The Loveable, Frustrating Tot
“There are those who love tater tots, and there are those who are wrong.”
-J. Edgar Hoover
Okay, I may not be able to verify that quote. I mean, we all know it's true, but I can't be sure about that attribution. At any rate, I’d like to state for the record that I love tater tots, and I don't care who knows it. Originally conceived as a way for Ore-Ida to use up the scraps produced in their french fry plants, they have taken on a life of their own, moving from school cafeteria oddity to full-fledged nostalgia icon. What most people don't know is they are a pain in the ass to make at home. Why, you ask?
Well for starters, who the hell has the willpower to stop eating them? Not me. So in order to avoid this being a cruel tease, we are going to need a bunch. You know those recipes where the difficulty scales inversely to increasing batch size? You know, like it isn't any harder to make a gallon of tomato sauce than it is to make a quart, right? Well tots are not one of those dishes. The ratio of volume produced to level of effort scales linearly. The more tots you are trying to produce, the greater the ass pain. (You’ll see in the recipe,) But the prep isn’t even close to being the worst part. Deep frying things at home is a nightmare! To my knowledge, there's just no viable way to achieve professional results without a commercial deep fryer. Even if you’ve got a “pro” electric fryer, it’ll never be able to pull more than 15 amps, which seriously inhibits the recovery time. So instead of a big, bounteous heap of crispy tater goodness, you can fry a half-dozen tots at a time, with long, painful pauses in between cooks to let the lethargic heating element bring the oil back to temp.
With a pot of oil on a gas flame, you can bring a little more heat, and get a little more volume, but the grievous injury and house fire potential are enough to make this not worth the results. Tots are amazing, but they aren't worth dying for. Danger aside, what you gain in recovery time, you more than lose in heat control. A thermometer and the knob on your stove are not the most precise instruments, and aren't great for a process where +-10 degrees can be the difference between soggy, perfect, and burnt. Then, possibly the worst of all the problems, there's the grease-laden vapors. Home kitchen ventilation is definitely ill-equipped to handle that oily discharge. Every home fume hood that I’ve EVER seen are absolute clown shoes (including mine).
{Actually, I got something for this. I've had some decent luck with using a 2 gallon stockpot, with about 8 inches of oil in it. Then, I put it right under my range hood. The high sides of the pan prevent spills, and kinda chimneys the fumes up towards the hood. Pros: no splatters, reduces fry residue everywhere. Cons: you need really long tools to make it work, you constantly burn your forearms on the lip of the pot, and your whole house still smells like a Popeye's for three days... and I have a really good fume hood. And then to dispose of the oil, I just duct tape a lid to the pot, let it cool overnight, put it in my car, and... You know what? I'm not going to finish that sentence. I have friends, and I want it to stay that way. -JS}
I rarely if ever deep fry at home. I hate it, it's never worth it, and have accepted this reality. The only solution I’ve come up with for home deep frying that's even kind of ok is using an outdoor gas burner. Place a piece of steel or a larger pan over the burner, creating a makeshift French cooktop. FIll a heavy pot about ½ full with oil, and use a thermometer to try and regulate the temperature. It's really the best I’ve got. And even after you solve all these issues,, you've got all that spent fryer oil to dispose of properly. See what I mean? It's a massive pain in the ass. Oh, and please, don't get me started on air "fryers.” Oh you mean roasting? I wonder if it is anything like “dry brining,” aka seasoning!Admittedly, I've never used one, and I’m open to trying it... but let's just say i'm skeptical.
{Takes forever, results mediocre. -JS}
So, after that little rant, why on earth did I make tater tots? Ya know, for fun.
This recipe is adapted from the brilliant Happy in the Kitchen (Artisan, 2006, required goddamn reading), by the recently departed Michel Richard, who was one of the US's premier culinary badasses, and is currently probably drunk on ghost absinthe with the spirits of Joel Robuchon, Jean Louis Paladin, and Fernand Point. I've made a few tweaks. I’ve broken down the ingredients into baker's percentages, and converted the amounts to the infinitely superior metric system. I've also made some minor changes to the recipe itself, but I can't deny the source of my inspiration. You all need to buy that book, right now.
I thought, as any good cook would, that I’d get cute and season the potatoes before I rolled them with 1% salt. Boy, was that a mistake! They fell apart faster than a Chinese motorcycle. I don't know why I questioned chef Richard to begin with. As I stood helplessly watching them crumble in the oil, I began to question my life choices. But I was overcome with determination to nail these, just on principle. Take two went better. This time hold the salt to the end, check.
Legally, I'm not sure we can call these Tater Tots. That is, in all likelihood, a registered trademark. In the book, they are called 'Spuddies.' However, for these, I think we will go with 'Potato Barrels,' if, for no other reason than when Jesse found out that was how they were listed on the Tristan kid's menu, he got so mad he almost pooped himself. It was pretty fantastic.
{Infidel. I will destroy you. -JS}
Nate's Potato Barrels, with gratitude to Michel Richard
100% Baking Potatoes
1.5% Gelatin (powdered)
3% Wondra Flour
.25% MSG (Optional)
.1% Xanthan Gum (optional)
For my batch, it was as follows.
680g Potatoes
10.2g Gelatin
20.4g Wondra
1.7g MSG (optional)
.68g Xanthan Gum (optional)
MOP
1) Heat oven to 120C/250
2) Peel and rinse potatoes.
