little better and a little browner, but I still had to keep it in way longer than the one minute they described. These were also good with soy sauce, but, in my opinion, still a little bland. I won't blame the recipe, since I am not really a great cook. I might have messed something up, but I do have to say I wasn't very impressed.
We kept at it and kept snacking on these for a while though, because the dumpling took a lot of prep time. First, the pork and cabbage was mixed together and the shrimp and other stuff were mixed, and each of these were heated up. Then little bits of it were put into the won ton dough, and these were sealed over. When sealing, you want to keep as much air out as possible, because the air expanding in the deep fryer will cause the dumplings to open up. They are still good if they open up, but a couple totally emptied out their insides in the deep fryer and only the shells were recovered.

Here's the exact recipes:

Pork dumplings:

"3/4 lb of pork mince
8 oz bag of shredded carrot/cabbage mix
2 tbs of minced garlic
2 tbs of minced ginger
3 tbs of oil
4 tbs of soy sauce or teriyaki
won ton wrappers

Cook the pork mince in the oil, garlic and ginger on medium heat. Then when the mince is browned add the cabbage/carrot mix and the soy sauce or teriyaki. When stuffing is cooked let it cool. Then layout won ton wrappers. Place one teaspoon of the pork and cabbage mixture into the center of each won ton. Then outline with a wet finger tip one half of the wrapper. Then fold the wrapper in half and seal. Then steam until the dumpling looks vacuum packed and then grill or deep fry!"

And the shrimp recipe can be found here.

We even classed it up a bit with a fancy presentation:
Actually, this was just a photo op. We ate pretty much all of them standing over the deep fryer, which is how I eat pretty much everything I deep fry. Very few finished items actually make it to the dinner table.

These were excellent. The won ton shells got way crispier than normal dumplings. They were more like crab Rangoon, which I realized I really need to make at some point. Both the shrimp and pork were really good. I think I liked the pork slightly more, but both were delicious. And, we made about 50 of them, so I was stuffed by the end.

So, this is probably the most work intensive thing we've made so far, although, I really shouldn't take much credit, all I really did was dip the basket of dumplings into the oil and somehow mess up the tempura batter. But it felt a little classier, and it was nice to cook something fancy for a change of pace.

The following day, I cooked my lunch and dinner in the deep fryer (breakfast was leftover dumplings). Both of these meals were less classy, as each involved hot dogs. Those will be my next two posts.

Let Them Eat Fishcakes!

2009-06-13T06:20:00.006-04:00

I recently went on a bachelor weekend, where we finished up the festivities with a morning of fishing off the coast of Long Island. Between the 13 guys on the boat, we caught at least 100 bluefish. These are way bigger than the other stuff I catch. And apparently they are pretty fierce fish.

My roommate and I ended up with 17 pounds of fish jammed into our freezer. A lot of people will tell you not to freeze bluefish because it won't thaw well. Being an oilier fish, some people think it gets mushy when thawed. (Later, we cooked some regular fillets that we had frozen and thawed, and I had no complaints with them.) We didn't really have a choice though, because we weren't going to have a chance to cook it for a while, and we definitely didn't want the apartment to take on the aroma of 17 pounds of aging fish meat.

But, fishcakes are a good option for unfrozen bluefish, because it involves mashing up the meat anyways, so, you can get away with it not having the best texture. Also, fishcakes seemed very deep-fry-able, which was obviously appealing to me.

We followed this recipe, which sounded easy enough -- and very good. Still, the whole thing was pretty work intensive. You have to get potatoes cooked and mashed, and the fish cooked and flaked, then you mix everything together. When we mixed it all together, we had made a HUGE amount of bluefish cake material. This picture was taken after most of it was already cooked, but overall, it was enough fishcakes for two huge dinners and more leftovers.
At first we pan fried them on the stove. We knew we had enough to try both, so we went with the stove first since that's what the recipe described. But later, we tried deep frying, and these were excellent. They only need to cook for a couple minutes. Also, the patties stick to the basket a little, but if you shake the basket carefully after dipping them in, it will dislodge them and then the bottoms will fry enough in the first few seconds that sticking isn't a problem anymore.

Really both were excellent, but the deep fryer cooked them to a perfectly even dark brown, where the frying pan left them more blackened in some areas and still white in other spots. I will give the frying pan some credit, of all the leftovers we had, the pan-fried ones might have been slightly better, since they didn't absorb as much oil. But right out of the deep fryer was much better than pan fried.

We still have about a dozen more bluefish fillets, so at some point I'll bread and deep fry them or check out other recipes for deep frying them. This isn't your typical deep frying fish, but I think it's worth a try.

