Tory Tries to Explain: Deep Frying
Pictured: Me, the moment I knew I needed to write a blog post about how to make deep frying easier.
Last night, I made one of Mike’s favorite dinners to eat and one of my least favorite to cook: sesame chicken. Now, don’t get me wrong. I also love sesame chicken… when getting takeout. Making it from scratch is a different story. The recipe I use isn’t even particularly complicated-- it’s just that I just haven’t yet gotten the hang of the deep frying part. I don’t have an electric fryer, so it’s just me and my Dutch oven, which I’ve found particularly hard to control.
And I don’t mean to be dramatic, but this recipe leaves me feeling like I'm standing in front of the stove deep frying small chunks of chicken for literal hours at a time. And eventually, my feet start to hurt. And the oil constantly spits landing on my hands, arms and face. (Please refer to the above photo of me in full protection gear.) Does this happen to anyone else, or am I the only one? The threat of hot, spitting oil had me wearing face shields within the privacy of my own home long before it became the responsible thing to do in public.
So, I think at this point I’m just complaining. The whole frying process overall probably takes about 30 minutes and while my feet do start to hurt and the oil does spit, it’s usually worth it in the end. But if any of the above grievances about deep frying resonate with you, you’re not alone! In order to try to make the deep frying process easier for us all, I dug around the internet and my copy of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji López-Alt to try to answer some of my most mystifying questions about the process. If you have any of your own questions about deep frying that I haven’t covered here, let me know and I’ll try to help!
Personally recommended safety tools to protect your skin from sustaining oil burns:
Splatter screen If you’re not yet ready to wear full-on riot gear to fry some chicken, this is the most reasonable place to start. I like this set because the handles fold up for storage. However, I don’t always use them when deep frying because the food isn’t in the fryer for very long so and I don’t want to keep removing and replacing the screen.
Oven mitts Though I am not using them in the above photo, sometimes when the going gets tough, I put on oven mitts to protect my hands and wrists since they come in closest proximity to the oil. It’s annoying to maneuver tongs while wearing them, but safety first.
Boyfriend’s long sleeve shirt Or any long sleeve shirt will do. Just make sure your arms are protected past the oven mitts!
Face shield One thing I hope you’ll learn quickly about me is that I never want to promote an unrealistic or unattainably glamorous lifestyle. However, here’s one place where I’m going to indulge. Aren’t you so jealous of how cool I look in this thing?
Tools to make deep frying easier:
Dutch oven I know Le Creuset is the ultimate kitchen status symbol these days, but I got this Tramontina set from Costco. Ain’t no shame in my game!
Tongs I use tongs to drop my food in the oil while keeping my fingers safe. Getting close to the surface of the oil minimizes splashing.
Metal spider strainer I didn’t start cooking with one of these until recently, and it’s game changer. It’s been much easier to keep my oil clean and to remove food from the oil when it’s done cooking.
Rimmed baking sheet with wire rack Before I begin frying, I place a few paper towels on a wire rack in a baking sheet. This is where I put my food as soon as it comes out of the fryer to absorb oil but promote air circulation so the food stays crispy.
Candy thermometer (Clip-on) Use this thermometer figure out how much the temperature of the oil fluctuates when you add new food and how to adjust.
Instant read thermometer Use this thermometer to know if your food has been cooked to a safe temperature.
My recipe says the oil must be heated to 375 °F, but every time I add food, the temperature drops. I tried adjusting my gas flame to accommodate, but it basically incinerated my chicken. How do I keep the temperature consistent?
Keeping the temperature consistently at 375 °F is much easier said than done. Once the oil is heated to the correct temperature, the addition of cold food will inevitably make the temperature of the oil drop. One way to mitigate the drop in temperature is to work in small batches. The first time I made this recipe, I was dropping maybe 5-6 pieces of chicken in the oil at a time. The fewer pieces you add at a time, the less fluctuation you’ll see in the oil temperature. Now, the most I’ll do at one time is 4 pieces.
However, even if you do work in small batches, the temperature is still going to drop a little bit when you start the first batch. Instead of rushing to crank up your burner right away, give the food a chance to heat up to the temperature of the oil, and for the oil to return to the proper temperature. When deep frying on the stove, you will need to adjust the temperature every so often to make sure it stays where you want it, but this isn’t something you want to tinker with constantly. It’s best to give the food and oil a chance to regulate on their own, or else you risk overheating the oil.
This is one lesson I had to learn the hard way. Please enjoy this photo and text exchange I had with my mom the first time I tried this recipe. She wasn’t wrong (thanks, mom) and I’m pretty sure the chicken was still raw on the inside too.
Another thing to do that keeps the oil temperature stable is using a bigger pot with more oil, while still keeping your batches small. If you keep the amount of food you’re frying the same but simply add more oil to the pot, the temperature will stay more stable when you add the food.
However, one thing that’s crucial here is that the oil should never come up higher than half way the sides of the pot. (I’ve seen that in deep frying recipes a lot and always wondered why exactly it mattered. Turns out, it’s for a very good reason!) If the pot is too full of oil, you risk a grease fire. When you first drop food into the oil, it’s going to produce a lot of bubbles. If the oil level is too close to the top of the pot, the bubbles could spill over the sides of the pot and start a fire.
Speaking of really bubbly oil when I first drop my food in, why exactly does my oil spit and bubble even when I’ve thoroughly patted the surface of my food dry?
Not too long ago, when I learned that patting my chicken breasts dry could drastically reduce the amount of oil spitting that occurs when I grill chicken, I. Was. THRILLED. I mean, anyone who owns a dedicated face shield for cooking would be. When you pat your meat dry, it reduces the amount of moisture that comes in contact with the oil and heat from the pan. And it’s the moisture that can really take a normal amount of spitting and sizzling and make it vicious.
So needless to say, I was a bit disappointed when my fry oil started wildly and aggressively spitting all over the place upon dropping in my chicken. Of course, I do expect some bubbling since the chicken is covered in a moisture-laden batter, but when you’re running for the protection of a long sleeve turtleneck, oven mitts, and a face shield, such reasoning isn’t really top of mind.
To learn more about why the oil starts to bubble and spit when the food goes in, I turned to my copy of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji López-Alt. In it, he says, “Free water inside foods and in batters or breadings will evaporate at 212°F. As soon as your food hits the oil in a deep fryer, which for most recipes ranges from 300°F to 400°F, moisture will rapidly convert into steam, releasing itself in a violent cascade of bubbles. This escape of moisture is what you see when you first lower food into a fryer.” He goes on to say that as the free moisture within the food evaporates, the bubbles will slow down and eventually stop altogether.
So, I guess there really isn’t anything I can do about these bubbles, but at least I understand what’s happening when they occur which is pretty cool!
Other questions I had but couldn’t find answers for:
If a recipe says the oil should be at 375°F, what is an appropriately safe range to be within since the temperature will inevitably fluctuate as food is added?
The first time I made this recipe, my chicken was floating around and sticking to each other because I crowded the pot. The second time I made it, I put fewer pieces of chicken in, but this time, they basically sunk and stuck to the bottom of the pan. The oil was certainly deep enough, so why were they clinging to the bottom?
I’ve heard that you can get quite a lot of use out of frying oil if you clean it and save it properly. However, my oil was in bad shape after only two uses. What can I do next time to make sure I get the most use out of my oil before it goes bad?