There’s just something about the texture of fried food that sets it apart from the other cooking forms. A super crisp exterior surrounding a moist interior isn’t something that other cooking processes can deliver. Sure, you can get meat to have a “crust” by searing but not in the same way that fried foods develop a crusty exterior. From corn dogs and french/freedom fries to Sunday afternoon fried chicken, fried foods do please the palette.
But the frying process alone won’t produce that juxtaposition of textures. Left unprotected in the hot oil, most foods will overcook and even burn. What they need is a coating to protect and defend the food within and promote development of that amazing crust, potatoes and other high starch foods not included.
There are really two coating choices – breading or battering the food. Breaded foods can be pan or deep fried while battered ones are typically only for the deep fryer.
Bread for Success
Breading food typically involves applying a moist coating to the food and then applying a drier coating on top. The moist coating adheres to the food and allows the drier coating on top to stick to it.
The moist coating is typically eggs or dairy products (milk, buttermilk, etc), or a combination of the two, but other wet “binding” agents containing protien can be used. The outer dry coating can be flour, cornstarch, bread crumbs, crackers, potato chips, corn chips, etc – basically anything dry that’ll stick well to the wet stuff below.
All-purpose flour is a traditional coating but it can develop a chewy texture. Rice flower won’t do that and neither will cornstarch. There are literally thousands of recipes for creating breading for frying. Go on, Google “breading frying recipe” and see how many you get.
Regardless of the exact breading recipe it’s best to follow this simple process:
- set up 3 shallow pans: 1 with flour based dry ingredients, one with the egg/dairy/wet ingredients and one with the outer coating ingredients
- roll the food in the flour based pan to coat. This provides a dry, rough surface for the wet coating to adhere to.
- dredge it in the wet stuff next
- roll it in the exterior coating last
- let it sit for a few minutes before introducing it to the 375 degree oil. This’ll give the wet proteins a chance to set before the oil hits them and help keep the breading on the food.
Feel free to season any/all of the components – wet or dry – to give them the flavors you like.
Batter Up
Batter by contrast is one stop shopping. It’s the wet and dry teams mixed together – just like a cake/pastry batter (surprise!). Again, everyone out there has a frying batter recipe but it comes down to wet proteins like eggs and/or milk mixed with dry flour and/or other dry ingredients such as cornstarch, baking soda, etc. plus seasoning.
Once the oil is at that magic 375 degree temperature, the food is submerged into the batter and then directly into the hot oil – no waiting!
Batch, Batch, Batch!
Regardless of method, don’t try to fry all of the food at once. Working in batches and allowing the oil to return to temperature before the next batch will help ensure that a good crust develops and food that is not greasy.
Too many items in the pan will drop the oil temperature below the critical 300-325 degree level and allow the frying oil into the food instead of cooking it from the outside. That would be bad.
A good indicator that the food is done is the lack of bubbles from around the food. Bubbles (really the steam from the moist interior of the food) help keep too much oil from entering. No bubbles means more oil is getting in than you probably want. Extracting or turning/flipping the food (depending on your cooking method) at this point will also help keep the greasiness away.
Almost done!
