Funnel Vision

It’s late May now, past Memorial Day and the unofficial start of summer. It’s a great time to get outside. We’re all getting antsy, and if we are going to see others, it’s sounding more and more like outdoors is the way to do that most safely. We probably won’t be heading to a county or state fair anytime soon, but for this post, I whipped up a carnival treat that can hopefully bring back fond memories of summer days spent outside: funnel cakes.

As I mentioned last time, before I could do any more frying, I really had to clean out the deep fryer. As funnel cakes are just dough, I want a nice, clean taste. While I’ll blanket it in cinnamon and sugar, I don’t want the lingering flavor of chicken tenders, cheese curds, or pork cracklins showing up as well.

After probably close to an hour of scooping out junk and scrubbing, I went from this:

To this:

You can actually see the bottom of the fryer! Because the “before” picture’s oil is so murky, in that photo, you can’t see the probably full pound of junk I later scooped out of the bottom — the burnt bread crumbs, charred remnants of cheese, and other stuff lost to the depths over many meals.

If the oil has been used a lot (and especially if it’s been used for seafood), I'll throw it away. You can, however, filter it and save it for use again — and for plenty of uses, that’ll be fine.

Other than the cleaning, there wasn’t any heavy lifting here. Another recent Aldi find was a ready-to-go funnel cake mix — with a funnel included! For $2, how could I not?

The package says it makes eight funnel cakes. As it’s just the Fry Gal and me enjoying these, I cut the recipe in half. We definitely couldn’t each eat four funnel cakes. We probably shouldn’t each eat two, but the amount we should eat has never stopped us before — and this gives me a few chances to practice. (I’m not sure anyone should eat one, if we really want to split hairs.)

This is a super easy prep: Add water to the included powdered mix and whisk. That’s it! And, of course, I also got powdered sugar, cinnamon, and cinnamon sugar ready. The dough is really just a vehicle for those.

It’s pretty much just cleverly-marketed pancake batter.

Once the mix is ready, you load up the funnel and pour it into the oil “in a circular motion, creating a lattice design.” “Circular motion” and “lattice design” seemed at odds to me, but I know what a funnel cake is supposed to look like, so I let that be my guide.

The way it rises up, takes shape, and bubbles (especially in a clean fryer with very clear oil) is mesmerizing to watch:

After 20 seconds, flip it over, let it go for 20 more seconds, and then you’re done!

The Fry Gal topped hers with a perfectly reasonable amount of powdered sugar:

 I went with a little powdered sugar, but I also went heavy on the cinnamon sugar:

I went heavier still on the third one:

Taste-wise, these came out great. Not much to say about the batter really; it, as expected, took a back seat to the powdered sugar and cinnamon.

They didn’t hold together as the funnel cakes of my past, however. The mass of funnel cake that came out looked and acted more like a pile of (delicious) fried noodles. I guess I didn’t quite master the “lattice” part. This would have been very difficult to support on the world’s flimsiest oil-soaked paper plate, while walking around fairgrounds. That said, there were some decent-sized clumps, and this way you could enjoy it in smaller bites.

I guess a positive benefit of this is that I don’t have to bite into the huge mass and have the reverberation of that crunch propel a cloud of powdered sugar into the air, which ALWAYS causes me to cough, which creates an even bigger cloud of powdered sugar and looks like I’m trying to recreate LeBron James’ pregame ritual. That’s also why I prefer cinnamon sugar to powdered sugar on my funnel cakes.

A keen eye might notice that we only got three funnel cakes out of half of the batter. That’s fine, because, to channel Yogi Berra, we were getting full and probably couldn’t have eaten a fourth. Perhaps if I’d made four smaller ones, they would have held together better, but “smaller” goes against the spirit of fair foods. And in any case, these were still nowhere near the size you get at the fair.

