Sunday, June 12, 2011 Learning a New Toy

Deep fried devil dogs, baby! You frickin know it!

My husband got me a brand spanking new deep fryer at a tag sale a while back and I never got around to using it until last night. First attempt, not perfect, imagine that. BUT the results were still gosh darn tasty, and I learned a few things.

#1 - If you don't have the exact ingredients for pancake batter it's not the end of the world. You know how it is, you do a Google search of deep fried Oreos because when you do a Google search for deep fried Devil Dogs you get a hot dog recipe. Then, of course, you don't have the ingredients for the pancake batter that every recipe calls for. You don't have Bisquick or pancake mix - so you have to put your thinking cap on and decipher what ingredients make up the ingredient. I'm sure glad I went to college for this. Then you discover you don't have milk, you only have half and half - you know how it goes. Here's what I ended up making, and it worked.

1 cup flour
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon salt

mix together

beat one egg in a bowl

Mix together (in a measuring cup)
1/2 cup of half and half
almost a half a cup of water
top it off with maple syrup and vanilla extract

add the wet to the dry, mix with a spatula until lumps are almost all gone.

I froze the Devil Dogs, possibly a wasted step. The cream was still solid in parts and nice and melty in other parts. The jury is still out on that one. This leads me to lesson...

#2 - Following manufacturers directions is for losers! I should have known the directions were written by a bunch of suits that have never deep fried a thing in their lives! "Place the food in the basket before dropping the basket into the hot oil." So...can you guess what happened?



The basket is still soaking in a pot of water - 12 hours later!

I understand they don't want me burning myself, but if the hot oil doesn't immediately touch the batter my deep fried Devil Dogs will always lose half their coating. And that ain't right, yo!

Obviously I have to work on this. What a shame. I can tell you that they were DDelicious! Powdered sugar brought the whole thing home. I may experiment with a little cardamom in the batter, giving it more of a doughnut thing going on. But these are a home friggin' run, baby!

I have a bunch of mushrooms and a zucchini, so today I shall experiment with some deep fried savory - but I may have to give these another go before the day is through.

What would you deep fry?

-HH