You claim to love proper potato French fries and you give us a recipe for McDonalds’ style fries?
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That’s why I said it can limit your batch size not that it does. Safety wise (with a gas stove anyway) its not really wise to fill that thing beyond half full so given my rather shallow/half assed wok I end up with a max food capacity that’s about the same as the the fryalator I have. Though its easier to clean I have to stick a thermometer in it and jog the heat up and down to get a consistent temp. Which is exasperated by the lower oil capacity of the wok. Which is sort of the point of frying in a wok, fry more food in less oil and compensate for temperature weird by the fact that its on a stove instead of operating like an easy bake oven.
As is the wok I have vs the fryer I have I reach for the fryer every time. Now if I was thinking of stepping up to a “better” frying set up I’d just get a better, bigger, wok that’s actually carbon steel (mine is aluminum I think, came with a very nice Paella pan that is carbon steel oddly). That’s a way cheaper alternative to buying a fryer that would perform as well.
I use my dutch oven for deep frying. Mine is an old plain iron number about 6 quart capacity. I’m going to upgrade to an 8 quart enameled one at some point.
I use my oven probe thermometer to monitor the oil temperature, and usually peanut oil. I’ve made everything from fried chicken (with just an inch of oil or so) to catfish to onion rings and tempura. it works great and a dutch oven (especially an enameled one) can do so much.
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Bizarrely, I was going to suggest EXACTLY the same things as tmead07. Peanut oil, dutch oven, probe thermometer - precisely my favorite way to fry. Great way to deep fry nearly anything without buying a bulky one-trick-pony.
Peanut oil is easily the best price performer I’ve seen mentioned here. The health benefits of various lipids usually do not apply when we’re talking about deep-frying at high temperatures. Peanut oil is cheap, has a high smoke point, and can be re-used.
I have some friends who are from India. They do a fair bit of frying in their Southern Indian cuisine. What they use is a very small wok that seems to hold about 3 cups max. I have no idea where they got it, but they said they like it a lot. I think because they don’t tend to fry large amounts of things and it keeps the oil relatively deep compared to the amount of oil they are using.
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First off, your local Chinatown is your friend: woks of all sizes for very little money can be found in the back section of the supermarkets as well as other stores.
Second, if you can, get a cast iron wok: wonderful heat retention and the weight helps keep it from getting thrown around on the burner when working with the food. The wok I use most is cast iron and large enough to block using any other burners on the stove…I don’t even have to hold onto it when I’m cooking. It’s a bear to hang up between uses, but worth it!
In 3 separate china towns I have not noticed the woks being materially cheaper than anywhere else. The real trick is to go to a decent restaurant supply house rather than a Williams Sonoma or Bed Bath and Beyond or some shit. And yes in many cities restaurant supply places tend to be concentrated in Chinatown, though the prices should be the same regardless of where the supply house is located. That said flat bottom woks tend to be hard to come by in Chinatown, and without a wok burner flat woks are often safer and spread heat better (dependent on your stove). The best deals I’ve seen on cheap but decent, carbon steel flat bottom woks has actually been at Ikea. Though that was years ago, and my brother camp fired it to death so durability might be an issue.
That said said the stuff you have (and acquired at little or no cost) is always cheaper and more practical than the stuff you don’t have. When my brother (of wok killing fame) reclaims his fryer I’ll go back to the wok. When I leave my current living situation (the wok stays) I’ll consider picking up a cheap, proper wok instead of frying in my dutch oven. Space and funding dependent.
Edit: Oh and cast iron sounds nice, but from what I understand its completely non-traditional and has its own set of problems. Thin carbon steel is used specifically because of the way it retains heat (or doesn’t dependent on the use), and specific unevenness it has, and it can also be quite light. So for the stir fry thing you can get ripping hot at the bottom, but have thing less hot higher up, rapidly transition between cooking methods, toss shit around in a smaller wok etc. Cast iron might be better on western stoves, more durable on the grill, and better for deep frying though. In the end it would fall under the “space and funding dependent” category more so than carbon steel.
The big problems with having a dedicated deep fryer like that are that either you’re going to start doing a lot more deep frying, or you’re not. If you do, you’re pumping a lot more fat into your diet; if not, then you’ll have a clunky appliance sitting around on your counter, full of used oil (or drained and in the cupboard.)
