Fry
May 4, 2015 4:13 PM   Subscribe

What foods are fun to fry at home?

I think it's fun to fry food at home, but I want to do things I don't have to do a ton of preparation to make. I don't want to cut a zillion fries. I don't want to make a picky tempura. Simple fried yum yums is all.
posted by Aranquis to Food & Drink (53 answers total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
We bread and fry meats at home all the time: fish fillets, pork chops, chicken breasts.

Mozzarella sticks are also very easy.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 4:16 PM on May 4, 2015


And ooh, pickle chips.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 4:17 PM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


If you have a bread machine, donut holes are super easy. (I say donut holes because it removes the step of rolling and cutting and flouring up a surface.) Nearly all the time is idle spent letting the dough rise.

This recipe is fantastic. I dump everything in the bread machine bucket up to step 4 then let it sit for a while, then dump the rest and start up the machine on the dough setting.
posted by phunniemee at 4:18 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


You can also make donuts from canned biscuit dough. It's like magic.
posted by Metroid Baby at 4:23 PM on May 4, 2015 [7 favorites]


Flour coatings are much less work than tempura. There are several vegetables that work with a simple flour dusting. Rinse them in a colander so the flour will stick, then pop in a fryer.

Broccoli - pre-cut. Both frozen and fresh will work.
Green beans - same as above
Okra - you can get okra frozen and pre-breaded, or you can use the simple flour technique.

A lot of big bag frozen appetizers that are labeled for heating in a microwave or oven are much better fried.
Taquitos. Egg rolls. Breaded shrimp, clams, etc.

Frozen catfish nuggets rolled in corn meal are fantastic.

I could actually go on all day. I fry a LOT.
posted by nedpwolf at 4:24 PM on May 4, 2015


I can't believe I forgot tortilla chips. Nothing is easier.

A bag of corn tortillas cut into triangles. Fry. Salt.
posted by nedpwolf at 4:26 PM on May 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


Fried lentils, they're like a thousand tiny chips. That recipe is complicated, all you need is oil, lentils, spice and salt. Soak for a bit then fry until they get crispy.
posted by FallowKing at 4:28 PM on May 4, 2015


Bananas topped with Nutella wrapped in egg roll wrappers. Serve with a scoop of good quality vanilla ice cream. Repeat many times. So good.
posted by IndigoOnTheGo at 4:33 PM on May 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


Pakoras! you could buy a bag of prepared vegetables in the salad section of the produce aisle, or just slice a few onions, chiles, potatoes, what have you. Make a 1:1 mixture (or therabouts; you want it a little thinner than pancake batter) of chickpea flour and water, spice it with some garam masala, drop your veggies in the batter, then drop the battered veggies into your oil with a spoon.

Some recipes call for self-rising flour or baking powder. I don't find it necessary. The chickpea flour alone is just fine.
posted by mudpuppie at 4:35 PM on May 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Steak. (If you live in a small space, though, highly advise turning your extractor fan on max, or buying an air filter.) I like it with crusty bread and a spinach salad.
posted by cotton dress sock at 4:38 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Anything you can buy frozen will be easy to fry. French fries, onion rings, chicken wings, chicken fingers, taquitos, burritos, jalapeno poppers, mozzarella sticks, ravioli, samosas, pakoras, crab rangoon, egg rolls, fish sticks, etc. The key to great wings or chicken fingers is regular old Frank's Red Hot sauce mixed with butter.

You can also use a simple batter to coat anything you want and fry it, I believe. Like, freeze a Snicker bar, and then coat the frozen candy bar in batter and drop it into a deep fryer. Healthy? No. Fun? Yes!
posted by AppleTurnover at 4:46 PM on May 4, 2015


Homemade potato chips ("chips" in the American sense) are a lot easier than making french fries and are almost always a crowd pleaser. The one piece of equipment you need is a mandolin slicer. (Which you can also use to make fries but it is much easier to do flat slices for chips. Fries are an arm workout, chips are actually kinda fun to slice.) They also cook faster than fries and are easier to gauge the doneness on. Just get a couple of big Russet potatoes, run them through the slicer, dump in batches in the fryer. Sea salt. Chopped garlic or parmesan if you want to be fancy. The longest part of the whole process is waiting for the oil to heat up and then cleanup, really.

