The batter-fried cheese curds I’ve had at fairs in Wisconsin and Minnesota were invariably made with cheddar that was chewy and moderately salty. I liked them, but the cheese I had in Czechoslovakia was smooth and creamy, more like melted Mozzarella.
These were gooey poutine-quality curds. Mozzarella sticks are served at half the pizza places in California with mixed results.
ETA: Now that I think of it, those mozz sticks are usually breaded. Battered sounds much better.
I miss those Friday nights at the pub. It was called Černý kůň, “The Black Horse” in Czech. After eating my chips and cheese, I’d down a few beers and mosey off to the town cinema to see the latest English-language import.
Don’t get saucy with me, Bearnaise.
Lions and tigers and Bears? Oh maynnaise?
In all honesty, I haven’t even looked. It’s a thing with me. If I have a bad food experience, I usually just shy away from that indefinitely. Add to that the fact that it was my first experience with that kind of food, and first impressions are very powerful ones.
Hellmann’s is not even a brand in the western US, like Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. and skinny vs. fat butter sticks there’s a divide where it’s called Best Foods. The Hellmann’s brand is used in Europe, Canada, Middle East, and South Asia. BF in East and Southeast Asia. Australia has both for some reason.
Good tempura is neither puffy nor thick. It, too, shatters.
I like Fish and Chips and living on the coast I have them frequently enough. I’m headed to England in September… I’ll report back.
If you want a batter that shatters—like biting into glass—while keeping the cod or haddock moist and flaky, here are a few tricks I use for my beer-battered fish and chips:
Use ice-cold beer. The colder, the better. It creates more steam and slows gluten development, giving you a lighter, crispier crust.
Replace about 30% of the flour with cornstarch. It makes the batter noticeably crispier.
Add a little extra baking powder. More bubbles = a lighter, crunchier coating.
Mix as little as possible. A few lumps are fine. Overmixing makes the batter chewy.
Fry hot—365–375°F (185–190°C). If the oil isn’t hot enough, the batter soaks up oil instead of getting crispy.
If the batter explodes into crispy shards when you cut into it, you’ve nailed authentic British fish and chips. I make mine so crispy it practically shatters just from making eye contact.
Yep, tempura uses ice water to get that texture.
For tempura, ice-cold sparkling water (or club soda) and a splash of vodka are worthwhile upgrades. They help create an even lighter, crispier batter.
This is largely the most important thing when frying anything battered. Fry hot, but not crazy hot. The oil should stay about 350°F after you have placed what you’re frying in the oil. If it drops much lower than that, the batter and the thing it’s coating get a chance to absorb the oil.
That’s a bit of a scaling problem.
The way to keep the oil hot after adding the food is to mostly have a large reservoir of oil versus the size of the food, and secondarily to have an extremely powerful heat source to add heat as the food tries to cool the oil.
Easy peasy at a restaurant kitchen. Much harder with home tools.
And it leaves you with all this leftover oil.
We tried some fried food recipes shortly after we got married. And they were tasty. And we decided we’d leave frying to the professionals.
Yes, similar for me too. I’ve given it a go a few times, but it’s such a commitment of quality utensils, diligent expertise, and specific ingredients, the results have always been mediocre at best, so I decided it’s not worth the effort.
Same experience for me. IME/IMO deep frying at home is something you either do every day or never.
Besides, IMO it’s by far the most dangerous thing one can do in a home kitchen. The potential for life-altering injury is so large and so ever-present I want nothing to do with it. It’s far safer to juggle large chef’s knives.
Yeah, even twice a week might be worth it. But i don’t want fried food twice a week.
Also, juggling knives isn’t terribly dangerous. I can’t juggle, but i used to play around tossing a single sharp knife in the air and catching it, and it’s not very hard.
I remember an episode of Good Eats in which Alton Brown prepared fish and chips. He pointed out that done properly, only a tiny amount of oil would be absorbed.