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You can certainly deep-fry foods in clarified butter (also known as ghee) and in lard. In fact, there are many foods that are traditionally fried in these fats. They both have very high smoke points and are excellent for making crisp fried foods.
For example, Puri, Indian fried breads, are deep-fried in ghee (clarified butter). And many Southern USA and ...
22
I believe you are referring to this article? https://www.seriouseats.com/2012/01/the-food-lab-how-to-make-best-buffalo-wings-fry-again-ultimate-crispy-deep-fried-buffalo-wings.html
Funny enough, I was reading this yesterday. And if you go through the end, Kenji gives a very scientific explanation on how double-frying your wings can make them more crispy.
...
21
The part that handles the food is comparable, as you noted: A container for the hot oil plus a basket to lift the food out again.
But the difference is in the periphery:
A chip pan is just a pan (or what you may also call a pot), but the heating is done on the stove, like for all other pots.
A deep fryer has its own heating system, either via a heated ...
19
No, you cannot deep-fry in butter. It simply can't handle the heat; it will brown and burn before you reach deep-frying temperatures.
In a comment you say that vegetable oils are unstable when heated, but it is in fact the opposite: butter is much more unstable when heated. Butter has a smoke point of 200-250F, around 120-150C. Many vegetable oils have ...
18
There are three major properties an edible fat (I am assuming you are not asking about inedible oils like petroleum based products) has that affect how it is best used:
Flavor
Saturation
Smoke point
Properties
Flavor
The flavor of the fat is very important. So called neutral oils (like canola oil or refined grapeseed oil, or refined peanut oil, among ...
18
B is your best bet. In fact, that's the original (And IMO, best) way to do it! Find a nice heavy cast iron skillet, fill it around halfway with oil, and then fry your chicken and rotate it in the pan as needed
Here are some links:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/deep-south-fried-chicken/
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/fried-chicken-recipe....
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The desired texture of 'crispness' is the result of many factors, and oil choice is generally not the biggest factor. Consider a french fry. The generally accepted best practice for fries is a blanch and finish method. This allows the fry to be cooked throughout and have a crisp surface, without being overdone and leathery. To accomplish this, the finish ...
13
160C sounds about right for cooking oil temp. I typically shallow fry on the stovetop for about 10-12 minutes for the thighs and then transfer them to a 175C oven to finish cooking (if needed) and then repeat with the breasts. I would stay away from "battering" if you are looking to replicate something like popeye's.
A few things I do to ensure a nice thick ...
11
It is not necessary to have any egg to make a breading.
You should instead take a step back: rather than trying to create a substitution for egg in a breading which relies on their unique properties, instead use one of the many breading methods which does not.
Among them are:
Simply dredging in an acceptable starchy flour (such as corn meal)
Using a (...
11
All of the sources I read say the same thing... what makes them different is that they're fried twice.
From Saveur:
Frites are the supercharged cousin to paltry American-style fries: made from soft Belgian potatoes called bintjes, they're thick-cut and—this is key—double-fried (in the olden days, in molten horse or ox fat, though modern options range ...
11
This is a staple of Balkan cuisine. You will see it named Lángos (and derivatives) in Hungary and Mekitza (and derivatives) in Slavic languages. Either of these words is used in Western Europe, depending on which group popularized it there.
I am not sure this wording has spread outside of Europe, and cannot say if it was imported in the USA or developed ...
10
Fried Dough As mentioned in comment, it's something I'm mostly used to seeing at fairs - the dough does not do well in a communal fryer where it could pick up other flavors (hmm, fishy fried dough - yuck) and deep frying at home is kind of a chore (but you are up to it!)
Scones are one of the many alternate names given in the linked wikipedia article.
10
The way I have achieved this is by gently simmering the potato cubes until they soften. (You want them pretty much cooked, but not so done that they won't hold together well.)
I also lightly salt the water so they take on a little seasoning while they cook. This, of course, is optional.
Next, I drain the potatoes very well. I want them to essentially be ...
10
It does help, yes. The first frying acts to partially dehydrate the skin, while partially hydrolysing the collagen into gelatin. The second frying then completes the dehydration and "puffing up". If you didn't have the first frying, there would be less time for those effects before the food burned.
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Not to take anything away from the answers already existing for this question, but I want to add one more reference: Kenji Alt's in depth opus on creating the McDonald's style fry at home.