3) Small dice potatoes.
4) Place chunks into the food processor with approx 500ml/ 2 cups of water. (When you
turn the processor on, the little bits of potato float around in the water, instead of staying on the
bottom and getting pureed.
5) Pulse the potatoes into pieces; be careful not to over process.
6) Drain potatoes and rinse with cold water. Shake off excess.
7) Spread potatoes on a towel to dry. Top with another towel, wrap it up and squeeze out excess
moisture.
8) Spread potatoes on an even layer on a baking sheet.
9) Using a very dry tea strainer or fine sieve, evenly dust the gelatin on the potatoes.
10) Bake in the oven for 4-5 min to melt the gelatin. The potatoes will look oily.
11) Transfer the potatoes to a bowl, and mix well.
12) Add the wondra, MSG and xanthan gum (if using)
13) Using Plastic wrap, shape potatoes into logs. Tying the ends tightly
14) Prick the plastic with a cake tester to rupture any air bubbles.
15) Re-tie the ends to compress the potatoes.
16) Freeze the potatoes for 30 min to 1 hr to firm up. Do not completely freeze it could turn the potatoes
brown.
17) Heat oil to 190C/375F
18). Remove logs from the freezer; Cut the logs into portions, remove the plastic wrap and get ready for
the first fry…. (tired yet?)
19) Fry in batches until golden brown, about 3 min. Place on paper towels
20) Lower oil temp to 162C/325F
21) Fry in batches until richly golden brown and crisp. Approx 3 min. Place on a paper towel, season with
salt and serve.
22). If freezing, cook for about 2 min - freeze solid and store in plastic bags. Can reheat in the oven at
204C/ 400F
I love Happy in the Kitchen, and cannot overstate how much I learned from it. It definitely passes the French Laundry Cookbook test, meaning that it's clear that the author isn't holding back, he's showing you how to do the whole trick, not acting like an 80's nouvelle cuisine author and only giving us 85% of the steps. However unless you're going to serve them with caviar, (which by the way, may be the greatest caviar delivery vessel in the universe), I cannot it good conscience recommend anyone trying to make these. This is definitely a “hey look what I can do” recipe, one that I'd chalk up in 'why bother' category (see also: homemade ketchup). Just buy them frozen, and fry 'em up yourself, if you dare.
-NW
Bonus Content:
One thing we really love about the el Bulli cookbooks is how they include lists of ideas that didn't work, right along with the ones that did. That is unbelievable insight! To that end, allow me to include something I tried, that didn't goddamn work. I thought I could speed up the process by freezing the cooked mixture in a silicon demi-sphere mold. Sadly, I'll never know if this worked, because I rushed it, and tried to bread them before they were already frozen. Total, messy disaster. Oh well. If any of you get crazy and try this out, and it works, let us know, will ya?
Bonus Content, Part II:
When writing this article, I really wanted to quote the following article from Food Arts, a recently defunct trade magazine than many chefs I know (including us) read religiously. It's by Chris Young, a brilliant chef/scientist whose credentials include the test kitchen at Fat Duck, or, to phrase it a different way, GATHER AROUND AS HE RUNS IT DOWN. We reached out, and received permission to share it with y'all. Here it is, excepting only it's last few hundred words, which were about specific models of deep fryers, and, ten years later, were likely out of date anyway. Reprinted with permission from the June, 2011 edition of Food Arts, M. Shanken Communications, Inc. We miss Food Arts! It was a great industry rag! Jesse insisted that we crank Skid Row's I Remember You, in memoriam. Their current publications can be found at mshanken.com, so check them out! They have a ton of great industry content, currently heavily skewed to the beverage side of things. So put on I Remember You (Jesse's not kidding about that part) and check this out!
The Frying Game, Christopher Young, from Food Arts, June, 2011
Plunged into hot oil, countless steam-filled bubbles erupt and envelop the food in a cloud of swirling steam and churning oil. Seen in microscopic detail, the surface of the deep-frying food is continually rocked by violent explosions that release plumes of steam—a telltale sign that water just beneath the surface is boiling. There is nothing gentle about deep-frying. Such cataclysmic upheaval is, however, essential for both the speediness of deep-frying and for creating the inimitable crispy, crunchy, or blistered texture of superb deep-fried foods.
Deep-frying works a lot like baking, only faster. In both techniques, a convecting fluid transfers heat to food: the oil in a deep fryer churns in response to differences in buoyancy between hot and cold layers, just as the air in an oven does. And as heat is transferred to food, moisture in the food evaporates. This effect is invisible in baking, but in deep-frying it is made visible by steam bubbles rising through the oil.
Oil is much denser than air, which makes heat transfer more efficient, as well as more even. Oil is also more viscous than air. The Jacuzzi-like jets of steam bubbles can stir the cooler oil near the food into the hotter surrounding oil. The turbulence conducts heat to the surface of the food two to three times faster than stagnant hot oil. If that seems counterintuitive, think about what you do when you get into a really hot bath. You try to stay as still as possible because stirring the water makes it unbearably hot. The temperature of the water is the same in either case, but flowing water feels much hotter because it hasn’t had time to cool off against your skin.
Whether a food is surrounded by hot air or oil, moisture is always evaporating from the surface of food. The higher the surrounding temperature and the dryer the surrounding fluid—and, strange as it may seem, oil is a very dry cooking environment—the faster evaporation occurs.
