Will try the pickles – sounds like good beer-drinkin’ food.
Okra sounds awesome as well.
Butter:D
I can attest from experience that deep fried Baked Lays potato chips aren’t actually nearly as good as regular Lays. But it’s still kind of a fun protest against anyone who buys you Baked Lays instead of normal potato chips.
Here’s a recipe for deep fried butter balls courtesy of, who else, Paula Deen.
Egg rolls. Get a package of wraps, some bagged coleslaw mix (not actual coleslaw, just the mix with the shredded cabbage and carrots) and some ground pork or chicken. Mix the ground meat with some soy sauce (I like to add oyster sauce), then stuff the wraps with meat and and slaw shreds (roll them diagonally) and fry. Better than takeout.
Frozen burritos. Surprisingly good.
Small fryer? Obviously for cooking small fry!
Diogenes, what temp oil and for how long? I’m gonna try these tomorrow.
The real trick with spring rolls is getting the wraps sealed up. If the oil gets inside, they will be soggy drippy messes. Don’t be discouraged if your first ones turn out that way–once you get the wrapping technique down, the result is entirely different.
Cutting them sucks, but homemade potato chips are like nothing on this earth.
One of my favorite recipes calls for cutting eggplants into small chunks. Deep fry these chunks. Then in a regular frying plan, fry some onion and Indian spices and sesame seeds. Add the eggplant. Then mix in some sugar and squeeze some lemon juice over the whole thing, Amazing.
Samosas are another good one, although they are a pain in the butt to make. Indeed, there are all kinds of fun deep-fried Indian snacks.
For those playing along at home, there is nothing magic about a standalone deep fryer, and deep frying is surprisingly easy even with no special equiptment. Give it a shot!
There’s all kinds of ways to do it, and it’s all amazingly good. Not something I’d fix on a regular basis mind you, as it can be quite fattening.
There’s also salmon balls, hush puppies, and house fries.
drain, pat dry and tempura batter marinated artichoke hearts. om nomnomnom
Twinkies.
StG
Fish. Haddock in beer batter - get some brown ale and mix with seasoned flour to a thick liquid consistency, dip some nice chunky haddock fillets in it and drop them straight into hot oil for five minutes or until golden and crispy. Salt and vinegar recommended, but optional.
Tater Tots, Taquitos, and wings.
When I had a fryer, those were the things I did most.
Use a vegetable peeler. Use it to slice off the peel and then keep slicing.
You hardly ever see it but salmon is an amazingly good fish for batter frying.
Another thing to try is pepper rings. Get some bell peppers and slice them into rings. Then batter and fry them like onions.
Sweet potato fries, baby! This has been my happiest discovery so far. (I bought my small deep-fat fryer, a bucket-like Presto “FryDaddy,” a month ago, but for dietary reasons haven’t used it much.)
If you’re going to do the above fries along with regular potato fries, I suggest either slicing the potatoes more finely, or putting them in the oil first, because the sweet potatoes are drier and don’t need as much cooking time.
The next time I make these, I’ll experiment with preheating the white potatoes at least in the microwave to see if that makes the fries crispier or more fast-food-like.
The other thing for me has been [short, generally about two-inch-long] longitudinal banana slices. It’s much easier to do these in a deep-fat fryer than in a pan on the stovetop (and with much less mess!), but a similar problem with stickiness (and the caramelized surfaces peeling off and getting stuck to the spatula) persist either way. The slices will curl up like shrimp in the fryer. I just lift as many out as possible at once and dump them upside-down on paper towels; I’ll lose a fraction of the caramelized bits when they get stuck to the towels, but I want to get rid of as much of the excess oil as possible, too.
I tried making plantain-like chips out of thin banana (not plantain) slices, but that was a failure. Everything just got stuck together and stayed mushy, instead of getting hard and dry like the commercially-made chips.
Two questions for the deep-fry experts: 1) is there any satisfactory way to prepare a big batch of fries and store them for later eating? (I tried leaving most of a batch in the fridge, but they lost all their crispiness); and 2) how many times can you use a batch of canola oil and/or over how long a period of time, provided you never expose it to meat or dairy?
Wow. Lot of great ideas here. I’m gonna be busy with this thing for a while…