Next post, I'll be cooking some Asian food -- deep frying dumplings and spring rolls. Also on the horizon is a big, deep-fried breakfast planned for a friend coming in from out of town.

Fresh Fried Fish

2009-06-07T15:53:00.002-04:00

For this post, I packed up my deep fryer, and traveled to upstate New York, where I spent Memorial Day weekend. My first day there, my Dad, brother, and I had a lot of success fishing, catching a total of 30 bream and yellow perch.

That day, we cleaned them all and prepared for dinner. As an appetizer, I showed off the experience I've gained with the deep fryer by making mozzarella sticks. I also made a cool variation on the ones I've already written about. Last week in the supermarket, I saw string cheese that was mozzarella and cheddar swirled around each other. And it was on sale! Obviously, I had to try this. I used the same recipe as with normal mozzarella sticks, and these were similarly delicious. Cook them just a tiny bit longer, since the cheddar doesn't melt quite as fast. These also looked cool when you took a bite and the different colors of melted cheese oozed out. Both versions were a hit with the family.
Then we moved on to the fish. We cooked 12 of our fish (24 sides) and three of the fish had eggs, which are tasty when fried up. The basket comfortably holds six pieces at a time, so we did two batches using egg and breadcrumbs, then two batches using the cornmeal and flour recipe I'm used to.
Everyone loved both of them, and I personally couldn't say one was better than the other. We ate them in buns and added ketchup or tartar sauce. Both batches cooked in about the same amount of time, but the breadcrumbs made a slightly darker finished product. I'll definitely try the breadcrumbs again, so that says a lot, given that I've always enjoyed the cornmeal recipe.
If you were curious, in the foreground of the picture of the cornmeal fish, those smaller clumps are the eggs. Good stuff!

So, I think this supports my "just use breadcrumbs on every non-dessert food" theory. Even though I can't definitively say it was better or worse, if I hadn't looked up or known any recipes, I could have just done this, and I would have loved every bite, which is exactly what the theory proposes.

I realize I've done a lot of breadcrumb deep frying lately, so next time, I'll do something a little more involved: fishcakes (poor man's crab cakes) made from bluefish, which I also caught on a separate fishing trip.

In the meantime, keep the suggestions coming. Though heart disease may stop me from getting to all of them, I want to hear your ideas, and I'll try to do as many as I can! I'll also do some maintenance on this site at some point to see if I can add it any more features like a specific suggestion board, voting, etc...

Veggie Night

2009-05-31T19:03:00.003-04:00

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...

More Desserts

2009-05-21T22:28:00.005-04:00

Having finished up ravioli, I wasn't totally full, and I figured I could justify a small dessert, since I'd been eating more healthily lately (For example, just the day before I'd ordered a salad instead of fries with my cheeseburger!).

So, I looked in the one bin in my fridge, which contains mostly deep frying stuff. I decided to fry a fun size Milky Way bar, since I didn't get any photos of that last time. I also decided to get rid of some leftover Easter candy, by cooking the two Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs I had. Finally, I wanted to give another shot to one of the few unsuccessful ventures so far, the chocolate covered cherry. The Milky Way and Reese's eggs were chilled and ready to go. I put the chocolate covered cherry in the freezer to get it a little colder so it would hopefully stay together this time.

Again, I have found that dessert deep frying is super easy, just mix up instant buttermilk pancake batter like the box says, and dip whatever you want to taste delicious in that, then lower it carefully into the 375F oil. Sometimes I have trouble with whatever I'm frying falling out of the pancake shell and sinking to the bottom. Then I have to fish it out and the shell out separately (Don't worry, both actually still taste good!) These will float, so flip them halfway through. After a couple minutes, they should be golden brown and then they are ready.The Milky Way bar was delicious as usual. Don't forget to top any of these with powdered sugar if you'd like. I often skip this step, you know, to be a little healthier. Also, I am usually so excited to eat it, I just forget this step. There are probably other really good toppings too, like cinnamon, fudge, etc. And of course, here is the beautiful cross-section:
As you can see below, my first try with the Reese's egg was a little messy. The egg did fall out of the shell. For the second try, I lowered the egg in with a metal deep frying scoop-type utensil. This helped it stay together, but it stuck to the scooper and had to be pried loose with a fork. I was surprised with this one, because the peanut butter did not get soft and gooey as I had anticipated. It was still delicious; how could it not be? It's peanut butter covered in chocolate and deep fried! But I can't help but feel that it could be better. So, I'll keep working on this one.
For the chocolate covered cherry, I also lowered it into the oil on the scooper. Again, it stuck to that and had to be carefully pried off with a fork. I should probably just use a normal spoon for the dipping. But, it worked this time! It was pretty good, but after trying a bunch of these deep fried candies, I prefer those containing caramel. But I also have a bunch more candy bars that I'd like to try deep frying at some point.