Because it takes energy to change water from liquid to steam, the evaporation of moisture from deep-frying food cools the food as it dries it. Indeed, this same effect is why we are cooled by sweating. So at the same time that hot oil in the deep fryer is adding heat to the food, evaporation is sucking heat out of the food. The two processes are in competition. Which one will win?
The surprising answer is that, for most of the deep-frying time, evaporation wins in nearly all foods. Until the surface is almost completely dried, evaporation holds the exterior temperature of the food at the boiling point of water. The oil in the deep fryer may be 400°F, but as far at the food is concerned, the effective cooking temperature is almost 200°F cooler than that.
What’s happening is that all of the additional heat energy arriving at the surface of the food is being used to vaporize water rather than to increase the temperature of the food. Simply put, none of the heat sinks in. Thus, as long as columns of bubbles are streaming from the food, you can be sure that the surface is wet and, thus, no hotter than boiling water. Raising the temperature of the deep fryer oil doesn’t cook the food any faster; it simply accelerates drying so that a crust will form faster.
Eventually, the surface becomes dry and the boiling zone moves from the surface down into the food. Devoid of water, streams of bubbles start to slow to a mere tickle, and the temperature of the crust rises quickly. This is the point at which the golden color, rich flavor, and wonderful texture of a deep-fried food develops, the raison d’être of deep-frying.
This last stage also presents the principle challenge of deep-frying, which is to cook the food to the center before the crust burns or before the boiling zone moves deep enough into the food to overcook delicate ingredients like meats and seafood.
Sized just right Food is such a poor heat conductor that anything except paper-thin slices of food heat faster at the surface than at the center. This effect can be something to celebrate. In French fries, for example, it accounts for the exquisite contrast between a crispy crust and a light fluffy interior.
But there’s a reason you won’t find French fries much larger than your fingers or, for that matter, that you shouldn’t deep-fry a raw whole turkey. When foods are too large, the surface becomes a bottleneck through which the heat can pass only slowly to the interior, and uneven cooking is inevitable. It takes so long to raise the temperature at the center of the food that the intense heat of deep-frying overcooks the outside or, worse, burns it.
When in doubt, cut food into smaller pieces for deep-frying. Small objects have a greater ratio of surface area to volume than larger ones; as a result, they heat through faster and more evenly from surface to center. If you can cut the size of the food in half, you cut the cooking time by as much as a factor of four. What’s more, you’ll avoid the unhappy experience of eating deep-fried food that is charred on the outside and raw in the center.
In situations where cutting the size of the food down isn’t an option, a two-step deep-frying technique is a good strategy. For vegetables, such as potatoes and other foods that aren’t easily overcooked at near-boiling temperatures, both steps can be done in the deep fryer. The first step cooks the food all the way through at a relatively low deep-frying temperature, typically between 250°F and 285°F. Once fully cooked, the food is removed and the oil temperature is usually raised to between 350°F and 400°F, at which point the food is plunged back into the oil just long enough to create a golden brown crust.
Unfortunately, cooking delicate meats and seafood this way will still overcook a large fraction of the interior. A two-stage cooking process is still a good strategy, but the cooking temperature for the first step should be much lower. Thus, for large delicate foods, the precooking step is best done in a water bath, combi oven, or CVap oven, and then quickly finished in a deep fryer.
Clothe your food For delicate foods that aren’t too large, there is another approach to deep-frying in a single step without overcooking: clothe them with a wet batter. As the water in the batter steadily boils, it will keep the effective cooking temperature beneath the surface cooler. Depending on the batter used, this can be a slight cooling effect (thin tempura-like batters) or it can be substantial (thick beer-batters).
If greater protection of a delicate food is necessary, but a thin crust is still desired, then a good strategy is to foam the batter slightly. As the foam dries and hardens, it further insulates the food from the intense heat of the frying oil. Foaming a batter can be as simple as incorporating a carbonated beverage into it. For greater insulation and a crisper crust, include a leavener into the recipe. Baking powder does an excellent job of aeration; when heated, the acids and alkaline ingredients it contains react to fill the batter with bubbles of carbon dioxide. Finally, for a more direct approach, you can go high-tech with a whipping siphon. This approach has the advantage that the batter is foamed to order and thus can be held throughout a service without losing its bubbles.
Another useful trick is to replace some of the water in a batter with alcohol. Neutral spirits like vodka work well and can replace as much as 40 percent of the water in a typical batter recipe. Although the alcohol will destabilize a foamy batter, it also effectively dries out the batter so that it cooks quickly. And because alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, it has a stronger cooling effect. This means that the food inside the batter is exposed to a lower effective cooking temperature and the batter itself becomes dry and crisp sooner. Thus, alcohol-imbued batters are particularly useful for the most delicate foods, such as fish, that are easily overcooked in a deep fryer.
Sometimes a delicate, crisp coating isn’t ideal, and a hefty, crunchy coating is more suitable. Breading is the solution. It involves taking solid particles, such as bread crumbs, panko, even flaked or puffed cereals, and affixing them to the food using a binder like eggs, dissolved gelatin, or other modernist hydrocolloids. As with batters, breading insulates the food it clothes, but because breading recipes tend to be fairly dry, they provide much less of a cooling effect. Thus, we usually use breading for the texture it imparts. Breading can also become sturdy enough to form a crunchy shell that holds its shape, even as delicate centers become molten and soft. The cromesqui, or croquette, is a particularly excellent example of this technique in action.
