Awhile back, I picked up a Euro Pro deep fryer from Linen ‘N Things for either $10 or $20 after rebate. I never got a chance to use it till today. When I first wanted to use it, I noticed it said not to use olive oil, which was the only type of oil I had around. They said corn oil, peanut oil, vegetable oil , canola oil, etc were all fine. So later, I picked up a giant jug of canola oil from Costco, since that appeared to be the healthiest of the bunch. Speaking of which, did you know that canola stood for: “Canadian oil, low acid”? I had always thought canola was a plant! Also, wouldn’t the world oil be redundant here, sort of like ATM machine (automated teller machine machine).
Anyway, I had the giant jug of oil and it just sat around as I was too lazy now to test out the deep fryer.
I was talking to Xyon today about how even if we had a bread maker, we’d be too lazy to use it. I then said that’s probably why I haven’t used my deep fryer ever since I got it a couple months back. He commented and said aren’t deep fryers meant for lazy folks. That got me thinking… how do I clean it up? Is it messy? It turns out that I can leave the oil in there for years and reuse it. If it starts turning brown or black, I should change the oil, but given that I won’t probably be using it that much, it might even last a lifetime.
Anyway, I got hungry tonight and decided to give it a try:
(from Food album)
I have to say, these deep fried fries are 100x better than anything that can come out of the oven, microwave, or even pan fried! Mmmmmmm. Now I just need to find more things to deep fry!
Speaking of which, I guess now would be a good time to put in a word about a new photo service my friend Derek and Tekman have started: photosleeve. If you look at my sidebar, you’ll notice I have a new link: PhotoSleeve which has all my digital photos from 2002 to 2008. There are problems with my 2001 digital photos which I’m fixing before I upload them. It’s still being beta tested, but you can sign up on their homepage or if you send me a message, I can probably speed up your application. 😉 Maybe I’ll delve more into their features when I get a chance to write a dedicated post for it.
I was just watching Kujibiki Unbalance and realized the word for mushroom was 茸 (take) and 椎茸 (shiitake) is a type of mushroom. So on the same line of redundancy, when you say shiitake mushroom, you’re really repeating mushroom twice.
茸 can also be pronounced kinoko if there isn’t a word in front modifying it or if you’re talking about mushrooms in general. Just like å±± (yama) is mountain by itself, but when you use it in a phrase such as 富士山, it’s pronounced fujisan (Mount Fuji)
Peanut oil, while being far more expensive, is superior for frying foods when it comes to flavor. It’s what we keep in our cast iron dutch oven. (We replaced our electric fryer with a massive Lodge Logic pot and haven’t looked back.)
You can strain your oil every once in a while without having to change the entire batch. We pour our oil through a mesh strainer into a holding container, toss the crumbs, and then go over the bottom and sides of the pot with paper towel to clean off anything that didn’t pour out. You might be able to fish out some of the bigger junk with a particularly fine-mesh spider skimmer, but that stuff tends to settle pretty quickly. You will want to change it every once in a while; cooking oils go rancid after time, although some do much more quickly than others. I like to keep around the empty oil jugs to contain oil I’ve discarded for whatever reason. If you fry stuff that’s breaded (especially if you make the coating yourself), you’ll notice a lot more debris afterward than fries.
i was looking at this deal when it was up too. but i decided i didn’t need to have more fried foods in my life… haha =(