Commercially-made ravioli can also be fried and are pretty delicious. (Homemade ravioli are even better, of course, but there you are to "quick and easy noms" what the Apollo program is to a paper airplane. Save that for another day.) Defrost them first or they tend to burst open. Some people dredge, flour, and bread them before frying.

Also: fried egg noodles. As seen at your local Chinese restaurant.

And last but not least, if you haven't gone through your grocery store's freezer section since acquiring a fryer, it's worth trying any favorites / guilty pleasure foods done in an actual fryer instead of an oven. E.g. almost all Ore-Ida fries and Tysons chicken products can be done in a fryer instead of an oven, and they are (as you would expect) both spectacularly worse for you and spectacularly tastier.

Tysons Buffalo Chicken Strips, 350F for about 4 minutes or so or until they just start to brown a bit, then pull out and toss in Franks Red Hot. Tastes exactly like bar food, because it is bar food. With the money you save you can buy better beer, though. And Tums. So many Tums.
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:49 PM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Beer-battered prawns.
posted by pompomtom at 4:51 PM on May 4, 2015


Anything in a won-ton wrapper: crab rangoon if you want, or do something sweet, like one of my favorite recipes from the Surreal Gourmet: slice of banana, blob of peanut butter, caramel-filled (or not, those are seasonal) Hershey's Kiss. (Ah, I see there's something very similar up above.)

In general, just make sure there's no loose water inside the wonton before sealing.

As for snickers bars-- you should do it, but it's a good opportunity to do the small bit-size Snicker's Bars, the ones that're little individually-wrapped squares.

Also, Twinkies. Look, I know, it's practically a cliche of deep-fried gluttony, but my friends had a party that centered on a deep-fryer, and we had heard of this, so we tried it, and by god, they taste even better when battered and friend.

Pickles: fry them as spears, IMO, not chips. Well, chips are also good, but spears are better. Know that when you put something that wet into the deep-fryer, the oil will get angry, so stand clear and shield your everything from the spatter. Worth it.

Tempura all the firm vegetables. Cut them as you would for stir-fry, or slightly larger.

Funnel Cake: Make a sweet version of Pate a Choux. Pipe directly into fryer such that it forms a circular pastry made of cross-crossing lines of dough.
posted by Sunburnt at 4:59 PM on May 4, 2015


Oreos!

Take oreo, dip in batter, fry. They are quite tasty.
posted by meese at 5:03 PM on May 4, 2015


If you want fun - you can fry anything.
Dip in batter or not, wrap in wonton wrappers if gooey, but Twinkies, candy bars, cream cheese, hell, even sticks of butter are fun. Peanut butter sandwiches pinched at the edges, or fruit "pies" of bread and jam. Freeze the gooey stuff before frying.
Meat is fun too
Chicken wings, pork chops, thin slices, even hot dogs.
Just make it your motto:
"If I'm going to eat it I'm going to fry it first."
Where there is a will there is a way. You can fry anything.
posted by littlewater at 5:07 PM on May 4, 2015


Parsnip fries. Made just like potato fries but better, even more so if you mix some pesto with some mayo to dip them in. Get this if you hate cutting fries.

Prawn crackers are fun to cook as they puff up so much, you can buy them uncooked on amazon.
posted by wwax at 5:08 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


With summer coming up, breaded zucchini!
posted by shortyJBot at 5:11 PM on May 4, 2015


Chicken wings. Outside of Buffalo it is categorically impossible to get good chicken wings unless you make your own. They are always weirdly chewy and everyone who thinks they're great has no idea what good chicken wings are. You use Crisco. And it should be terrifying and take twice as long as you think it should. That's how you know you're doing it right.