There you have it. Even without a carnival coming to your town, you can bring a taste of one to you, before heading outside to enjoy the warmer weather and longer days in plenty of responsible, socially-distanced ways. And what better way to fuel yourself up for an outdoor adventure than by downing 1,000+ calories worth of simple sugars?

Curd Your Enthusiasm 2: Fry Fry Curdie

The cheese curds on my last post were delicious, but, as this pandemic rolls on, we are learning that we aren’t necessarily going to be able to keep doing things the way we used to do them. That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy things almost the same way though. For example, I’m now getting my MLB fix by watching a few innings of Korean baseball each morning before work.

The initial curds experience fell back on my familiar method of breading cheese to fry it. Now it’s time to expand my repertoire and try out a new approach. So for this sequel post, I’ll beer batter and fry them.

Longtime readers may know that I’ve done a little beer battering back in the day, including fish, oysters, and avocados, to name a few. This is my first foray into beer battering dairy, however.

I was raring to go and deep fry some beer-battered cheese curds, and, while doing some of the prep work, I asked the Fry Gal to pick out a good online recipe.

She wasn’t aware of my method of picking out an online recipe: find whatever is closest to what you already think and is easiest for you personally to follow (this is also how everyone does politics online). If you have absolutely no idea what a recipe might look like, and no experience or qualifications to guide you, just imagine what you wish it looked like and find whatever most closely matches that (still how everyone does politics online).

The Fry Gal was a little too thorough in evaluating recipes to be sure she picked the very best one, and we ended up with a recipe that required one of my least favorite things — a step involving waiting. In this case, the recipe we went with called for the curds to sit in the freezer for an hour to cool down. (But as usual, the Fry Gal was right. I checked her work, and other recipes also recommend this step.)

That meant we faced another all-too-common experience in our current world — time to kill. The oil was already heating, and we were hungry. What could we fry in the meantime?

We had recently dug into an Iberico ham leg over Easter:

The properly carved meat looks like this . . .

. . . and even I would argue it’d be criminal to deep fry such delicious, tender cured ham.

The leg does produce a bit of waste, however — the skin and fat that in better times would just be discarded.

As these are not better times, we put that to use, making pork cracklins. (I realize that on my last post, I joked about tearing barely usable scraps off an animal carcass, and here I am only weeks later doing exactly that!)

I cut those strips of skin and fat into smaller bites and into the fryer they went. No other prep is necessary (though I have learned you can add sugar and salt beforehand and give the pork scraps time to soak those up).

After a few seconds, they start floating to the top of the oil. From there, you can stir occasionally, but mostly just leave them be for several minutes.

Then I strained them out of the fryer and drained on paper towels. If you taste them right out the fryer, you’ll say, “meh.” But if you hit them with some seasoning and, most importantly, salt, they come alive instantly. I used the same Lazy Susan’s seasoning I use for chicken tenders.

In a handful of cracklins, you’ll get some skin, which will have become crispy and light; some fat (OK, plenty of fat), which will be soft and almost buttery; and some bits of actual meat, which will be a bit chewy but a good complement to the rest of it.

In writing this post, I learned that cracklins are different from pork rinds, which are just the skins, trimmed closely without the fat attached.

This batch didn’t make a whole lot, but that’s a good thing. I can’t eat too much of these without getting very dehydrated from all the salt and a little bit disgusted from all the fat.

If you haven’t recently imported an Iberico ham leg from Spain . . . I’m sorry to hear that. But, you can buy pig skins and scraps for VERY cheap at the supermarket. They’re found in the leftovers/scraps/super on-sale section of the meat aisle. I think those will turn out even better than these already cured and aged pig skins.

---

OK, that was a fun diversion while we waited on the cheese curds, but now let’s get back to it.

We still had a little more time, so I mixed up a dipping sauce from another recipe we found. It was made of mayo, hot sauce, and garlic powder, specifically:

• 1/4 cup light mayo
• 2-3 tsp (or more to taste) Franks Red Hot
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder

I put it all in a bowl, mixed it up, and set it aside for later.

