Deep fry

corblimey

I plan on making some stuff tonight that requires deep frying, rather than shallow frying. Since I don't own a deep fryer, I was just going to throw a few lugs of veg oil into a pot and wait til it got really blooming hot.

1. Is this a dumb idea and a recipe for a fire?
2. How deep is deep? If the food item in question is just covered by oil, is that enough
3. How hot is hot? I thought I read somewhere that if you dump a small potato in while it's heating up, once the potato is completely golden, it's hot enough.

Magic Monkey

Use either a wok or a medium sized pot (as if the oil bubbles over in a small pot, you're in trouble), filled 2-3" deep with a neutral oil: sunflower or rapeseed oil are good. Technically deep-frying is submerging the food in oil, but it depends what you're cooking: for chicken goujons 2" of oil should be enough, and you can always flip the food over to cook on the other side anyway. Cook bigger pieces of food at a slightly lower temperature, so the inside cooks through fully before the outside browns and burns. And keep all your food the same size so they cook evenly, and perhaps most important of all, DRY. Water and hot oil are not good friends. Use kitchen paper to pat dry the food well before you deep-fry (i.e. chips - for battered food, this doesn't apply). If you're cooking a lot, cook in batches, as adding too much to the oil at once can reduce the temperature and make it more likely that the coating will absorb the cooking oil, making your food greasy.

You want your oil to be around 180°c, test it by putting a small cube of bread in the oil and if it turns golden brown after 1 minute it's at the right temperature. Start heating and keep your pot at medium heat.

corblimey

Magic Monkey wrote: »

You want your oil to be around 180°c, test it by putting a small cube of bread in the oil and if it turns golden brown after 1 minute it's at the right temperature. Start heating and keep your pot at medium heat.

Thanks Monkey, I have a meat thermometer, could I use that to check the heat? I'm guessing I could, but maybe a meat therm wouldn't work in liquid? (I dunno, I'm not a scientician)

This is the food I'm frying, so everything is uniform and the insides are already cooked if that makes any huge difference. I plan on frying til they're brown on the outside and take my chances. If the oil is the right temp, the insides should be fine then.

Magic Monkey

Meat thermometers don't go above 100°c, so it's no good in this case. Just test with a cube of bread, or seeing as you're using shortcrust pastry, test with a scrap of that - you'll know once you drop a piece in if the oil's too cold if it doesn't start "fizzing" after a few seconds, and if the oil's too hot if it's smoking. As a rule of thumb, put the oil in the pot, medium heat, test after 5-10 minutes (it'll depend on how much oil you're using).

In the case of that recipe, you're basically only cooking the pastry seeing as the filling is already safely cooked, so it should be fine. I'd just be careful to seal the pastry in tight enough to the filling to make sure there are no air pockets and seal the edges with a fork. Once you test the heat of the oil with some pastry scraps, you'll get it to the right temperature to avoid the pastry absorbing any grease, and instead have nice crispy filled pancakes

corblimey

Well I made a balls of it Oil was waaay too hot when I added the pancakes, they turned to cinders almost immediately, black as the ace of spades and inedible. Oh well, good to know for next time (although I won't be making these again )

here.from.day.1

Haha hard luck..!

The Sweeper

OH no! Hate that!

THe look of oil is useful when you're judging heat - it shouldn't be rippling and smoking if you're just deep frying something like those pancakes. A bit of a ripple, and as said above, try an experimental sacrificial food item before adding your main foodstuff!

Also, try frying things one at a time - that way if the oil is too hot you only lose the first item, as opposed to chucking the whole lot in and losing it all.