Dry frying

[Blamo]

I made a chicken caccitore (my mother's favorite) about a week ago and dry fried coarsely chopped white mushrooms in a heavy cast iron pan heated on high for 4-5 mins prior to putting them in the sauce. This technique really elevated the ordinary. My mushrooms actually had some flavor. Alton Brown suggests searing mushrooms in this manner in I'm Just Here for the Food and Michael Rhulman also writes about doing the same in The Elements of Cooking. Anyway, I would say that the mushrooms in the caccitore became more interesting than the chicken itself! Thanks Alton and Michael.

[Mikeb19]

In a recent discussion of mushrooms, reference was made to an earlier post, by Chufi, about "dry frying" mushrooms. Since discussion of this interesting technique has heretofore been buried as an aside in other topics, I thought I'd elevate it to full-topic status by starting this one.

By "dry frying" we mean sauteeing in a skillet, but without any oil. To recap, here's Chufi's description of the method as applied to mushrooms.

Put mushrooms (whole is best, but you can chop them up if you are in a hurry) in a large frying pan. They should be in a single layer. Don't add any fat. Put pan on high heat and fry the mushrooms over high heat until they are completely brown, collapsed, and wrinkled. Shake the pan occasianally (which is when you will hear that funny squeaky sound of the evaporating liquid).

So, dry frying. Any thoughts? Brilliant innovation? Other applications?

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I've cooked steaks in pans without any added fat. A japanese chef I used to work with seared scallops in a non-stick pan without any added fat. People dry fry nuts all the time. It's pretty common stuff....

[adinfinitu]

The Ethiopian cookbook I have (Exotic Ethiopian Cooking : Society, Culture, Hospitality, and Traditions) starts a lot of things with dry fried onions. They later go on to add about a 1:1 ratio of spiced clarified butter or oil to the other main ingredients, so I've never tried any of the recipes. I'll go to a restaurant and pretend to eat in ignorant bliss instead.

[Jim Dixon]

I'm pretty sure I mentioned dry sauteeing in a chanterelle thread some time back. I first read of this method for mushrooms in David Arora's All the Rain Promises and More, a great guide to wild mushrooms.

I don't always preheat my cast iron skillet, and I think the method works best at medium heat. It drives the moisture out of the mushrooms, and depending on the weather when they were harvested, some may be dryer than others.

Jim

[Shalmanese]

I dry fry green beans all the time. It takes about 20 minutes to get them really soft with brown bits on them but then I hit them with a combo of thinly sliced garlic and balsamic vinegar for balsamic glazed green beans.

One thing you have to watch out for in dry frying is that there's very little contact between the food and the pan so there's very little thermal transfer and it's very easy to overheat the pan. This is especially bad if you're using teflon or other non-stick pans and requires quite a bit of finesse with the heat to do properly.

I've found a good technique is to flick a couple of drops of water into the pan ever minute or so. You want the water to make a particular sound as it's evaporating. If it's too quick, take your pan off the heat, if it sits there, you need more heat.

[plattetude]

Am I crazy, or does "dry frying" = "pan roasting"? Or is it all a matter of semantics?

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Christopher

[Chufi]

Eggplant is also notorious for soaking up oil when pan-frying ... might this also be a good candidate?

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I have tried eggplant this way. It works, but you have to cut them into small dice and watch them very closely so they don´t burn. And keep them moving!

The mushrooms, they don't seem to burn no matter how high the heat

[Chufi]

Am I crazy, or does "dry frying" = "pan roasting"?  Or is it all a matter of semantics?

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Christopher

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I thought of this too. When I roast vegetables in the oven, I add a bit of oil. The goal is to get moisture out and intensify the flavor. The same thing with dry frying the mushrooms. But, as soon as you use a little oil and high heat, I guess you would have to call it stir-frying!

Edited November 30, 2007 by Chufi (log)

[Gabriel Lewis]

I'd hardly call it innovative, as besides the examples others have mentioned, this is a staple technique in Sichuanese cooking. As pat_00 mentioned, it can vary from a small amount of oil to just smearing the wok with an oily cloth. In some instances, Sichuanese dry frying isn't really the same as what were considering here. They also use it to refer to cooking meat until all its juices have been expunged and evaporated. In other instances though, the wok is only smeared with oil and then vegetables are fried till tender and fragant, and typically seasoned at the end with sesame oil and salt.

At any rate, I don't see how it's fundamentally different from grilling or roasting, except that you can easily collect and evaporate the juices, and its easier to manipulate things as they cook. It's good for browning when you don't want to use oil.

I do see this as a bit different from roasting/toasting spices or blackening tomatoes or chiles in a dry pan. And I do think it works best with a well seasoned wok or similar pan, as Milagai and others have described.

[Gabriel Lewis]

I thought of this too. When I roast vegetables in the oven, I add a bit of oil. The goal is to get moisture out and intensify the flavor. The same thing with dry frying the mushrooms. But, as soon as you use a little oil and high heat, I guess you would have to call it stir-frying!

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I think it makes more sense to approach in terms of what's actually going on in the cooking process. If you don't use enough oil to change how one transfers heat from pan to food, then you are effectively dry frying.

edit: excessive effectivelys

Edited November 30, 2007 by Gabriel Lewis (log)

[Shalmanese]

At any rate, I don't see how it's fundamentally different from grilling or roasting, except that you can easily collect and evaporate the juices, and its easier to manipulate things as they cook. It's good for browning when you don't want to use oil.

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The difference is in the heat transfer. With dry frying, you're applying intense heat to a relatively small area of the food and relying on constant stirring for heat distribution. In fact, dry frying is probably closer to blowtorching than anything else.