Thanks for all the continued support. With readers in six continents, "Off The Deep End" is officially a world-wide hit. Deep frying is obviously a topic that transcends all cultures and peoples. Please recommend the blog to any friends you have in Antarctica. They are probably really cold, and deep frying totally warms you up!

Next week, I'll be continuing my recent health food kick with deep fried vegetables.

Ravioli

2009-05-18T23:10:00.000-04:00

I've been incredibly busy all month, and the next two weeks are no different. Nonetheless, I am hoping to set aside a couple more times to fry during May so I can bring you, the reader, more exciting posts. Please don't worry that I'm running out of ideas. I actually have tons of ideas, but just not enough time to make them all happen right now. Keep sending your ideas too, though!

Last week, I had one free night to try out some stuff, but I didn't want to have to make anything too complex. So, I decided to deep fry some ravioli. I found a few recipes, and I narrowed it down to two that I wanted to try. Also, I had both cheese ravioli and spinach ravioli, so with the two recipes, that was four possible combinations to try out.

The first recipe didn't involve any breading. You just drop thawed raviolis into the oil. The recipe didn't specify a temperature, so I went with 350F. No real reason for that; it just seemed right. I lowered a bunch in and cooked them for a few minutes. Mine didn't quite get the bumpy, smallpox-ish look that the recipe's pictures had. Below isn't a great picture, but the shells got a bit harder,with some bumps, and for a couple of the raviolis, the cheese started exploding out.
My roommate and I both tried these, and our reaction was the same: "Hmm, it's OK." We had marinara sauce to dip them in and also ranch dressing, which the recipe I linked to had recommended for spinach ravioli. both were decent, but I didn't love the texture of the deep fried pasta shell. The cheese inside was quite good, however.

To be fair to the recipe above, I should mention that 1) I just guessed what temperature to use, 2) I may not have totally thawed the ravioli (I'm a bit impatient at times), and 3) I didn't follow through with the Kosher salt and parsley, which I think could have helped these. It still kind of worked as a finger food, though.

Then I moved on to the next recipe, which called for dipping the thawed raviolis (These were more thawed, since this was the second batch cooked.) into an egg wash, then into breadcrumbs, and then into the oil, which I kept at 350F, since this recipe also did not specify.

These were outstanding. They were way better than the first batch. The bread crumbs brown nicely, and they protect the pasta shell from getting too hard. I dipped these in both the ranch dressing and the marinara sauce, and the marinara sauce was way better. The ravioli shell had both a crunchy and soft component to it, which was great, and the cheese was very hot and delicious inside.
These were the same Progresso bread crumbs I have used for mozzarella sticks and the mushrooms I have made previously, and these have yet to fail me in any deep frying endeavor. I might have to buy stock in that company. I also want to try this same method with other similar foods, like tortellini, perogies, and maybe manicotti and other stuffed pastas.

This post is a bit long, so I'll wait until my next post to cover what I deep fried for dessert afterwards. That one should be coming soon, and don't worry, I will get back on a more rigorous deep frying schedule soon enough!

Cinnamon Buns

2009-05-05T18:24:00.004-04:00

For breakfast one Saturday morning, I wanted cinnamon buns, and I had one of those cans that you pop open, and lay out the dough on a cookie sheet and bake them. But I figured, "What if I deep fry them instead?" That should be pretty easy and delicious.

When I was a kid, I had a friend who would have me over for fondue, but not the cheese fondue or chocolate fondue you might be used to, instead it was a pot of boiling oil. We each got a long fondue fork, and we'd put pieces of chicken, steak, bacon, or even vegetables (I didn't usually do any vegetables) on one end and then dip them in the oil and let them cook. It was always a lot of fun, and for dessert, they'd have biscuits from one of those cans that we'd cut up, cook in the oil, and then cover with powdered sugar, like mini beignets or sopapillas. So that's how I got the idea to try this.

And it was, indeed, a good idea. Here's the timeline:

8:39am - I turned on the deep fryer. I quickly scanned a lot of recipes for fried dough, and oddly, none of them actually gave me a temperature. Most just said "hot" or "real hot," so I turned it all the way up. While waiting, I put all of the cinnamon buns in the basket.

8:47am - The oil was ready. I dropped in the cinnamon buns. They floated, and they made a wonderful smell.