Next, I mixed all the ingredients for the beer batter. Those were:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup beer (Jack’s Abbey House Lager)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs 

My working space was set up with a plate of the curds, a bowl of flour, and the beer batter. Once everything is ready, and the oil is hot, you roll the curds in flour, then dip them in the batter, then transfer them right to the oil.

The recipe suggested frying 5-6 curds at a time, but I didn’t think I was overloading the fryer too badly with 10 at a time (for about 2 minutes per batch):

Beer batter is tough to keep totally covering whatever it is you are deep frying. It drips off quickly during the transfer to the oil, and you lose a little more batter before it starts to solidify in the fryer. Those loose drops of batter need to be skimmed out of the oil on an ongoing basis.

I also lost a few curds to the depths of the fryer. If you don’t have a strong coating of batter, the cheese will seep out as it melts, leaving behind an empty beer batter shell.

Here’s my batch:

And here’s a picture I dug up from my trip to Wisconsin (these were yellow curds, not white ones):

All in all, these were enjoyable. That said, we had a few issues with these that, taken all together, meant we preferred the breaded curds from Part 1. We also thought the dipping sauce was OK, but we could take it or leave it.

The first problem was that I waited slightly too long to serve them. They cooked in three batches, and I brought them all out together. The third batch was very good, and very gooey, but the first two batches had already started to cool and the cheese in those had re-solidified. It’s a small window of time in which you need to enjoy these. I’m impressed at how reliably restaurants can get them out to us on time.

Another problem was that the fryer hasn’t been cleaned in a while. This is also no fault of the curds, but the sludge of many meals past had accumulated on the bottom of the fryer, and that gunk keeps the oil from getting as hot as it needs to. This causes the food to be less crispy (which is particularly important for a beer batter) and to absorb more oil, which makes an already dense dish like fried cheese even heavier.

These are all avoidable problems, so under better conditions, these might have rivaled breaded curds. But even so, I think we would still have preferred breaded curds, mostly because of their similarity to mozzarella sticks. I mentioned the Fry Gal’s soft spot for mozzarella sticks last post, but I still understated it; mozzarella sticks were actually mentioned in our wedding vows.

The important takeaway for me was that the fryer was greatly in need of a cleaning. It’s the perfect time for that too, because 1) I’ve got plenty of time on my hands, and 2) in my next post, I want to fry something that would really benefit from cooking in clean, pure oil.

Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, even if things aren’t quite as good as the way you’d like to be doing them — like beer battering your cheese curds instead of breading them — I hope you all are finding new ways to enjoy a new normal!

Curd Your Enthusiasm

In the last post, I enjoyed some delicious comfort food. That’s important in times like these. Equally important, though, is taking advantage of opportunities. This post shares a fun combination of the two!

In this vaguely dystopian world of disrupted supply chains and empty grocery shelves, you need to jump at the chance to treat yourself when you spot it. That opportunity recently presented itself to me as a Midwestern treat, but if this pandemic drags on long enough, one day stumbling upon a fresh carcass with some usable meat remaining may come to be a similar stroke of good fortune.

Until recently, I could never find cheese curds around Boston. That changed a few weeks ago, however. While quarantine shopping at Aldi, I spotted two varieties — white cheddar and Cajun — and I knew I had to buy both.

Even in the best of times, you can’t hesitate if something catches your eye at Aldi. There are intriguing products I've only found at Aldi, and when I’ve returned to purchase more, I’ve never seen them again. I don’t know if that will happen with these, but I’ll certainly enjoy them while I can.

What exactly is a cheese curd and what makes it different from simply being cheese? The explanations I found on the Internet ranged from bafflingly unhelpful to quite technical. According to the latter, cheese curds stop just short of officially becoming cheese: “once the curd is pressed it is called cheese.”

Pressed? Does that mean the key step is... flattening the curd? (Thank you. Thank you. I’ll be here all week, folks. Literally. We’re not supposed to leave the house.)