What you get out of using the appliance instead of a pot on the stove is a bit more precise temperature control, a basket that fits, and slightly better ergonomics. But still, deep frying is something that's only practical if you do it often enough to reuse the oil, so it's a better fit for restaurants than for most homes.
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Eww.
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The countries which have traditionally used woks have not all used the exact same type of wok. And I’ve found that some Western stoves have grates that make a round bottom work just fine. You’ve got to go with what works for you or what you’ve learned how to cook on. In my case, that would be carbon steel, but I’ve grown to prefer the advantages of cast iron. It really is what works for you in your current cooking situation.
Since we’re talking about cooking oils…
Most commercial oils (canola, vegetable) are made through a chemical extraction process using the solvent hexane. The hexane is theoretically removed from the final product but trace amounts remain. In other words, no, they are not simply squeezing the corn/soybeans until oil comes out.
My suggestion is to only cook with expeller pressed oils. These are oils made in a non-toxic manner and they are the healthier options (olive, coconut, peanut, avocado). Read the labels and look for “Expeller Pressed” as you can buy chemically extracted peanut oil.
Also, be cautious with imported olive oil from Italy as it is frequently doctored and counterfeit. Some are OK. I second the notion that a Costco membership pays for itself. The Kirkland Organic Olive Oil is in my cupboard.
Far out! I use the same recipe but I add chipotle powder to the shaker bag. I also use a 1 gallon Nesco deep fryer.
I was asked to do all my frying outdoors by my sweet wife because of my love of deep fried sardines. It can be kind of messy and with the fish, smelly. I find the more hot oil to food ratio the crisper and less oily the result.
Cheers!
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Right I currently have a restaurant grade stove. High output burners with removable grates/covers over the burner itself. If I take off the cover, and drop a wok ring over the burner itself I can use a round wok just as well as a flat bottom, and the closer proximity gives me a little better heat. But even with a western stove that puts out double the amount of heat of a typical home stove I’m not running anywhere as hot as an average wok burner. I’ve used one, the amount of heat they put out is absurd, and its incredibly directional. The closest thing I’ve seen to that outside of Asian kitchens are charcoal chimney starters and the highest output sort of propane burners used as turkey fryers and in home brew. Or in one acquaintance of mine’s case to run a still and melt lead in bulk for bullets and fishing tackle.
Wherever woks are used, and whatever form they take, and however else they might be used that high, direct heat is really fundamental to the way its used. Thinner carbon steel is going to get hotter faster, and cool down much more rapidly with a huge amount of heat concentrated at the based and dying off rapidly as the walls gain in height. Cast iron doesn’t handle that as well. It does heat unevenly so you get a gradient along the walls, though the heat is going to be spread out more overall. Its also very slow to heat up, and even slower to cool down. And from what I understand cast iron pots and woksdo (and have historically) exist in Asia. But they’re intended for different uses, or different cuisines, and aren’t generally capable of doing what we think of when we think of the classic wok.
That said few if any people outside of Asia and commercial kitchens are working with an ideal set up to use a wok in the best possible way. Our burners just don’t have the oomph. So its really (as you said) about figuring out the best possible solution for your situation, with an eye to price point and practicality. For me that’s been flat bottoms and carbon steel with lots and lots (and lots and lots) of pre-heating. Though I prefer to scratch it all together. Some of the best stir fries I’ve made have been in standard cast iron skillets, working in batches and pre-heating to high hell. But the wok really has turned out to be the best way to deep fry on the stove top, so I’d only consider another based on what’s best deep fry wise (and space and cost). Cast iron, since you mentioned it, stands a good chance of being the better stove top deep fryer. All that heat retention is gonna minimize all the heat jogging you have to do with a thin carbon steel model. And that (and a vaguely crappy aluminum wok) is pretty much the only reason I keep reaching for the fryer over the wok.
Also if anyone is curious I hate the aluminum wok for 2 reasons, first its too light to remain stable on the burner no matter what I do. But more importantly it sticks. OH GOD DOES IT STICK. It remains some what easier to clean than the fryer because cleaning entails soaking for three days before scrubbing once. The fryer you have to disassemble, clean as normal, three times, then try to ignore excess grease plasticizing as you put it away.
This conversation as also got me looking side eyed at Lodge’s cast iron wok, which is surprisingly cheap.
PS I’m very wordy when I’ve had 3 cocktails.
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You take the starch out and then you put it back?
Seems to me the Cook’s Illustrated trick is what you need here – fry them twice.