8:49am - I flipped them.

8:51am - I took them out and started eating them. Also, I had the package of frosting to put on them. These were awesome! So, yea, this was a great idea.

Does anyone remember the cereal Cinnamon Mini Buns? That's what these tasted like, only they were full size! These had a delicious crispiness on the outside (just like the cereal) and were still soft and cinnamon bun-y on the inside (not like the cereal, but really amazing!). I loved that cereal back in the '90s. Same with Waffle Crisp. I like the idea of taking a food I already like and shrinking it down to cereal size. Cookie Crisp never won me over like Cinnamon Mini Buns and Waffle Crisp though, but I think that's because cookies aren't widely considered a breakfast food.

I don't think they make Cinnamon Mini Buns anymore, which is too bad, because this post and that ad has really put me in the mood for some. I also like how this ad shows the science behind packing a cereal full of sugar. Maybe next time, I should put the deep fried cinnamon buns in a big punch bowl full of milk and eat with with a big soup ladle. Then I could pretend I was the shrunken down kid in the ad!

The only thing I'd change is I cooked them 2 minutes on each side, and if I do this again, I'll probably switch to 1 minute per side. Maybe that'd make them a little softer.

More Appetizers (And Some Other Random Stuff)

2009-05-03T07:08:00.005-04:00

Let's get right into this one, as it's been a week since my last post. We got the batter ready for the onion rings while the sweet potato fries were cooking. I used this recipe, which sounded easy enough. I had cut up a huge onion the day before, and I went with slightly larger rings than they said.
These were really good, but the batter didn't stick particularly well. Also, the onion rings all stuck together in one big clump. Still, they were really good. The casing was nice and crispy, and the onions themselves were very good.

I actually own two deep frying baskets, so I cooked them in two batches. For the second round, I decided to try double dipping, which has worked so well for a number of other foods I've deep fried. I also decided to try dipping the onions first into the flour and cornstarch mixture from the mozzarella sticks. This did make the batter stick on a little better, but not much, and I think it made the casing a little harder and crunchier. Overall, I liked the first bunch slightly better.

The next night, my other roommate was home, and I wanted to get him involved, since he had yet to deep fry anything. We were cooking burgers for dinner, so we figured we'd make some fries. With the sweet potatoes, I cut them by hand, but this time I used a mandolin slicer, since these potatoes were a little smaller. Using the mandolin slicer was a WAY better idea! They were all perfectly cut in about a minute. As per Emeril's recipe (We're kickin' it up a notch!), we soaked the potatoes in water, like the sweet potatoes, and waited a little bit (Emeril says at least 30 minutes.). While waiting, we started off with yet another batch of mozzarella sticks. Again they were awesome!

After that, we still had some time to kill, we had hot oil ready, and we had some breading mixture left over from the mozzarella sticks. So, we just started looking around for other stuff to deep fry in that would be good in that breading. First, we tried baby bella mushrooms and shitake mushrooms. We dipped them in the flour and cornstarch, then the egg, then the breading and garlic salt, and cooked them for just a couple minutes. I though both types of mushroom were great! The smaller ones are better, because they cook all the way through better than the larger ones. They get nice and warm and kind of juicy on the inside, with the tasty outer shell. I thought the garlic salt really added to this too.

Next, we tried deep frying some cherry tomatoes, again using the same mozzarella stick batter. These were also good -- soft and really warm -- but the batter hardly stuck at all.

Finally, we were ready for the fries. This was a very easy process, and this time I went with a better recipe that called for cooking them twice to get them crispier. I cooked them first at 325F for about 8 minutes, then took them out for about 10 minutes then put them back into 375F oil for 1-2 minutes. Afterwards, I added salt and pepper.

These fries were really good and complimented our burgers very well. Still though, they weren't particularly crispy. (Sorry there weren't more pictures!)

So, I learned a lot in this first foray into appetisers. I'm gonna keep working on a lot of these, and I'll, of course, keep reporting back. We'll try to get both types of fries crispier. Also, I think a future post will probably tackle beer-battered onion rings. And for all you fans of jalapeno poppers, I haven't forgotten about those! The mozzarella sticks were pretty much perfect, so I don't imagine I'll be tinkering with that recipe much. I will, however, try deep frying other cheeses. Keep sending in advice and suggestions! I have gotten some great suggestions so far, and I'll really try to test them all out at some point.

Bar Food Night!