I first had deep-fried cheese curds on a trip to Wisconsin last year, and I couldn’t get enough of them. This turns out to be a very good problem to have in Wisconsin, because every restaurant served some type of fried cheese curd — white, yellow, battered, breaded, etc. I had a whole new experience every time I ordered them.

For this attempt at deep frying cheese curds, I went with a trusted method — breaded, like I do with mozzarella sticks. I have been deep frying long enough now that I have an efficient assembly line for this process, which involves the curds moving (mostly) from left to right in my setup.
Those steps are:

1. Coating the cheese curds in flour.
2. Dipping them in an egg wash.
3. Coating them in bread crumbs
4. Dipping them back in the egg wash.
5. Coating them again in bread crumbs.

Curds come in all different shapes and sizes. I tended to pick the largest ones for frying. Once a batch went through the above steps...

I deep fried them for about a minute and a half, and they came out looking just like the mozzarella sticks I know and love:

The first round were the white cheddar curds, which were excellent. Round two, the Cajun curds, turned out even better in my opinion. They even looked a little more like those I’d gotten in Wisconsin. (The Fry Gal preferred round one; I think because they were more like mozzarella sticks, which she has a soft spot for.)

There are a couple reasons why I think the second batch was better. The Cajun seasoning added extra flavor, of course, but, also, the Cajun curds tended to be a little smaller than the white cheddar ones. While I figured bigger would be better, the smaller pieces made for perfectly sized bites and a good ratio of breading to cheese.

Another possibility is that the second batch had been out of the refrigerator longer and got closer to room temperature, which the package did suggest was a better way to enjoy them. I don’t think that matters as much here though, since they were eventually submerged in 370F oil.

Overall, they were delicious, gooey, and very stretchy. Mozzarella sticks are great, but unless you use the whole milk mozzarella string cheese (most string cheese varieties in the stores are made with skim milk), you don’t get a really good stretch from each bite. The curds have plenty of fat in them, however, and really stretched out.

The only decent picture I got doesn’t do it justice, so here’s a video:

 

A good, fresh curd will “squeak” when you bite into it. I had no expectation for Aldi brand cheese curds to rival those straight from a Wisconsin farm, but these did actually have a slight squeak to them, which was a nice surprise. We didn’t feel the need to dip these in anything, but some popular options are marinara, ranch, or a spicy or tangy aioli.

Two baskets of fried cheese curds between the Fry Gal and me was very filling. We’d planned to follow up this appetizer with a real dinner, but after both batches of fried curds, we didn’t need anything else to eat. That’s good, because I was too full of cheese to get up and cook anyways.

That made me think: If we need to feed restless Americans something to keep them sluggish and inside their houses for just a little longer, cheese curds might do the trick. Maybe the next government stimulus should simply be a basket of deep-fried cheese curds delivered to every household.

Until next time, stay safe, stay inside, and #flattenthecurd!

Fry A Little Tenderness

Welcome back to Off The Deep End! I took a little time off… about 8 years… some “me time”… I moved... changed jobs... got married... got a pet… and now find myself quarantined amidst a global pandemic.

As my healthcare skills are limited, my contribution to this worldwide effort will be dusting the cobwebs off the old blog and raising morale through deep frying. I don’t know how many posts I have in me, but I do have a lot of time on my hands, the Fry Gal by my side, and a stocked pantry that, like the US Department of Energy, features a strategic oil reserve filled to the brim to mitigate any potential supply disruptions.

Where to (re-)start?

Trying times like these call for comfort food, so we’ll begin with a simple, down-to-Earth meal. And after this long a layoff, I need to ease back into things anyways. Because the world needs some tender loving care right now, what better return to deep fried blogging than with a delicious basket of chicken tenders?

Here's a stock image from Google. We’ll see how mine compare...