A crispy batter or crunchy breading is the hallmark of great deep-frying. But when poorly executed, deep-fried foods clothed with a crust become unpleasantly greasy. The surprising fact, however, is that greasiness is mostly the result of what a chef does after the food has been fried. Z
What makes deep-fried food greasy, and when? We may think of deep-fried food as being submerged in oil, but that is not exactly true. If the frying oil is in peak condition, the food will directly contact the oil for no more than half the frying time. The rest of the time, the streaming bubbles shove the oil aside. Because of this, and contrary to conventional wisdom, very little oil is absorbed into food while it’s being deep-fried. Oil is trapped and absorbed by the surface after the food is removed from the fryer and begins to cool. Indeed, this is why blotting excess oil off the surface of the food immediately after it’s removed from the deep fryer helps to make the food a lot less greasy.
Researchers have shown that the cracks, fissures, and holes created at the surface of deep-frying food create capillary forces that wick oil once the food begins to cool. While frying, escaping steam mostly keeps oil out of these nooks and crannies, but when the crust cools, this steam condenses, which creates a slight vacuum that helps to draw the oil in.
This turns out to be the reason that lower frying temperatures produce such a greasy crust. Deep-frying a crusty food in oil at 340°F, rather than 360°F or hotter, can increase the oil absorption by 40 percent. Cooler frying oil is more viscous and sticky and, thus, doesn’t easily drain from the food. Hence, it’s always best to deep-fry at the highest practical temperature because this tends to produce a thin, delicate crust that’s less greasy. But be reasonable with the oil temperature. It’s wasted effort if the food gets scorched and burned.
A coating of oil isn’t necessarily bad, and the goal shouldn’t be to get rid of all the oil on the surface. Deep-fried food simply wouldn’t be deep-fried without some of the flavorful oil coating the surface. The oil provides a lot of the flavor, texture, and mouthfeel of deep-fried food. Interestingly, these effects are entirely superficial. When we chew food, the surface is the first thing that our tongue, cheeks, and palate sense. The first bite leaves them coated with warm, aromatic oil that is mixed into the food as we keep chewing. So the goal of deep-frying should be to leave food anointed with just the right amount of oil, neither too little nor too much.
Oil changes Oil is the most important ingredient in deep-frying. It affects the flavor of the food, how well it browns, how quickly it cooks, how greasy it becomes, and how healthful it is to eat. Yet cooks rarely give much thought to the oil once it’s poured into a deep fryer. They neglect to consider that, like any other ingredient, heating it to deep-frying temperatures cooks the oil!
Some of the complex chemical changes that happen to the oil improve it: oxidation that results from air being churned into the bubbling oil creates a chain reaction that generates the volatile aromas that impart deep-fried flavor to food. Water vapor escaping through the oil also creates a different set of reactions that involve splitting fat molecules into new compounds such as emulsifiers and gums. As oil is “broken in,” the emulsifiers allow oil and water to mix, so that the food spends more frying time in contact with the oil. This delivers the heat more rapidly and evenly, resulting in faster cooking and a more even golden-brown color.
Unfortunately, oil gets old from use. The reactions that improve it ultimately ruin it. Eventually the oil develops a rancid, fishy aroma, the result of oxidation reactions gone too far. Another sure sign that your frying oil is shot is when it foams too much, from steam bubbles getting stuck in the oily goo thickened by accumulated emulsifiers and gums.
Old frying oil isn’t just sticky and smelly—it’s downright dangerous. The breakdown of the oil lowers the smoking and flash points, increasing the risk of a dangerous grease fire.
Some oils survive the rigors of deep-frying longer than others. Saturated oils are more stable than unsaturated oils and, surprisingly, may be no less healthful than unsaturated oils when used for deep-frying. But the key to keeping any frying oil in peak condition is to frequently strain out food debris that accumulates in the oil. When these bits of food start to accumulate and burn, the oil is quickly ruined.
Choosing a deep fryer A good deep fryer should be the right size for your needs, accurately maintain the set temperature, recover to this temperature quickly during use, and preserve the condition of the oil. It should also be energy efficient and easy to clean and maintain. Although deep fryers that meet these basic requirements are available in a myriad of configurations, they all have one feature in common: a vat of oil large enough to hold a load of submerged food. How large this vat should be for your needs is the first factor to consider when choosing among the bewildering number of deep fryers available.
A small commercial grade deep fryer will hold as little as 14 pounds of oil—about 2 gallons—while the largest versions can hold 10 times this amount. A general rule of thumb is that you can deep-fry twice the oil’s weight in food every hour. Therefore, a small deep fryer can prepare about 25 pounds of food per hour.
Your mileage may vary, however, depending on many factors, including how quickly your fryer recovers the cooking temperature after plunging in a basket of cold food. Fast recovery increases the hourly capacity of your fryer and also improves the quality of the food. Recall that allowing the oil’s temperature to drop by as little as 20°F yields greasier food with a poor quality crust.
Thus, a second factor to consider when selecting a deep fryer is how quickly it recovers the desired frying temperature. Although the particulars of a design impact this, it is mostly determined by the available power supplied to the deep fryer (quoted in kilowatts or BTU/hrs for electric or gas powered units, respectively).