And keep a lid handy in case it catches fire (if it smokes, it's too high--stir every five minutes--but it should just be on the edge of smoking. You should feel a degree of fear.)
posted by A Terrible Llama at 5:13 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Deep-fried chickpeas are more delicious than you could ever have imagined chickpeas could be. Dust with paprika. I've also heard good things about fried fava beans.

Fried artichoke hearts with garlic aioli.

Fried brussels sprouts. Like roasted brussels sprouts, but more so. I like them buffalo-style, with Frank's Red Hot and blue cheese.

Yuca frita! (This does involve some slicing.) So unbelievably crisp. The best I've ever had involved two sauces: a thick, bright yellow mayo flavored with garlic and aji amarillo and a cilantro-lime-jalapeno-garlic mojo. You dip each piece in both -- the yellow sauce helps the green sauce adhere.
posted by ostro at 5:13 PM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Pakoras are the best.

I also recommend chickpea fries. There's a little bit of prep, but it's a pretty minimal effort. Note: this recipe says to chill overnight. I never have, but you do have to chill the batter until it's firm - like an hour or two.

Also, deep-fried tater tots are amazing.
posted by O9scar at 5:21 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Tostones!
posted by snaw at 5:36 PM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


I forgot falafel. I've tried to bake my share of falafel and they have never turned out right. Maybe you can buy some preformed that you can fry and eat in pitas with some lettuce, tomato, onion, tahini, hummus, tzatziki, hot sauce, whatever you want. Nom om om.
posted by AppleTurnover at 5:41 PM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Squash blossoms are surprisingly easy, delicious and hella impressive.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 5:42 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Bananas topped with Nutella wrapped in egg roll wrappers.

My recipe is a dab of peanut butter and a few chocolate chips wrapped in a small wonton wrapper. Serve with ginger ice cream. You can really do anything with wonton wrappers and simple fillings.

Also I've bought pre-mixed tempura batter and used it to fry a shitton of greenbeans and it's not really that fiddly and the green beans are amazing.
posted by jessamyn at 5:46 PM on May 4, 2015


A restaurant near here has a deep fried (but not breaded or battered) whole cauliflower that tastes yummy. After it's fried they pour some sort of lime/soy sauce/pepper thing on top and it's awesome.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 6:03 PM on May 4, 2015


I love fried brussels sprouts, but you want to make sure they are absolutely 100% dry before they hit the oil, or you need to be wearing a hazmat suit. And then you want to hit them with cheap powdery Green Can Parmesan the second they come out.

I use tempura mix when we do Fry Everything Day. It's messy with the dripping but all you have to do is put ice water in it. And yes, tempura green beans are so good.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:06 PM on May 4, 2015


Here's a good falafel recipe -
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/my-favorite-falafel-231755 - you get better texture if you use dried chickpeas and just soak them overnight - canned taste good too, but can be a bit mushy in the center...
posted by ersatzjef at 6:07 PM on May 4, 2015


Also onion strings.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:07 PM on May 4, 2015


Similar to donuts (but better): malasadas, Portuguese thingies you can get in Hawaii.
posted by jquinby at 6:14 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


There's a local asian-fusion pizza place that does Mozzarella sticks, but in egg roll wrappers. It's even easier and WAY less messy than traditional wet/dry breading.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 6:30 PM on May 4, 2015


Also, when I first got my fryer and was looking for ideas of what to fry, the tip that stuck with me is "Anything not bolted to the floor".
posted by ArgentCorvid at 6:36 PM on May 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


Extra firm tofu, chopped into smallish cubes, fried in peanut oil, and then soy sauce near the end.
posted by Beardman at 6:37 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Not sure if you'll count this as too much prep, but these are the bomb:

Peel a sweet potato and a couple of large parsnips. Throw out the outer skin, and keep peeling them (any vegetable peeler works, or a mandloline is faster) until all you have left is a big pile of ribbons, as wide as you can peel them. Fry in 2-3 inches of oil (because they're so thin, this takes a minute or two at most - do not walk away).