Sweet potato fries have a weird sort of problem. Their sugar context is high enough that no matter how crispy they are out of the fryer they get limp and soggy almost immediately. Twice fried might get a sweet potato crisp, but it won’t stay that way. A starch coating can stave this off, can’t remember the specific mechanics but its at least partially pulling moisture out of the food before/during cooking and shielding the food itself from the heat of the fryer. There’s a lot of Asian recipes (Korean fried chicken comes to mind, also salt and pepper shrimp) that use a corn starch, potato starch, or rice flour coating to allow something fried to get crisp and remain crisp when it otherwise wouldn’t. Including when sauced. So its a solid mechanic. Soaking the sweet potatoes first might not be necessary. But if it is doing what it says on the label then the idea is to rinse of starches and sugars from the surface and replace them with a different starch that’s better able to stave off moisture. Whether because of the structure of the starch itself or because its a distinct coating over the sweet potato.
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Huh. Makes sense. Been a long time since I’ve made sweet potato fries bu when I did I found an egg white coating was the key to crispy, probably because fat and interlocking proteins are impermeable to moisture. And, if recent research is to be believed, might be better for you than the refined carbohydrates of corn starch.
Frankly I think if you’re that concerned about what recent research says about the dangers of refined carbohydrates you should be more concerned about the arguably larger issue of tossing a sugar heavy tuber into a vat of boiling fat and consuming the results.
But yeah egg white would probably work, but as I understand it you want a coating that draws extra moisture from the surface of the food during cooking while also resisting moisture after cooking. Egg white it probably not going to do that.
You know what? Now that I think about it a bit, I suspect the story is a bit different. Corn starch and flour are frequently used as intermediate binding agents in southern fried chicken. You dredge in corn starch, then egg, then flour (at least, that’s one way if you were fool enough to not use buttermilk). Chicken is to damp for egg to stick to it but corn starch gelatinizes almost instantly and forms an interlocking layer on the chicken, the other side of which is dry. Egg sticks to that, and flour sticks to that.
Bet the same thing is going on here. Starch gelatinizes due to the moisture in the sweet potatoes, forming a sort of dry crust that the frying oil can then stick to and keep water out.
BTW, when you’re borderline diabetic, as I am, refined carbs kick your blood glucose into the stratosphere whereas natural, complex carbs do not. Essentially, this is because refining is equivalent to partial digestion so you get rapid conversion of carb to glucose, all at once. When the carb is locked into its natural environment, it converts much more slowly as it has to be extracted first. Instead of a glucose spike, you get a slow steady rise and fall.
That’s actually probably a part of it too. As far as I can tell there’s a ton of different things going on when you try to get a crisp crust in a situation where crispness in verboten. I know a part of it is also how a coating shields the outside of the food from over cooking. Its more important when dealing with proteins, but sweet potatoes can get pretty leathery if you cook them too dark.
In terms of diabetes: Maybe it would depend on the type of diabetes but I’d assume the higher sugar vs starch in a sweet potato would be a larger issue for your blood glucose than the fine dusting of corn starch your adding. Its not a lot of starch to be adding, practically speaking. Type 1 runs in my family, and we’re also prone to a few congenital thyroid problems which supposedly trigger the type 2 several of my aunts have (one of whom died as a result). ANYWAY all of my diabetic relatives focus on avoiding highly caloric and sugary foods in general, rather than small quantities of specific ingredients or nutrients. That and carefully managing their insulin use and blood sugar levels. But they’re all full blown and insulin dependent. And one way or another their diabetes was genetic or unavoidably caused by a genetic condition. Diabetes is weird and complicated.
So I’m just going to stick with worrying about the fact that my mother was just diagnosed with one of those thyroid problems I mentioned, while scratching at a patch of psoriasis I’ve got that’s apparently a common early precursor to the late developing Rheumatoid Arthritis that also runs in the family. BECAUSE GENETICS ARE AWESOME.
Yeah, you got that right. Type II runs in my family as does glaucoma.
There’s a ton of different things going on in any cooking chemistry. The deal with sweet potatoes is that since they are a natural, unrefined food the glycemic load is pretty low, about 1/3 of white rice even with the higher sugar content. It’s not easily accessible sugars. The body has to work for it.
Psoriasis too, btw, due to a low grade undiagnosed strep infection in graduate school.Not psoriatic like yours and for that you have my deepest sympathy. My grandmother had rheumatoid arthritis and it sucked. Ask your dermatologist about Protopic. Works for me.