2009-04-25T15:46:00.013-04:00

After a bit of experimenting with some weirder deep fried foods, I wanted to get back to thinking inside the box. I wanted to try my hand at some more traditional deep fried foods, but I had to think about how to get around the "eating a meal in shifts problem" I discovered with the fried fish, pickles, and hush puppies. The obvious solution was to make bar appetizers, which are easy and enjoyable to eat in shifts. I guess some people might say the more obvious solution is not to deep fry everything in your meal, but that's not the direction I wanted to go for this meal.

So, I looked up recipes and bought supplies for onion rings, mozzarella sticks, and sweet potato fries. I got regular potatoes for fries too, but I hadn't pre-cut those by the time we assembled to start cooking, and we were on a fairly tight deadline, as we wanted to be finished for the series premier of Parks and Recreation.

We started with the mozzarella sticks, because I was most excited about trying these. I used this recipe, which specifically said you can use the string cheese you can buy in stores. This seemed easiest for now, although sometime I'll try cutting a fancier ball of mozzarella into strips.

I cut each piece of string cheese in half to make these a nicer size. This one makes a little more mess elsewhere, since you need three bowls. The first on has flour and cornstarch. you roll the cheese in this to make the egg stick. Dipping it in the egg wash is the next step. Then you put it in the breadcrumbs and garlic salt.

I was noticing that after taking it out of the breadcrumbs, that some of the breading was sticking to my fingers and not the cheese. So, I drew upon one of the earlier lessons learned, and double dipped the cheese back into the egg, and then back into the breadcrumbs again. This really covered them well. Then, I carefully place each into a fryer basket and once they were all done, I dipped them into 365F oil (not the maximum temperature, for once).

They are done in less than a minute, so don't overdo it with these. Don't worry too much though, because from what I saw, the worst that can happen is the cheese gets too melty and starts oozing out of the breadcrumb shell. It's actually more disappointing if one isn't melty all the way through when you bite into it. I was excited to see that these don't float, so you don't have to worry about them not cooking evenly.

Although the recipe says to cook for 30 seconds, we pulled these out after about 45 seconds and dumped them onto a paper towel. While you should wait for most deep fried foods to cool down, don't wait too long for these, because the cheese will start to solidify again. But take careful bites, until you can really gauge how how the cheese is, because you don't want to burn yourself.

If you checked out the recipe I linked to, you'll see that these got an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars. Those judges are too harsh; these were incredible! They were very soft and cheesy and the garlic salt on with the breadcrumbs really was a great touch. I'd be hard pressed to say I've ever had better mozzarella stick elsewhere. These were so good, once we finished the sweet potato fries and onion rings, we made another batch of these.

The sweet potato fries were next, because they were super easy and we could make the batter for the onion rings while the fries cooked. I cut them into fries the day before, and soaked them in cold water, as described by this recipe. You only need to soak them for 15 minutes, but other recipes said up to two days in water was fine, so storing them in water overnight was the easiest for me so they would be ready the next day after work.

When you are ready to cook them, you dry them thoroughly on paper towels. You want to get all the excess water off, because if you don't, the oil will get angry and spit at you.

For these, I put the oil at 350F, and put the fries in for 5 minutes. I think we ended up cooking them closer to 7 or 8 minutes, but the important thing is to watch them closely after a couple minutes, and just take them out when they look ready. These sink too, so for at least the first several minutes, you can drop it in and leave them be.

As you can see from the photo, they lose their color a little, but they were good. We put a lot of salt on them, and I like them with ketchup, but we were all enjoying them too much to even take the break to get the ketchup out of the fridge.

When I try these again, I'd like to study a few recipes to get them a little bit crispier. These were great, but if they can be crispy on the outside, that'll be even better.

Well, that's all the time we have for today, so I'll cover the onion rings in my next post. And maybe I'll also throw in, at no extra charge, a writeup of the normal French fries, which we deep fried a few nights later.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for their support so far. We've seen literally dozens of visitors from 9 countries across 4 continents and 14 states and the District of Columbia! I've also gotten so nice compliments on Facebook and by email. And some of those people weren't even related to me! So, thanks, tell your friends, and keep spreading the word!

More desserts

2009-04-18T11:43:00.001-04:00

With the excitement of Twinkies, and various chocolates in my last post, we didn't get around to deep frying the Oreos. This was a shame, because they are a staple of the deep frying world, and a signature dish at state fairs around the country and on New Jersey boardwalks.

I tried these last time I was in Wildwood, NJ, and they are quite good, although incredibly sweet and very filling. If you find yourself in Wildwood, one order of deep fried Oreos (7 or 8 Oreos) will probably be enough for too people. If you can eat a whole order by yourself...well, you might want to look around at the various shapes of the other people on the boardwalk; you aren't in great company.