Also a big fan of this recipe for onion bhaji which looks prep-intensive but is actually just chop, dump, wait, clump, and fry.
posted by Mchelly at 7:16 PM on May 4, 2015


Apple fritters.
posted by neroli at 7:23 PM on May 4, 2015


I am a lover of fried food (I'm a vegetarian, though, so a bit of a weird one) but deep-fried tofu is one of the few things that I would consider keeping a dedicated deep fryer around for.

Falafel is also a good one -- it's only good when it's deep fried.

But I will also echo the whole "whatever you want." Fry it all.
posted by darksong at 7:59 PM on May 4, 2015


Broccoli - pre-cut. Both frozen and fresh will work.

Oh, oh man. So, let me tell you about deep frying broccoli. Here's what you do:

Get the darkest green fresh broccoli you can find, and chop off the stem. Pull the florets apart by hand, and if the bottoms/stems taper off and curl yes that's good. Wash, and dry very well. Lots of paper towel action.

Heat your deep fat fryer up with some vegetable oil in it, hotter the better if you have an adjustable one.

Drop the florets in (gently, needless to say) a few at a time, and look for desiccation of the skin. When that starts to happen, yank them out of the fryer and mop the excess oil off them with more paper towels. After you've fried all the broccoli (never too much!) shake some crushed red pepper over them, and douse them in equal parts soy sauce and malt vinegar.

Eat them as hot as you can stand, and try not to choke and die on the vinegar fumes.
posted by carsonb at 8:00 PM on May 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


CTL + F "hush" = no one has mentioned Hush Puppies!
posted by trip and a half at 8:09 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am going to tempura fry some frozen & defrosted calamari rings tomorrow night. It will be glorious.
posted by jbenben at 8:19 PM on May 4, 2015


Pumpkin Buñuelos.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:27 PM on May 4, 2015


Hello, corn dog.
posted by mudpuppie at 8:40 PM on May 4, 2015


Also, halloumi cheese (with olive oil), and a greek salad. I'm like 78% carnivore, and it's a full meal to me.
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:41 PM on May 4, 2015


Indian or Navajo Tacos (should all/any of that be in quotes???)! YUM. Dough is super easy to make - flour, baking powder, and milk usually. Top with beans, cheese, pico de gallo OR powdered sugar/honey/jam.
posted by jrobin276 at 10:20 PM on May 4, 2015


Oh we also deep fry stuffed zucchini flowers, which is a little fiddly but very very good.
posted by jrobin276 at 10:21 PM on May 4, 2015


Fried asparagus is delicious.
posted by neushoorn at 4:12 AM on May 5, 2015


Halved fingerling potatoes from the grocery store. Season aggressively.
posted by ftm at 4:40 AM on May 5, 2015


For your arm/face's sake, if you're not using a deep fryer or pot with a lid, invest in a splatter screen ( a mesh you put over the frying food in pan/shallow pot as it fries).


ask me how I know....
posted by lalochezia at 9:13 AM on May 5, 2015


Sardines are great fried--just season and dredge in flour.
posted by iximox at 10:15 AM on May 5, 2015


Andrea Nguyen's Korean Fried Chicken (KFC) is the best thing that has ever come out of my kitchen.
posted by cacofonie at 2:02 PM on May 5, 2015


Two nights ago, I fried leftover mac and cheese and it was delicious. Refrigerated block, dipped in egg and panko, then pan fried. Easy peasy, delicious.
posted by klangklangston at 4:26 PM on May 5, 2015


Leftover risotto! Squidge it into patties. smoosh them in breadcrumbs (possibly breadcrumbs mixed with grated parmesan if you want to have a total cheese party*) and fry til golden. Basically, lazy-person arancini.


*always
posted by greenish at 4:26 AM on May 6, 2015


Rice Noodles are fun because they fry up in seconds.
posted by soelo at 7:58 AM on May 6, 2015


Plantain! The vegetable that looks like a banana, but bigger. Slice into chips, fry and salt.
posted by Braeburn at 11:12 PM on May 6, 2015


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