[Sca-cooks] OOP Frying Question

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Sat Apr 12 09:53:03 PDT 2008


On Apr 12, 2008, at 11:44 AM, rattkitten wrote:
> The oil is at 375 which is as hot as the poor little thing will go...
> makes me miss the commercial fryer I had at the Restaurant. (We don't
> use one at the School I am at so that our little darlings don't grow  
> up
> with fried foods... )  anyways the batter was sort of thick but I  
> guess
> it could have been a little more.  And yes we are lowering the basket
> into the oil before we pour in the batter.

Try making it a little thicker, and maybe use a something like a  
pastry bag/tube. Obviously you'll eventually reach a point where These  
Are No Longer Funnel Cakes But Something Else, but maybe you can stop  
before that happens, if you know what I mean. At the worst you'll have  
churros, instead of funnel cakes, and I'm sure the suffering will be  
intense. But my point being that if they're coming from a thinner  
opening, they'll weigh less, be crispier, and more importantly, be  
crispier faster. I keep seeing something that looks like funnel cakes  
in the Indian markets in the neighborhood, that must have been poured  
through an opening the thickness of a pencil, or less. I haven't tried  
them, but they look cool.

>  One thing that worked sort
> of was using a spoon and pouring the batter into that after submerging
> the spoon into the oil.... But we shouldn't have to do that... I just
> think the damn thing is to small....

I can sympathize. All these specialty appliances that are supposed to  
make things more convenient rarely do so in reality. They just shift  
the balance a bit, and everything you gain in convenience is paid for  
in some other way.

I was given a deep-fryer as a Christmas gift, and it's lovely, and has  
a design feature intended to use less oil: the basket sits on a  
motorized axis set at an angle, such that approximately half, and only  
half (maybe a little more than half) of the basket's contents are  
submerged at one time. Sounds great, right? Less oil to buy and  
replace, fewer spatters, [arguably] less oil absorption into the food;  
what's not to like?

They don't talk about the extreme persnicketiness (Oooh, bay-bee, I  
made it into the end-of month stats for the Cook's List with that one,  
for sure!!!) of the basket mechanism, and its great love of  
accumulating bits of flour, solidified meat albumen and other juices  
(a.k.a. horse glue, chemically speaking), and its tendency to stop  
working unexpectedly if you fry, say, more than six pieces of chicken  
in one sequence.

As you say, it's probably fine for egg rolls, shrimp chips, French  
fries, and small batches of foods that don't give off protein-ey  
juices, possibly up to and including pre-cooked, frozen Battered  
Whatever. Funnel Cakes? NFW.

> Need to get me a BIGGER FRYER....
> aaruh aruh aruh... (Thank You Tim Allen) LOL.  We got this thing  
> back at
> Christmas and I have been slowly playing with it... I generally avoid
> fried foods.  But it has been fun for French Fries and Won Tons, Egg
> Rolls, Shrimp Chips... etc... We just got up this morning and said mmm
> donuts. Ended up with funnel cakes. and crumbs...

My standard rule is, any utensil that takes longer to clean than it  
does to use the utensil for its intended purpose, is probably not a  
great idea. As kitchen designs have changed somewhat with the passage  
of years and we are using real estate resources differently, I think  
that to a certain extent, deep-frying has become an exercise best  
practiced in a food-service environment. With the small amount of  
frying that I do, I'm probably best off with a wok.

Adamantius



"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter




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