The following night, I enticed a friend to come over for deep fried food, specifically Doublestuf Oreos. The great thing about these is how easy the batter is to make. It's just buttermilk pancake batter -- you only need to add water. I used 1 cup batter and 3/4 cup cold water, just like the box says for making pancakes. The recipe I used says to freeze the Oreos for 3 hours, but I actually found that wasn't totally necessary (i.e. I forgot to and wasn't willing to wait three more hours.). I did keep them in the fridge leading up to cooking them though.

I lowered them into the fryer with a spoon, to keep as much of the batter on the Oreo as possible, and that seemed to work really well. The underside of the Oreo ends up looking really good, because that batter hardens first and make a nice, smooth shell. The top side is still covered, but doesn't look quite as nice. I tried to photograph them all on their good sides. These take only a couple minutes and one flip until they are ready. Let them cool slightly and add a little powdered sugar if desired.

These were really good! the Oreo gets totally soft and gooey inside, and the chocolate and creme mix together really well. It's tough to say if it's as good as the Twinkie, but in the all important taste-to-effort ratio, these are one of the best so far.

There was one thing I didn't remember to try that I wanted to, and my friend had brought this up same idea as well. You know how every kid has at some point opened up two Oreos, then put the cream sides together to make a super Oreo with twice as much filling? Of course you do. It's such a common practice, Nabisco actually now makes Doublestuf Oreos. Well, since I had Doublestuf, I wanted to make a quadruple-stuffed Oreo and deep fry that. Maybe next time.

Given the ease and success of these, We got out a leftover Twinkie, and dipped it in this batter and fried it up. It was just as good as the night before! We also did that with a fun size Milky Way bar, and that also was delicious. So, I'm gonna keep experimenting with different batters, but for sweets, buttermilk pancake batter is really good, and definitely the easiest so far. This could become my go-to coating. Perhaps a future post will feature a more scientifically rigorous comparison of the various batters.

After the Oreos, the Twinkie, and a Milky Way, we pulled some strawberries out of the fridge and tried those. I didn't look up any recipes for this, but I am sure you could find some. I just went with my gut, and cooked it at the same heat until the shell was golden brown. The strawberries were definitely interesting -- very warm and soft under the delicious shell.

I think adding some chocolate into this process somewhere might improve them. Perhaps I should freeze chocolate covered strawberries, then deep fry them, or simply dip the deep fried strawberries in chocolate sauce. I think either of those options would be great and would give these strawberries the extra "oomph" they need to reach that next level.

Keep coming back, because my next post will cover various appetisers. I don't want to give too much away, but it went very well! And I'll have more pictures!

Dessert night

2009-04-14T22:08:00.002-04:00

Our last meal was a huge success, but we had to eat it in shifts, since you can realistically only deep fry one thing at a time. This time, I decided my friends and I should eat a light, balanced dinner, but save room for dessert and go crazy there.

In preparation, I bought: Twinkies, fun size Milky Way bars, Cadbury Caramel Eggs, chocolate covered cherries, cookie dough, and Oreos (Doublestuffed, obviously). I also got powdered sugar and fudge topping to put on our desserts. Sorry to say we didn't get to all of these in one night, but don't worry, they'll all be covered in due time.

I printed out recipes for each, and all four had different batter recipes. We decided to start with Twinkies. I'd tried a deep fried Twinkie in Vegas years ago, and I liked it, but I don't remember it being truly incredible. Anyways, I went with this recipe.

You have to chill the Twinkies (and other stuff) for a while before cooking, so I had put the Twinkies in the freezer, and the other stuff in the fridge overnight.

The batter was 1 cup milk, 2 tbsp. vinegar, 1 tbsp. vegetable oil, 1 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder, and a dash of salt. make that into a smooth, blended mixture, as seen below (Hey, we have pictures now!)

Then, put a popsicle stick into the twinkie and dip it in the batter. Since I only had wider sticks, those caused some of the Twinkies to break a little bit. That was more of a minor annoyance than a problem, but still worth mentioning. Having the popsicle sticks really helps you get the whole Twinkie fulled covered in batter. It'll start coming off on your fingers if you have to hold them in your hands -- which is tasty, but a little messy and it means the Twinkie won't be totally covered

Once you have totally covered the Twinkie, carefully dip it into oil heated to 375 (I'm still new to this, but it looks like pretty much everything needs 375, which is the max on my fryer.).

These float also, so keep them rotating in the oil. I could only really fit one at a time, but later I cooked some without the sticks, and then I could fit two.