In summary, his method is to:
Blanche the cut potatoes in water lightly acidified with vinegar, to allow them to cook through while the acid keeps the pectin from ...
9
Was the deep fryer below anything? Cabinet, Vent Hood? Those areas could be probably be cleaned to help.
This happens to me in my house when I fry up bacon. The only solution is fresh air and ventilation. I open a couple of windows, get a nice cross-breeze and it should dissipate over a couple of hours.
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If you are saying you cannot get the oil hot enough during pre-heating:
You may need a bigger burner than the one you are using. Most resources I've seen suggest over 100k BTU
There may be something physically wrong with your setup (i.e., the vessel should be closer to the flame)
The ambient temperature at the time of cooking was simply too cold for the ...
9
The nature of deep frying, contrary to expectation, is that it is a dry cooking method.
The heat from the oil vaporizes water at the surface of the food. The steam coming of the food pushes the oil away from the food, and keeps oil from soaking in during the main frying process. This is also what causes the bubbling.
The consequence of this is that by ...
9
There's so much heat around a turkey deep-fryer I wouldn't see how light or medium snow would affect your cooking. Any snow is going to melt and probably evaporate before it comes into contact with any hot oil, and any that makes contact will be gone in a flash. I've barbequed in 20 below and in snow, all that it really means is that you need more heat.
My ...
9
Reusing deep frying oil is fine (up to a point - you can't refry indefinitely), and in fact the flavour often improves with use. You should be absolutely fine frying two turkeys one after the other for Thanksgiving. Have a good one!
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Firstly I think you're having trouble making a distinguishment between water and oil absorption. Even though placing food in (room temp) oil may at first seem as if it had gotten it 'wet' it's a very different kind of soaked compared to doing the same thing with water, as the two liquids have profoundly different properties.
Oil when heated, however, ...
9
Isn't the oil (and bad oil temperature), the main reason for calories in fried food, not the vegetables themselves?
Just coating in corn starch will not help at all, the moisture in the vegetable will still make them limp and oily.
If you do a tempura or batter type frying, then the batter itself becomes the calories sponge.
If you want to make "lower" ...
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As @ElectricToothpick said, the milk solids in butter will brown and burn, so that's not a good option. Since ghee has had the milk solids removed, that's not an issue.
Traditionally, rendered animal fats like lard were used for deep frying, and french fries were originally fried in beef tallow. McDonald's followed that tradition until health-conscious ...
8
Further editing about other causes of oil foaming
It never occurred to me to add reasons other than lecithin leaching into oil as a cause of foaming. I hope most people don't re-use their oil for frying more than a few times since it's harmful to a person's health which I'll explain a little. Since this site isn't about health but cooking, it'll be brief.
...
8
You could absolutely pan fry them, a combination of your A and B options. You'll need an inch or so of oil, enough to come about halfway up your chicken pieces. This is a great job for a cast iron pan, because it will soak up heat and help you get through the temperature drop that will happen when you first add the chicken to the pan.
8
We do cook over 100C in a pressure cooker, but not enough to brown food, as this would take very high pressures. It probably wouldn't be safe or economical at home, and doesn't have enough of an advantage over ovens (which may use steam) for it to be worth doing industrially.
Solubility is a big factor, for example salt dissolves in water but not oil, and ...
8
Nothing you do will be perfect but here are a few things you can do to help.
When done frying dry well in a dry space.
Sealed spaces will trap the moisture released by the chicken as it cools. Refrigerators are natural moist spaces as well. You will want to do this on a drying rack to prevent the chicken sitting in its own runoff juices. Use of a fan will ...
8
I don't think you will have the risk of fire, as long as you keep the oil in the pot. Temperature will modulate more quickly than in cast iron, but it is not going to vary much within the pot itself. I use a wok because the slanted sides make for safer deep-frying. So, you don't need cast iron. In a pot, you need to be careful that when you add your ...
7
For the very best tasting fries, onion rings and battered fish are fried in fat made from rendered beef fat. When I was a cook we rendered down a thousand pounds of beef fat a week, it took days to do. But it made the very best tasting savory deep fried foods. The burning temperature is lowish, so food needs to be cooked at 325 and changed more often. It's ...
7
B. Definitely. My grandmother used to fry them this way for decades. Just be sure to watch them closely or the bottoms will burn very quickly. A splatter shield will also come in handy if you want to keep your arms from getting pock-marked from flying grease.
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