The Escoffier Series Concludes Chapter 7 with Deep Frying
The crunch of a perfecty fried fritter or a well cooked french fry is really something to behold. So simple, but not really. There’s a lot that goes into prep and production, but today’s focus is on the cookiing. The deep frying. Do you have a deep fryer at home? Do you deep fry anything? Deep frying is easier at home than it used to be. Even so, there are some good guidelines to follow for great fried food and preserving your fat for as long as possible.
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The Escoffierr series continues with the conclusion of Chapter 7. Deep frying is the topic.
The topic might sound like I’m going to discuss all the many ways to deep fry. Maybe a little bit, but mostly it’s discussion about fryer and food management and being safe.
Safe is a big deal since hot fat can really burn. I teased this story before so here it is.
When I was in culinary school in the early 80s, the chef instructors gave us a tour of the service kitchen. That school served a full service cafeteria lunch, with some to order cooking, every weekday. They showed us all the cookwares including the fryers. The fryer fat at that time came in large cans. The fat inside was milk white and thickish. It poured out, but some of the fat remained inside the can. The easiest way to get the extra fat out was to place the can on the hot griddle to let the heat melt the remaining fat and then pour it into the fryer. Phil volunteered to stay and watch the cans on the griddle. We returned to the prep kitchen.
Not too long after we left Phil he showed up holding his hand which was red and blistered and he was in great pain.
Phil did as instructed. He poured the melted fat into the fryers, which were turned on. One of the lids from one of the cans fell into the fryer. It seems Phil reasoned that, A, since the fat was still milk white, it was not hot, so, B, he could reach his hand into the turned on fryer to remove the lid from the fat.
Phil deep fryed his hand within the first half of the first day of culinary school.
Don’t be Phil. Reaching into a fryer to get out something that doesn’t belong is one more use for the tongs I despise.
Escoffierr didn’t have cans of processed fats of interesting origins. He had animal or vegetable fats. It is not entirely clear to me what he called vegetable fats and he doesn’t reveal what he means. A hasty search found peanut oil, which isn’t a vegetable, and rapeseed oil as two possibilites. He does refer to olive oil by name and cites it as a suitable oil for frying.
In Escoffiers kitchen, there was no deep frying device. Deep frying happened in a large pot on the stove. You can imagine that comes with a few risks, burns of the cook and spilling oil as two chief issues.
Today, many folks aren’t too far from that. Granny for years and years deep fried, except she called in pan frying. Those fried green tomatoes and fried chicken certainly qualify as fried foods. Of course, deep frying means complete sumbersion into the hot fat.
Escoffier’s preferred fat of choice is rendered beef fat. For his kitchen, it was the best due to the price. He preferred the fat around the kidneys as that was the cheaper fat but best for rendering for deep frying. Interesingly, that same kind of fat, the fat around the kidney of the pig, produces leaf lard, the best choice for biscuits and pie doughs.
Beef tallow, which is rendered beef fat, is available online. I don’t use it for frying.
Frying temperature is a bit like baking. It seems nearly everything is fried at 350 degrees. Escoffierr calls the ranges he identifies as moderately hot, hot, and very hot. He offers some temperature ranges for clarification. Moderately hot is around 280 degrees Farenheit, hot is 310-320 degrees, and very hot is 350 degrees. It is important to note that he means animal fats at those various temperatures.
When any oil gets very hot for its specific composition the surface of the fat starts to move. It’s like there is a small current making the fat start to flow. Also, a haze of smoke might start. Animal fats tend to smoke at lower temperatures that vegetable or fruit oils—olives are a fruit—or nut oils, like coconut. Vegetable oils, and we mean seed oils, can reach and hold temperatures up to and exceeding 450 degrees.
A deep fryer you buy for your home will have a built in thermostat which propably stops at 375. Stove top frying can easily reach those extreme temperatures. Escoffierr notes that except for whitebait, which we would call smelt, there’s no reason to fry anything at so high a temperture, but also remember, he is saying our 350 is very hot.
Regardless the fat medium of choice, it is very important to remember these few things. Fat expands as it is heated. All deep fryers have a max fill line pressed into the fryer well. Exceeding that by too much can have a serious outcome of the fat overflowing the edges of the fryer. Such a thing can happen in a standalone fryer or the Dutch oven on the stove top. Also, when food is placed in the fryer, displacement raises the level. Wet food, frozen French fries or fish or chicken, has a lot of water and that created foam and bubbles which rise well above the surface of the fat. They don’t stay there long, but they’re hot. You can’t really stop them so avoiding that issue is the best way to manage it.