There are plenty of ways to make chicken tenders, and I’ve tested a few while on hiatus. I’ve settled on what I find to be the simplest and most reminiscent of the tenders of my youth. I don’t care if this isn’t the best recipe. I’m not looking for a gourmet experience; that’s not why we eat chicken tenders.

I want the kind of tenders you’d get at a fast food restaurant (Remember going to restaurants? That was so much fun!), a poolside snack shack (Remember hanging out with people? What a blast!), a sporting event (Remember sports? They were awesome!), or a pub (Well, I am still enjoying plenty of beverages.) — the places you go for chicken tenders.

First things first, I’m making chicken tenders, not chicken strips or chicken fingers. I’m using the actual tenderloin of the chicken (strips of white meat located on either side of the breastbone, under the breast meat). I’m not just cutting up another part of the chicken into this shape.

When I’m picking out tenders for frying, I look for packages with the smallest ones I can find.

These were larger than I’d like, but panic shopping had taken hold in my town, and the grocery selection was limited. Any chicken tenders will do, but the smaller ones will cook through more quickly and will have more breading vs. actual chicken (a good surface-area-to-volume ratio).

In addition to the tenders and the oil, you only need two other ingredients, which most people will have around the house: eggs and flour.

(I tried a buttermilk coating once, which the Fry Gal requested. It was delicious, but one step made me wait 15-20 minutes while the chicken soaked in buttermilk. That’s a dealbreaker, as I am not typically willing to add that kind of time between me and tendies.)

Roll the defrosted tenders in flour, dip them in an egg wash, and then coat them with another layer of flour.

While that’s all you need to do, I also add some seasoning at this point. Here you can be as simple or as fancy as you want. Colonel Sanders, for example, built his reputation off this step with his secret mix of 11 herbs and spices. I add an “Old Bay” type seasoning we buy at Lazy Susan’s Hot Fat Crabs, a restaurant in Lewes, Delaware.

You can tell it’s a quality seasoning, because, like most fine spices, you purchase it by the pint in a takeout container:

After I add a dash of Lazy Susan’s seasoning, they are ready for the fryer, which is heated to about 370F (the max on my fryer).

My fryer can usually hold 4-5 chicken tenders at a time, and I cook each batch about 5-6 minutes. Since these were larger, I cooked them in batches of 3, still for 5-6 minutes.

They should be totally submerged in the oil, but if any parts aren’t, just flip them at least once while frying. (In the above picture, the basket was lifted slightly out of the oil for a better action shot.)

When they come out of the fryer, I add another dash of seasoning, and that’s it — they’re ready to eat! You’ll need to let them cool down though.

Not too shabby!

In this Off The Deep End reboot, you’ll notice I've upped the production value with fry baskets and liners. They’re fun to eat out of, make for an easier cleanup, and, for just a split second, you might even feel like you’ve left the house!

If you’re like me, you'll want to enjoy these dipped liberally in honey mustard, BBQ sauce, or ketchup. (One of many ways I'm attempting to ward off insanity while quarantined is by rotating between different condiments to make each bite new and exciting.) Another great decision is coating them in buffalo sauce and dipping in ranch or blue cheese dressing.

I hope this delicious, comforting, and easy-to-prepare meal can lift some spirits and help you all stay nourished in the difficult weeks ahead. That’s it for now, but I have a few ideas to keep this tiniest bit of momentum rolling for some more posts over the next month.

Until then, stay safe and stay away from each other!

Asian (And Some Italian) Deep Frying

It’s the Fry Gal here, back for another guest post! (Editor's note: Since I did pretty much no work on this post, I'll at least add some occasional comments in parentheses.)

A lot of the food that makes it to the blog is classic Americana — the kind of thing you'd find at a state fair. Fried turkeys, fried fish, mozzarella sticks, fried Twinkies, etc. However, frying is not a purely American art form, as we found out in one delicious evening!