After three to four minutes, these were a beautiful golden brown. In Vegas, I think I pretty much covered mine in sugar, chocolate, sprinkles, etc., but here I didn't want to overdo it. I went with a light dusting of powdered sugar to enhance, but not overpower the Twinkie flavor.

These were incredible! Everyone loved them! they were crispy on the outside, but soft and gooey on the inside, with the creamy center warmed perfectly. We each had one, which, it turns out, is a decent sized dessert.

Below is a pretty awesome cross-section.

The recipe I linked to above also includes a berry sauce to put on the Twinkies. It sounded good, but that will have to wait for another day.

Even though we were kind of full, and very satisfied, we pressed on. Though the Milky Way recipe called for a slightly different batter, we just went ahead and dipped them into the leftover Twinkie batter. Ditto for the Cadbury Caramel Egg (They were out of Cadbury Creme Eggs, but that was ok because I like the caramel ones more.) and the chocolate covered cherry. I'm a bit lazy, but, hey, if the Twinkie batter is wrong, I don't want to be right.

The Milky way bars were really good. They came out of fryer after a couple minutes oozing caramel, as did the Cadbury Egg. Sorry to say I don't have pictures of these. One time a Milky Way bar totally fell out of the batter shell, and I had to fish it out and re-batter it. It still turned out fine. The cadbury egg was excellent too. The chocolate gets really soft and the caramel inside is amazing. My hand was literally shaking as I ate these. Maybe that's a reflection of how much sugar I had just consumed, but I think it was the pure joy I felt from the entire experience.

The only blemish on the night was the chocolate covered cherry. I guess the whole thing wasn't cold enough, and the cherry fell out of the chocolate and hardened from the hot oil. and the remaining chocolate-batter mess wasn't that good. But, after 2 nights, the deep fryer is 6 for 7 overall, and I'll do some research and figure out how I can successfully make a deep fried chocolate covered cherry.

I still have a few more upcoming posts of stuff I've already cooked that don't have pictures. Sorry about that! I will, however, start carefully documenting everything for all future deep-frying.

Up next: Oreos

Fried pickles

2009-04-12T22:15:00.000-04:00

Now hush puppies and fried fish is a great meal, but, we need a vegetable to make it part of a balanced diet. So, I decided to deep fry some pickles. I've had these in restaurants as appetisers, and I've always enjoyed them, so I figured I'd give this a shot.

I have had deep fried pickles as both spears and as chips, and this first time, I decided to try spears.

I didn't save the exact recipe I used, but it was pretty close to this one. And I went with a flour coating of flour garlic salt, salt, and pepper. After doing all the dipping in egg, flour coating, egg, and flour coating again, you have to freeze the pickles for at least half an hour, then dip them into oil at 375.

It took just a few minutes to cook, while making sure they get cooked on all sides. These would not have won any beauty pageants -- they actually looked downright ugly. But they were delicious! You have to take careful bites at first though, because the pickle juice is extremely hot, and it will run everywhere. Also, the pickles are very good dipped in ranch.

So, after just one dinner, the deep fryer was 3 for 3, and my roommate and I didn't feel like we needed to eat again for a week.

Be on the lookout for my next post, coming very soon, which will chronicle dessert night. We deep fried Twinkies, Milky Way bars, a Cadbury Caramel Egg, and a chocolate covered cherry.

Hush puppies

2009-04-12T21:54:00.001-04:00

The fish were great, but that's not a meal by itself. Traditionally hush puppies accompany a fish dinner, especially fried fish. I'd only eaten hush puppies in restaurants, and I'd never loved them, but they seemed easy enough to make, especially since I was using corn meal anyways.

And these were very simple. basically, you can just follow the instructons on the box for making cornbread, but instead of baking it, you carefully plop big spoonfuls of the mix into 375F oil. the moment they hit the oil, they take shape and start to solidify. They are made a lot like beignets, a New Orleans delicacy (and likely to be a future post). The first couple I dropped in took weird shapes, but after a little practice, I was making pretty nice, spherical hush puppies. Like the fish, these float, so you have to pay attention while cooking and flip them as necessary. And after a couple minutes, they are done.

Also, if you haven't deep fried before, when letting food that has just come out of the fryer cool down, you'll want to lay a couple paper towels on a plate, and set the food on the paper towels so the oil that drips off gets absorbed. This is true for just about everything you'll cook in a deep fryer.

My previous complaint with hush puppies was that they can a bit dense, and not particularly flavorful. Well, these were incredibly soft, fluffy, and surprisingly sweet. They almost had a honey taste. They were incredible, like biting into a sweet cloud. We ended up making way more than we could eat (and we ate a lot), and I had some with lunch the next day. Eating them as leftovers doesn't do them justice, however, so you'll really want to enjoy them soon after cooking.

