My parents gave me a deep fryer for Christmas. My New Year’s resolution is to stop worrying about fat content and die happy. 
So does anyone have recipes for really good deep fried stuff? I’d especially appreciate one for hush puppies (AKA fat pills).
No hush puppies, but Fried Catfish rules!
4 catfish fillets, cut in half
1c cornmeal
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp paprika
dash of cayenne
Put the dry ingredients in a big ziploc bag. Shake to mix. Add fillets 4 at a time. Shake to coat. Deep fry (when fryer is hot) 4 at a time for about 7 minutes. (Stir gently about halfway through to keep them from sticking together.)
Drain on paper towels.
(This recipe is for a Fry Daddy which holds a quart of oil. If your fryer is bigger, you can put more stuff in at a time. The secret is to not overcrowd, so as not to lower the temperature too much, which can lead to soggy food.)
This is off the top of my head, I don’t work from a recipe for this, so quantities are open to change:
Jeff’s Chicken Nuggets
2 lbs of skinless, boneless chicken breast
2-3 eggs
a splash of milk
Seasoned breadcrumbs
Instant oatmeal
Rinse the chicken in cold water, pat dry. Cut the chicken into 1-inch cubes (about 2-3 bites per cube).
Beat the eggs until uniform consistency but not foamy. Whisk in a little milk, maybe an ounce.
Mix the breadcrumbs and oatmeal in equal amounts, about a cup each.
Dunk a few pieces of chicken in the egg mix to thoroughly coat, then into the breadcrumb/oatmeal mix.
(You can also coat the chicken with flour to absorb excess moisture before dunking it in the egg.)
Fry until golden brown.
Powdered sugar Bacon-Fat fried Cheese on a stick
Take some Eidam cheese and skewer it on a stick.
Batter it in whipped egg, milk and then roll in powdered sugar.
Fill deep fryer with bacon grease (lard will do in a pinch) and cook for 3 minutes.
Or, from the same thread, you can do the same with just bacon, but use flour instead of powdered sugar.
I love Buffalo Wings! The simple recipe I know is to take wings and cut the tips off. You can separate the lower and upper wing portions, but at home I just leave them together. Deep fry them for 10-12 minutes. While they are cooking do a sauce mixture of half hot-sauce, half melted butter. Your choice of the hot-sauce is probably the sole-determinent of the quality of this dish. Once the wings are cooked, then mix them in the sauce.
Also, if you want to be a tad healthy, you can use normal Olive Oil - just don’t use virgin or extra virgin olive oils because their smoke point temps are too low. But for normal fryers, normal olive oil works since you should be frying at around 365F. I have used olive oil in my fryer for 3 years now (changed regularly) and have really liked the flavor. I buy my olive oil at a Sam’s Club type place in 2 gallon jugs.
There are tons of Central European recipes for deep frying: schnitzels, rolada’s, etc. Plus I love tempura vegetables…yum. Learn how to do a beer batter and a tempura batter (online recipes abound).
Enjoy-
-Tcat
Dolores Reborn, I definitely plan on doing catfish (I pan fry it now), but see, without the hush puppies, it just ain’t the same …
CookingWithGas, those chicken nuggets sound awesome!
And Tomcat, while I am for Powdered Sugar Bacon-Fat Fried Cheese on a stick in spirit, in practice, not so much. I like a little salt with my grease and the sugar just wouldn’t work out, imho. I just got a Mexican cookbook, so the fried wings with some of those sauces could potentially be really, really good. I plan to use peanut oil, just 'cause it rawks (though I do use olive oil for everything but frying). And no vegetables are going near my fryer. No attempt whatsoever at healthy eating will be made here.
What? No fried pickles?
One has to consider whether pickles are truly vegetables or not. I’ve always considered them vehicles for sodium delivery. 
This one’s pretty simple, but everyone loves it:
1 pound large shrimp, peeled & deveined (butterfly them if you want)
1 egg, beaten in a shallow bowl or plate
1/4 cup flour in a shallow bowl or plate
1 cup of fine cracker crumbs or Panko bread crumbs in a shallow bowl or plate
Salt and pepper the shrimp, dredge them in the flour, then in the egg (making sure they’re throroughly coated), then in the crumbs. Fry them at 360 degrees until they are golden brown, perhaps 3 or 4 minutes. Serve them with lemon wedges and horseradish-y cocktail sauce.
You could always make a Blooming Onion.
I don’t know how good that recipe is - when we tried making it, we used the recipe from the booklet that was included in with this gizmo we bought at Harbor Freight. And it sucked. As did our deep fryer. Which is a whole other story…
Are you kidding. Nothing in the world like fried zucchini and fried eggplant…mmm.