All things being equal, electric deep fryers preheat and recover temperature faster than gas powered ones, but things are rarely equal. For example, the ubiquitous “pro-grade” countertop electric deep fryer might seem large enough for your needs, and a cost effective solution, but these fryers are designed to plug into a standard 120-V, 15-amp North American outlet. Under the best of circumstance it can only pull 1,800 watts of power before blowing a fuse. For anything more substantial than a few items of food infrequently prepared, such a low-wattage fryer simply cannot recover the frying temperature fast enough. Chefs tend to overcome this shortcoming by setting the temperature of the oil as hot as possible. While this helps minimize the effects of a plummeting deep-frying temperature that is slow to recover, it also dramatically shortens the lifespan of the oil.
True commercial electric deep fryers require dedicated electric service of 14 kW to 22 kW or more for a standard 14-inch wide frying unit. This is a substantial amount of power, and not every restaurant can supply it. A comparable amount of gas power is available in nearly every restaurant, which is one reason that gas powered deep fryers remain popular. Gas also tends to be a slightly cheaper utility than electricity, a point not lost on those selling gas burning deep fryers.
Whether powered by electricity or gas, any decent deep fryer will feature a cool zone at the bottom of the oil vat. This is why electric elements or gas heating pipes are raised above the floor of the frying tank. Doing this creates a zone of stagnant oil that remains cooler than the circulating hot oil mere inches above it. This layer of cooler oil acts as a crumb collector at the bottom of the fryer, holding bits of crackling and batter that fall off the food at low temperatures so they do not burn, ruining the oil and the flavor of the food. Older deep fryers that heat the oil directly from the bottom should be avoided. Although cheaper, the oil will need frequent changing in these fryers, making any cost savings an illusion.
Given the importance of the oil, modern fryers that incorporate an automatic filtration system that removes accumulating food debris from the oil are worth serious consideration. Not only does this feature maintain frying oil at peak condition for longer—a savings that goes straight to the bottom line—this is also a much safer system than manually draining hot oil and straining out the debris.
Finally, energy efficiency is a factor to consider carefully when buying a deep fryer. Even in a busy kitchen, a typical deep fryer idles 75 percent of the time. Energy consumption at idle varies significantly, but, broadly speaking, electric fryers are more efficient than those that consume gas, although some costly, but high efficiency, gas powered deep fryers do exist. Because electric fryers can reduce their power consumption to a trickle at idle helps offset the lower price of gas as a utility, too, is a fact that those selling electric fryers like to point out.
Nate's Potato Barrels, with gratitude to Michel Richard
100% Baking Potatoes
1.5% Gelatin (powdered)
3% Wondra Flour
.25% MSG (Optional)
.1% Xanthan Gum (optional)
For my batch, it was as follows.
680g Potatoes
10.2g Gelatin
20.4g Wondra
1.7g MSG (optional)
.68g Xanthan Gum (optional)
MOP
1) Heat oven to 120C/250
2) Peel and rinse potatoes.
3) Small dice potatoes.
4) Place chunks into the food processor with approx 500ml/ 2 cups of water. (When you
turn the processor on, the little bits of potato float around in the water, instead of staying on the
bottom and getting pureed.
5) Pulse the potatoes into pieces; be careful not to over process.
6) Drain potatoes and rinse with cold water. Shake off excess.
7) Spread potatoes on a towel to dry. Top with another towel, wrap it up and squeeze out excess
moisture.
8) Spread potatoes on an even layer on a baking sheet.
9) Using a very dry tea strainer or fine sieve, evenly dust the gelatin on the potatoes.
10) Bake in the oven for 4-5 min to melt the gelatin. The potatoes will look oily.
11) Transfer the potatoes to a bowl, and mix well.
12) Add the wondra, MSG and xanthan gum (if using)
13) Using Plastic wrap, shape potatoes into logs. Tying the ends tightly
14) Prick the plastic with a cake tester to rupture any air bubbles.
15) Re-tie the ends to compress the potatoes.
16) Freeze the potatoes for 30 min to 1 hr to firm up. Do not completely freeze it could turn the potatoes
brown.
17) Heat oil to 190C/375F
18). Remove logs from the freezer; Cut the logs into portions, remove the plastic wrap and get ready for
the first fry…. (tired yet?)
19) Fry in batches until golden brown, about 3 min. Place on paper towels
20) Lower oil temp to 162C/325F
21) Fry in batches until richly golden brown and crisp. Approx 3 min. Place on a paper towel, season with
salt and serve.
22). If freezing, cook for about 2 min - freeze solid and store in plastic bags. Can reheat in the oven at
204C/ 400F
I love Happy in the Kitchen, and cannot overstate how much I learned from it. It definitely passes the French Laundry Cookbook test, meaning that it's clear that the author isn't holding back, he's showing you how to do the whole trick, not acting like an 80's nouvelle cuisine author and only giving us 85% of the steps. However unless you're going to serve them with caviar, (which by the way, may be the greatest caviar delivery vessel in the universe), I cannot it good conscience recommend anyone trying to make these. This is definitely a “hey look what I can do” recipe, one that I'd chalk up in 'why bother' category (see also: homemade ketchup). Just buy them frozen, and fry 'em up yourself, if you dare.