Also, as good as these were, there are countless recipes out there that add jelepenos, bacon, and tons of other things. So, you can expect me to cook more of these soon enough. I just have to catch some more fish first.

Fried fish

2009-04-12T08:55:00.000-04:00

Ok, I started off with frying fish because that's what my roommates had in mind when they got me the deep fryer. I do some freshwater fishing in NY on Lake Champlain and at a pond in Connecticut. I mostly catch bream and some yellow perch. Occasionally, I'll land a bass, but I didn't have any this time. I used to fry them up in oil on the stove, but that usually gets really smoky in our kitchen, and blackens the outside of the fish very quickly (although the inside is still delicious every time!).

So, for the fish, I normally mix about equal parts corn meal and flour (but a little more corn meal) on a plate. Then I beat a couple eggs in a bowl, dp the fish in the egg, then in the flour and cornmeal mixture. While doing this, I also liberally sprinkle both sides with garlic salt. I can't find the exact online recipe I used, but it suggested double dipping. That is, after I take the fish out of the egg wash and cover it in flour/corn meal, I put it back into the egg, and then back into the flour and corn meal again.

The fish cooked at about 375F for a few minutes. Since the fish float in the oil, I made sure to turn them over a couple times so both sides get cooked well. I also only cooked a couple at a time, so they didn't get to crowded in there

These fish were AMAZING! They got a perfect golden yellow-brown color, but not too dark, unlike cooking them on the stove. Also, the double dipping was a great trick to learn, as it helps more corn meal stick to the fish for cooking. So I could properly quantify how good the double dipping was, I cooked a few that were only dipped once as a control group. Those were still great, but I thought the second dip caused the fish to puff up a little more and become a lot fluffier.

So, all in all, this was a great first run with the deep fryer. The fish were delicious, and, not to ruin the surprise, but double dipping will turn out to be a useful trick for a number of deep fried treats that I'll be writing about in the future.

Welcome to "Off The Deep End"

2009-04-11T11:54:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone,

Welcome to "Off The Deep End!" For my past birthday, I got a deep fryer from my roommates. Just about everything to come out of it so far has been amazing, and I am starting this blog to document the various things my roommates, friends, and I decide to submerge in hot oil.

Now, I've never been known amongst family and friends as a "health-conscious eater", and that trend will likely continue in this blog. My goal is not only to perfect the traditional deep fried fare, but also to really explore the studio space -- go off the deep end, if you will -- with tons of foods you might never have thought to deep fry. Twinkies and Oreos may have made it mainstream in the deep frying world, but why haven't Swiss Cake Rolls or peanut butter cups? Everyone loves mozzarella sticks, but what other cheeses work?

My philosophy is that there are no bad suggestions for deep frying. (Well, my roommate pointed out that fortune cookies are probably a bad suggestion, because of the paper inside, but whatever.) Sure, maybe some things won't be as good as others, but I'm willing to take that chance in the name of science, document it all for you here, and try not to gain too much weight in the process.

So, I welcome your suggestions and comments, provided they relate to deep frying and you are not a spamming robot. Also, this is my first foray into blogging, so the look and feel of this blog will possibly change in the coming months as I figure out what I'm doing here. I hope you all enjoy the blog, and a new post should be ready shortly.

Disclaimer

2009-04-11T09:40:00.000-04:00

Ok, sorry to keep everyone waiting for an actual deep fried meal, but first we need to talk a little about safety. DEEP FRYING IS EXTRAORDINARILY DANGEROUS! Always follow all the instructions that came with your deep fryer, and use caution at all times around hot oil. Hot oil is so dangerous, it was actually used as a medieval weapon. It also stays hot long after you turn off the fryer, so give it a lot of time to cool down before moving the oil in any way.

Also, numerous house fires are started every year by people trying to deep fry things -- often turkeys -- that are too large for their fryer or that they do not have the knowledge to cook properly. I will not be attempting to deep fry anything that my fryer can't handle, and I do not encourage anyone else to do so either.

Also, I am not, in any way, an expert on deep frying. I just have a great enthusiasm for consuming greasy, fattening foods. In most cases, I am starting out with recipes I have found online and making adjustments later on as I gain more experience. But even with an adventurous mindset, safety is always my primary concern. Anything I suggest here may not work the same on your deep fryer, so please be careful.

Ok, thanks for reading that. My first actual food post will cover the first meal I deep fried: freshly caught fish, hush puppies, and pickles.