Or you could go for a fried calzone.
[ol]
[li]Buy frozen dinner roll dough at the grocery store (or make fresh dough if you’re ambitious).[/li][li]Wrap thawed dough around sausage and cheese[/li][li]Deep fry[/li][li]Dunk in marinara sauce[/li][/ol]
They’re surprisingly tasty.
NOW you’re talking!
Thats what I came in to post. Their quick and dirty and delicious. With mine, I add a Morroccan seasoning mix. Mmmmmmmmmm.
Try it - you’ll wonder why you ever made a no-vegetable rule.
For the true heart attack, go for the Gut Bomb - deep fried Provolone cheese. Take a 1" thick slice of a standard 4" log. Dip in an egg wash and bread crumbs. Give it a good coating so none of the cheese has a chance to leak out. Fry for about 2 or 3 minutes until a dark golden brown. Serve with marinara sauce. Best artery-clogger there ever was. (Warning - not for those worried about high cholesterol.)
AP
Mmmmmmmm fried ice cream
Nope, no vegetables. I actually prefer my vegs fresh, not cooked in any way. Well, except for potatoes. For those, I can most certainly make a deep fried exception.
I wonder if you could fry string cheese? Hmmm.
Chicken Wings
Deep fry some chicken wings (no idea how long - the times I’ve been involved in this, we’ve used frozen ones, already separated, and just followed the instructions on the bag for how ling to deep fry - your fryer manual will probably tell you how long for fresh wings).
Toss with a mixture of melted butter & Frank’s Red Hot.
Use more butter if you want milder wings, less if you want hotter wings.
DON’T buy the Frank’s Buffalo Wing sauce - stick with plain ol’ Frank’s.
Serve celery & Ken’s Blue Cheese dressing on the side. Also slices of French bread if you want to pretend you’re from Rochester.
P.S. I could have sworn Frank’s Red Hot was once called Durkee Red Hot. Did it change names? Change companies? Does it have different names in different parts of the country?
I love getting fried zucchini and eggplant at a local Italian restaurant, but I’m not sure how to reproduce it at home. The breading doesn’t seem to be made of bread crumbs. How do y’all like to do it?
I got a good pot for Christmas that will allow me to deep fry, so I have a keen interest in this thread. I’ve pan-fried before (I love making fried chicken strips with a bit of cajun seasoning mixed with the flour I dredged the chicken in), but I was never able to submerge anything.
A local restaurant makes the best beer-battered onion rings I’ve ever had, and I’m dying to try making those at home too. Anybody got a good recipe for those?
I make tostones every now and then. Very easy and very tasty Latin American snack or side dish.
Ingredients: 1 plantain per 2 people. (A plantain looks like a banana, but it’s more starchy and not sweet. They’re not very good raw; they need to be cooked first.)
Cut the plantain into discs half an inch to three-quarters of an inch thick. Deep fry until just golden brown, 4-5 minutes. Remove from oil to cookie sheet or other heatproof surface, press with the side of a chef’s knife or something similar until they’re half as thick, and return to oil. Deep fry another 3-4 minutes.
Remove and immediately toss with salt.
The classic accompaniment is an eggless aioli: In a small food processor, puree several cloves of garlic (raw), a tablespoon or two of olive oil, a splash of lemon juice, and a pinch of salt. This is extremely flavorful with an aggressive garlic bite, and is the perfect accompaniment to the crisp starchiness of the tostones.
Yum.
I serve this with Latin-themed food, like, say, a polenta-crusted broiled salmon, plus a lime-accented black bean salad.
These are work, but they make a great appitizer if you’re entertaining.
Fried Won Tons
1/2 pound ground pork, finely chopped or 1/2 pound shrimp, diced o rmixed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped
1/4 cup bamboo shoots, drained and finely chopped
1/4 cup green onions, finely chopped
1/2 cup bean sprouts, finely chopped
1/2 egg, beaten
2 leaves bok choy, finely chopped
1 (14 ounce) package wonton wrappers
Glass of water
Plum sauce and/or hot mustard
Mix meat, salt, soy sauce, chestnuts, bamboo, onions, sprouts, egg and bok choy together.
Place about 1 tsp of mixture in the center of a won ton wrapper. Moisten fingers with water and wet two consecurive sides of the wrapper. Pull the wrapper over the mixture and seal the edges to form a triangle.
Cook in oil until brown.
Dip in plum sauce and or mustard if desired, but they’re great without it.
You’re missing out on one of life’s great treats if you don’t make your own french fries!
Some recipes call for frying them twice, but here’s one that only cooks 'em once, like we do. They won’t be crispy, but they will be goooood.
This recipe has the twice-cooked method I mentioned above.