-NW
Bonus Content:
One thing we really love about the el Bulli cookbooks is how they include lists of ideas that didn't work, right along with the ones that did. That is unbelievable insight! To that end, allow me to include something I tried, that didn't goddamn work. I thought I could speed up the process by freezing the cooked mixture in a silicon demi-sphere mold. Sadly, I'll never know if this worked, because I rushed it, and tried to bread them before they were already frozen. Total, messy disaster. Oh well. If any of you get crazy and try this out, and it works, let us know, will ya?
Bonus Content, Part II:
When writing this article, I really wanted to quote the following article from Food Arts, a recently defunct trade magazine than many chefs I know (including us) read religiously. It's by Chris Young, a brilliant chef/scientist whose credentials include the test kitchen at Fat Duck, or, to phrase it a different way, GATHER AROUND AS HE RUNS IT DOWN. We reached out, and received permission to share it with y'all. Here it is, excepting only it's last few hundred words, which were about specific models of deep fryers, and, ten years later, were likely out of date anyway. Reprinted with permission from the June, 2011 edition of Food Arts, M. Shanken Communications, Inc. We miss Food Arts! It was a great industry rag! Jesse insisted that we crank Skid Row's I Remember You, in memoriam. Their current publications can be found at mshanken.com, so check them out! They have a ton of great industry content, currently heavily skewed to the beverage side of things. So put on I Remember You (Jesse's not kidding about that part) and check this out!
The Frying Game, Christopher Young, from Food Arts, June, 2011
Plunged into hot oil, countless steam-filled bubbles erupt and envelop the food in a cloud of swirling steam and churning oil. Seen in microscopic detail, the surface of the deep-frying food is continually rocked by violent explosions that release plumes of steam—a telltale sign that water just beneath the surface is boiling. There is nothing gentle about deep-frying. Such cataclysmic upheaval is, however, essential for both the speediness of deep-frying and for creating the inimitable crispy, crunchy, or blistered texture of superb deep-fried foods.
Deep-frying works a lot like baking, only faster. In both techniques, a convecting fluid transfers heat to food: the oil in a deep fryer churns in response to differences in buoyancy between hot and cold layers, just as the air in an oven does. And as heat is transferred to food, moisture in the food evaporates. This effect is invisible in baking, but in deep-frying it is made visible by steam bubbles rising through the oil.
Oil is much denser than air, which makes heat transfer more efficient, as well as more even. Oil is also more viscous than air. The Jacuzzi-like jets of steam bubbles can stir the cooler oil near the food into the hotter surrounding oil. The turbulence conducts heat to the surface of the food two to three times faster than stagnant hot oil. If that seems counterintuitive, think about what you do when you get into a really hot bath. You try to stay as still as possible because stirring the water makes it unbearably hot. The temperature of the water is the same in either case, but flowing water feels much hotter because it hasn’t had time to cool off against your skin.
Whether a food is surrounded by hot air or oil, moisture is always evaporating from the surface of food. The higher the surrounding temperature and the dryer the surrounding fluid—and, strange as it may seem, oil is a very dry cooking environment—the faster evaporation occurs.
Because it takes energy to change water from liquid to steam, the evaporation of moisture from deep-frying food cools the food as it dries it. Indeed, this same effect is why we are cooled by sweating. So at the same time that hot oil in the deep fryer is adding heat to the food, evaporation is sucking heat out of the food. The two processes are in competition. Which one will win?
The surprising answer is that, for most of the deep-frying time, evaporation wins in nearly all foods. Until the surface is almost completely dried, evaporation holds the exterior temperature of the food at the boiling point of water. The oil in the deep fryer may be 400°F, but as far at the food is concerned, the effective cooking temperature is almost 200°F cooler than that.
What’s happening is that all of the additional heat energy arriving at the surface of the food is being used to vaporize water rather than to increase the temperature of the food. Simply put, none of the heat sinks in. Thus, as long as columns of bubbles are streaming from the food, you can be sure that the surface is wet and, thus, no hotter than boiling water. Raising the temperature of the deep fryer oil doesn’t cook the food any faster; it simply accelerates drying so that a crust will form faster.
Eventually, the surface becomes dry and the boiling zone moves from the surface down into the food. Devoid of water, streams of bubbles start to slow to a mere tickle, and the temperature of the crust rises quickly. This is the point at which the golden color, rich flavor, and wonderful texture of a deep-fried food develops, the raison d’être of deep-frying.
This last stage also presents the principle challenge of deep-frying, which is to cook the food to the center before the crust burns or before the boiling zone moves deep enough into the food to overcook delicate ingredients like meats and seafood.
Sized just right Food is such a poor heat conductor that anything except paper-thin slices of food heat faster at the surface than at the center. This effect can be something to celebrate. In French fries, for example, it accounts for the exquisite contrast between a crispy crust and a light fluffy interior.
But there’s a reason you won’t find French fries much larger than your fingers or, for that matter, that you shouldn’t deep-fry a raw whole turkey. When foods are too large, the surface becomes a bottleneck through which the heat can pass only slowly to the interior, and uneven cooking is inevitable. It takes so long to raise the temperature at the center of the food that the intense heat of deep-frying overcooks the outside or, worse, burns it.
When in doubt, cut food into smaller pieces for deep-frying. Small objects have a greater ratio of surface area to volume than larger ones; as a result, they heat through faster and more evenly from surface to center. If you can cut the size of the food in half, you cut the cooking time by as much as a factor of four. What’s more, you’ll avoid the unhappy experience of eating deep-fried food that is charred on the outside and raw in the center.