A frying enthusiast and avid reader of Off The Deep End suggested an Asian frying night, and Bobby and I were more than happy to participate. So, after stocking up on spring roll wrappers, fish sauce, and bean sprouts, our project began!

First on the menu: crispy spring rolls. Let me preface this by saying that we thought everything was going to be much easier than it actually was. Like a whole lot easier. Bear that in mind while we explore the carnage in the pictures below.

We found a recipe for spring rolls here. The filling was surprisingly easy to make and would actually make a great side dish. Next it was time to deal with the wrappers. Spring roll wrappers start out as big, thin circles that break at the slightest provocation. Not unlike whiny children or small animals, they become much easier to work with after you hold them underwater for a while.

First, we slapped some filling on them.

We figured out early on that less filling makes them easier to roll up. Here's what they looked like ready to go in the fryer.

That shiny circle with the sewer-grate type pattern on on the bottom of the screen is what the wrappers looked like before we soaked them.

Remember that part where I talked about carnage? Here's what it looked like:

Yikes.

It tasted delicious, mind you, but the problem in presentation came from the fact that we overstuffed the wrapper. Also, I don't think we rolled it up tightly enough. I’m using the royal "we" here. (I actually felt OK at that step, as I've had some practice rolling similar things in high school and college... like burritos, crepes...wait, what did you think I meant?) Once we figured that out, here was the end product:

Much better! A little paler than you'd find in a restaurant, but much easier to eat than our previous attempts. (They ended up more like spring burritos than spring rolls. Also, they weren't deliciously crispy like you'd find in restaurants, the shell was a little tough and chewy.)

Next on the menu, crab Rangoon! I think these turned out really well. You can find our recipe for the fillings here. We couldn't find any wonton wrappers at the grocery store, so we again went with the spring roll wrappers. (A couple dollars gets you a stack of wrappers about half an inch tall, which, it turns out, is probably 25 trillion of them. Not knowing this, and worried we might run out, I of course bought two packages. Also, I had a choice of buying 6oz. of crab meat for about $8 or 8oz. of "imitation crab-flavored seafood product" for $2.99. I think you know which one I chose.)

We learned our lesson and used only a little bit of filling. We also wrapped them up dumpling-style and dipped them in an egg wash before going into the fryer. Here's what they looked like before:

Aaand the delicious after:

Bonus gooey money shot:

Oh. Yeah.

So what went right? (It's fake crab meat and cream cheese. What could really go wrong?) Well, for starters, the smaller size and improved wrapping technique worked really well. If we had any leftover spring roll filling at this point, I think we'd re-do those using what we learned. Also, the egg wash gave it that nice, golden-brown color you want in your fried goods, and also really helped to seal up the Rangoon. These were delicious and very easy to make.

(Seriously, these were amazing. I think there is a lot smaller margin for error in making spring rolls. For these, you just needed to wrap a blob of filling with the wrapper in any way you want. It didn't matter if it wasn't rolled up cleanly. Also, I think we could have made dozens of crab Rangoon with the amount of filling the recipe called for.)

Next, our guest brought some Italian rice balls after a failed attempt at Asian-style rice balls. They were awesome!

Before and after in the same shot:

And the deliciousness inside:

They were awesome dipped in marinara sauce and warm out of the fryer.

Next were some actual dumplings, made by our guest's mother.

Before, on the brink of transformation:

After, delicious and bubbly:

The outside was very perfectly crispy and chewy, and the inside was very flavorful.

Look at all those vegetables! We were practically eating salad! These went straight into the fryer as is, no egg wash needed.

So that was our adventure, hope you all enjoyed the ride! Everything was delicious and we'll have to make it again sometime, especially those crab Rangoon. Special thanks to Michele Rhee for her treats and her great idea!

There are still a lot of spring roll wrappers in Bobby's pantry (We used plenty and broke a lot more, but I'd say there still at least 48 trillion left.), so if anybody knows what we should do with those, you know how to reach us.

Pulled Pork

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.