There’s a practice for French fries that is a two step frying procedure. The first step is to fry the potatoes on low, maybe 300 degrees, for a few minutes. Tiime is difficult to provide since the amount of oil and the quantity of fries will impact how long it takes for the potatoes to be par cooked. This is called blanching. Technically it isn’t blanching at all, but in french fry land, it’s understood that’s what’s expected.
I’ve already jumped ahead of the french fry procedure. It isn’t exactly necessary, but its a huge help to soak cut french fries in cold water at least long enough to wash off the surface starch. That starch will burn or brown faster than the rest of the potato cooks and you’ll get a false reading of doneness on your fries. Drain those potatoes well before frying them. Even at 300 degrees, that water will make steam and if your face is over the fryer you might get warmer faster than you prefer. Tiny droplets of fryer fat also rise out with the steam and your face and glasses will be coated in a thin film of fat.
Drain the blanched fries and allow them to cool. If you have no other frying to do, let them rest in the fryer basket over the fryer while the oil heats to 350 degrees. If you have other items to fry when the oil is hot before the french fries, place the blanched fries on a sheet pan. No need to refrigerate them if you’re going to eat them imminently.
Chicken fingers and fish fingers and thin kinds of foods such as zucchini sticks or cheese sticks fry well at 350 degrees. Chicken breast pieces or legs or thighs will do better at 300 due to the need for long exposure to heat. Chicken legs will cook very nicely and get wonderfully browned and crispy at that low temp because of the duration of time needed to cook the meat.
And speaking of frying poultry, there’s that Thanksgiving tradition of setting the back yard on fire with a turkey fryer. No doubt you’ve seen the Youtube videos of accidental infernos almost certainly from too much fat and a too wet turkey, and possibly too hot fat, too. I’ve never fried a turkey but have eaten some. Tasty enough, but hardly worth the oil and contraption for me to do it.
Breading versus batter depends on the thing. In many cases I put the thing, chicken legs or chicken fingers or even fish in buttermilk with seasoning salt. Give that some time to marinade and them dredge in seasoned flour or bread crumbs. A more traditional breading procedure would be the three stage breading process which is seasoned flour, egg wash, and the final coating, seasoned flour or bread crumbs. Corn meal would work depending on your desired outcome and the thing inside the breading.
As a practice, allow breaded items to rest on a wire rack for about ten minutes. Store it in the cooler if the weather is warm. This resting perion allows the liquid in the egg to grab onto the outter coating which helps keep as much on the food as possible. Some breading always comes off in frying; this waiting time just gives us an advantage.
Battered foods, tempura anything or battered fish is an immediate fry. Getting the batter just right so it coats nicely and fries well is a bit of a skill. I will offer that in many cases after the batter has been resting, even if being used, it starts to get thicker than it was when you started. Adding a bit of the liquid that made the batter is perfectly fine to adjust the batter to a better consistency.
Breaded items can be placed in the fryer basket then lowered into the fat. Battered items are placed into the basket which is already in the fat. If you are frying on the stove top, carefully place the breaded item in the fat or lower it into the fat with a fryer spider.
Scoop foods, fritter batter or Hush puppies, can be scooped and released right into the basket in the fat, but limit how many go in one basket. The last one in is already behind in cooking compared to the first one, and since they tend to move about in the fryer from convetion, keeping the order right is tough.
Fritters and fries get removed to a metal bowl and seasoned. Fingers of the various foods or battered foods get a metal wire rack so they excess fat drains away from the food and it’s not sitting in a pool of fat. Season everything that comes out of the fryer while it’s still hot.
Maybe the biggest challenge to a fryer is straining the oil. It requires a large enough metal container and a suitable straining device. Commercial restaurant stores sell cone filters which are basically large and extra thick coffee filters as well as the contraption to hold that cone and that strains the bits left at the bottom of the fryer. When I pan fry, I use an actual coffee filter placed in a metal strained resting over a large Pyrex measuring cup and let the hot oil drain. Sometimes a replacement of the filter is necessary. Food residue left in the fryer continues to cook which can taint the flavor of the oil and also reduce it’s efficiency. Foods fried in low quality oil taste like they were fried in low quality oil. They’re not as good as they could be.