In situations where cutting the size of the food down isn’t an option, a two-step deep-frying technique is a good strategy. For vegetables, such as potatoes and other foods that aren’t easily overcooked at near-boiling temperatures, both steps can be done in the deep fryer. The first step cooks the food all the way through at a relatively low deep-frying temperature, typically between 250°F and 285°F. Once fully cooked, the food is removed and the oil temperature is usually raised to between 350°F and 400°F, at which point the food is plunged back into the oil just long enough to create a golden brown crust.
Unfortunately, cooking delicate meats and seafood this way will still overcook a large fraction of the interior. A two-stage cooking process is still a good strategy, but the cooking temperature for the first step should be much lower. Thus, for large delicate foods, the precooking step is best done in a water bath, combi oven, or CVap oven, and then quickly finished in a deep fryer.
Clothe your food For delicate foods that aren’t too large, there is another approach to deep-frying in a single step without overcooking: clothe them with a wet batter. As the water in the batter steadily boils, it will keep the effective cooking temperature beneath the surface cooler. Depending on the batter used, this can be a slight cooling effect (thin tempura-like batters) or it can be substantial (thick beer-batters).
If greater protection of a delicate food is necessary, but a thin crust is still desired, then a good strategy is to foam the batter slightly. As the foam dries and hardens, it further insulates the food from the intense heat of the frying oil. Foaming a batter can be as simple as incorporating a carbonated beverage into it. For greater insulation and a crisper crust, include a leavener into the recipe. Baking powder does an excellent job of aeration; when heated, the acids and alkaline ingredients it contains react to fill the batter with bubbles of carbon dioxide. Finally, for a more direct approach, you can go high-tech with a whipping siphon. This approach has the advantage that the batter is foamed to order and thus can be held throughout a service without losing its bubbles.
Another useful trick is to replace some of the water in a batter with alcohol. Neutral spirits like vodka work well and can replace as much as 40 percent of the water in a typical batter recipe. Although the alcohol will destabilize a foamy batter, it also effectively dries out the batter so that it cooks quickly. And because alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, it has a stronger cooling effect. This means that the food inside the batter is exposed to a lower effective cooking temperature and the batter itself becomes dry and crisp sooner. Thus, alcohol-imbued batters are particularly useful for the most delicate foods, such as fish, that are easily overcooked in a deep fryer.
Sometimes a delicate, crisp coating isn’t ideal, and a hefty, crunchy coating is more suitable. Breading is the solution. It involves taking solid particles, such as bread crumbs, panko, even flaked or puffed cereals, and affixing them to the food using a binder like eggs, dissolved gelatin, or other modernist hydrocolloids. As with batters, breading insulates the food it clothes, but because breading recipes tend to be fairly dry, they provide much less of a cooling effect. Thus, we usually use breading for the texture it imparts. Breading can also become sturdy enough to form a crunchy shell that holds its shape, even as delicate centers become molten and soft. The cromesqui, or croquette, is a particularly excellent example of this technique in action.
A crispy batter or crunchy breading is the hallmark of great deep-frying. But when poorly executed, deep-fried foods clothed with a crust become unpleasantly greasy. The surprising fact, however, is that greasiness is mostly the result of what a chef does after the food has been fried. Z
What makes deep-fried food greasy, and when? We may think of deep-fried food as being submerged in oil, but that is not exactly true. If the frying oil is in peak condition, the food will directly contact the oil for no more than half the frying time. The rest of the time, the streaming bubbles shove the oil aside. Because of this, and contrary to conventional wisdom, very little oil is absorbed into food while it’s being deep-fried. Oil is trapped and absorbed by the surface after the food is removed from the fryer and begins to cool. Indeed, this is why blotting excess oil off the surface of the food immediately after it’s removed from the deep fryer helps to make the food a lot less greasy.
Researchers have shown that the cracks, fissures, and holes created at the surface of deep-frying food create capillary forces that wick oil once the food begins to cool. While frying, escaping steam mostly keeps oil out of these nooks and crannies, but when the crust cools, this steam condenses, which creates a slight vacuum that helps to draw the oil in.
This turns out to be the reason that lower frying temperatures produce such a greasy crust. Deep-frying a crusty food in oil at 340°F, rather than 360°F or hotter, can increase the oil absorption by 40 percent. Cooler frying oil is more viscous and sticky and, thus, doesn’t easily drain from the food. Hence, it’s always best to deep-fry at the highest practical temperature because this tends to produce a thin, delicate crust that’s less greasy. But be reasonable with the oil temperature. It’s wasted effort if the food gets scorched and burned.
A coating of oil isn’t necessarily bad, and the goal shouldn’t be to get rid of all the oil on the surface. Deep-fried food simply wouldn’t be deep-fried without some of the flavorful oil coating the surface. The oil provides a lot of the flavor, texture, and mouthfeel of deep-fried food. Interestingly, these effects are entirely superficial. When we chew food, the surface is the first thing that our tongue, cheeks, and palate sense. The first bite leaves them coated with warm, aromatic oil that is mixed into the food as we keep chewing. So the goal of deep-frying should be to leave food anointed with just the right amount of oil, neither too little nor too much.
Oil changes Oil is the most important ingredient in deep-frying. It affects the flavor of the food, how well it browns, how quickly it cooks, how greasy it becomes, and how healthful it is to eat. Yet cooks rarely give much thought to the oil once it’s poured into a deep fryer. They neglect to consider that, like any other ingredient, heating it to deep-frying temperatures cooks the oil!
Some of the complex chemical changes that happen to the oil improve it: oxidation that results from air being churned into the bubbling oil creates a chain reaction that generates the volatile aromas that impart deep-fried flavor to food. Water vapor escaping through the oil also creates a different set of reactions that involve splitting fat molecules into new compounds such as emulsifiers and gums. As oil is “broken in,” the emulsifiers allow oil and water to mix, so that the food spends more frying time in contact with the oil. This delivers the heat more rapidly and evenly, resulting in faster cooking and a more even golden-brown color.
Unfortunately, oil gets old from use. The reactions that improve it ultimately ruin it. Eventually the oil develops a rancid, fishy aroma, the result of oxidation reactions gone too far. Another sure sign that your frying oil is shot is when it foams too much, from steam bubbles getting stuck in the oily goo thickened by accumulated emulsifiers and gums.
Old frying oil isn’t just sticky and smelly—it’s downright dangerous. The breakdown of the oil lowers the smoking and flash points, increasing the risk of a dangerous grease fire.
Some oils survive the rigors of deep-frying longer than others. Saturated oils are more stable than unsaturated oils and, surprisingly, may be no less healthful than unsaturated oils when used for deep-frying. But the key to keeping any frying oil in peak condition is to frequently strain out food debris that accumulates in the oil. When these bits of food start to accumulate and burn, the oil is quickly ruined.
Choosing a deep fryer A good deep fryer should be the right size for your needs, accurately maintain the set temperature, recover to this temperature quickly during use, and preserve the condition of the oil. It should also be energy efficient and easy to clean and maintain. Although deep fryers that meet these basic requirements are available in a myriad of configurations, they all have one feature in common: a vat of oil large enough to hold a load of submerged food. How large this vat should be for your needs is the first factor to consider when choosing among the bewildering number of deep fryers available.
A small commercial grade deep fryer will hold as little as 14 pounds of oil—about 2 gallons—while the largest versions can hold 10 times this amount. A general rule of thumb is that you can deep-fry twice the oil’s weight in food every hour. Therefore, a small deep fryer can prepare about 25 pounds of food per hour.
Your mileage may vary, however, depending on many factors, including how quickly your fryer recovers the cooking temperature after plunging in a basket of cold food. Fast recovery increases the hourly capacity of your fryer and also improves the quality of the food. Recall that allowing the oil’s temperature to drop by as little as 20°F yields greasier food with a poor quality crust.
Thus, a second factor to consider when selecting a deep fryer is how quickly it recovers the desired frying temperature. Although the particulars of a design impact this, it is mostly determined by the available power supplied to the deep fryer (quoted in kilowatts or BTU/hrs for electric or gas powered units, respectively).
All things being equal, electric deep fryers preheat and recover temperature faster than gas powered ones, but things are rarely equal. For example, the ubiquitous “pro-grade” countertop electric deep fryer might seem large enough for your needs, and a cost effective solution, but these fryers are designed to plug into a standard 120-V, 15-amp North American outlet. Under the best of circumstance it can only pull 1,800 watts of power before blowing a fuse. For anything more substantial than a few items of food infrequently prepared, such a low-wattage fryer simply cannot recover the frying temperature fast enough. Chefs tend to overcome this shortcoming by setting the temperature of the oil as hot as possible. While this helps minimize the effects of a plummeting deep-frying temperature that is slow to recover, it also dramatically shortens the lifespan of the oil.
True commercial electric deep fryers require dedicated electric service of 14 kW to 22 kW or more for a standard 14-inch wide frying unit. This is a substantial amount of power, and not every restaurant can supply it. A comparable amount of gas power is available in nearly every restaurant, which is one reason that gas powered deep fryers remain popular. Gas also tends to be a slightly cheaper utility than electricity, a point not lost on those selling gas burning deep fryers.
Whether powered by electricity or gas, any decent deep fryer will feature a cool zone at the bottom of the oil vat. This is why electric elements or gas heating pipes are raised above the floor of the frying tank. Doing this creates a zone of stagnant oil that remains cooler than the circulating hot oil mere inches above it. This layer of cooler oil acts as a crumb collector at the bottom of the fryer, holding bits of crackling and batter that fall off the food at low temperatures so they do not burn, ruining the oil and the flavor of the food. Older deep fryers that heat the oil directly from the bottom should be avoided. Although cheaper, the oil will need frequent changing in these fryers, making any cost savings an illusion.
Given the importance of the oil, modern fryers that incorporate an automatic filtration system that removes accumulating food debris from the oil are worth serious consideration. Not only does this feature maintain frying oil at peak condition for longer—a savings that goes straight to the bottom line—this is also a much safer system than manually draining hot oil and straining out the debris.
Finally, energy efficiency is a factor to consider carefully when buying a deep fryer. Even in a busy kitchen, a typical deep fryer idles 75 percent of the time. Energy consumption at idle varies significantly, but, broadly speaking, electric fryers are more efficient than those that consume gas, although some costly, but high efficiency, gas powered deep fryers do exist. Because electric fryers can reduce their power consumption to a trickle at idle helps offset the lower price of gas as a utility, too, is a fact that those selling electric fryers like to point out.
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