Maintaining crisp/crunch of fried items?

[jedovaty]

I've been playing with rice flour or various starches (corn, tapioca, potato) for frying batter, excluding apf due to various reasons.

 

The batter is always perfect as it comes out of the oil, but after sitting a couple minutes before I get a chance to get them to the table, the food becomes soggy.  I don't know why.  However, if I reheat leftovers in the oven, the batter turns into something awesome.

 

Recipes have varied from only a dusting to full on gooey booze-drenched batters.  Frying has been tested between 350 and 400 F, small batches at a time.  Food items are everything from veggies to meats.

 

Any ideas?

[Yiannos]

Not sure about how rice flour and those other starches would do, but anything I fry at home goes into a 175 - 200 degree oven on a cooling rack set into a sheet pan until I am done frying the entire quantity of fries onion rings etc. Everything stays nice and crunchy until I am ready to serve but again not 100% positive about how  your particular ingredients would end up.

[chromedome]

Usually the culprit is steam escaping from the food within the batter, and the inner layer of cooked-but-not-crisp batter in the case of thicker mixtures. I know of only a limited number of ways to deal with this: Batter only foods with low water content; fry them until they're completely crisp and dry throughout; or give them -- as @Yiannos says -- a rest in the warming oven where the dry heat aids the escape/evaporation of steam but keeps the exterior crisp until you're ready to eat. 

 

The first two options are thoroughly problematic, so I lean to the third. It too will only take you so far, but it's a good and practical technique. 

[jedovaty]

Thank you.  I'll give it a try!

[Thanks for the Crepes]

Yes, that is the thing about fried stuff. It needs to be consumed as quickly as possible. It will hold a little while in a hot oven, but speed is of the essence. When I fry for a number or people, I do it in batches and serve it up as it comes out of the fryer after draining and blotting. I might snatch a cook's tidbit here and there, but I sit down and eat last. Potatoes will hold in the oven better than delicate seafood, so if I'm doing fish or shrimp and chips, I always fry the taters up first.

 

All kinds of vegetable lend themselves up deliciously to the fryer, but moist things like eggplant, zucchini and green tomatoes really need to be eaten right away. The steam coming out of the interior will quickly destroy any crispness they had.

[nickrey]

Use Trisol. The recommended usage is 30% Trisol to 70% flour.

[ElsieD]

4 hours ago, nickrey said:

Use Trisol. The recommended usage is 30% Trisol to 70% flour.

 

I'd never heard of this, but that is true of a lot of things.  It says it can be used as a substitute for sugar in dough preparations.  Is it sweet?

Edited March 7, 2017 by ElsieD
Inserted the word never (log)

[Martin Fisher]

1 hour ago, ElsieD said:

 

I'd never heard of this, but that is true of a lot of things.  It says it can be used as a substitute for sugar in dough preparations.  Is it sweet?

 

 

It's wheat dextrin, a fiber—it's not noticeably sweet.

Well, that's subjective. I wouldn't call it sweet—and I'm one who's definitely not a sweets freak.

[nickrey]

5 hours ago, DiggingDogFarm said:

 

It's wheat dextrin, a fiber—it's not noticeably sweet.

Well, that's subjective. I wouldn't call it sweet—and I'm one who's definitely not a sweets freak.

I agree with Martin, the taste is neutral.

[gfweb]

11 minutes ago, nickrey said:

I agree with Martin, the taste is neutral.

Agreed

[Dave the Cook]

One thing that can help with batters is to remove some of the water from the batter by substituting alcohol. We usually employ 80-proof vodka because of its neutral flavor, but you can use whatever spirits you like, as long as the alcohol content is substantial. While it's just as good a solvent as water at room temperature, at frying temps the alcohol evaporates more readily, leaving the cooked batter drier; it also (along with gluten-free rice flour) restricts gluten formation somewhat, which might (I don't know for sure) prevent the cooked batter from retaining moisture.

 

More information in McGee's article and recipe in the NY Times. (Note that while McGee uses beer, you can substitute any carbonated liquid; we often just use club soda.)

[Anna N]

I was pretty sure Kerry Beal and I had played with Trisol at some point. 

Here.

[FeChef]

if item takes 12 min, fry for 6, let rest, fry for another 6. Or fry items let them all rest and fry for 2 min. double fry method also makes items crispier then usual.

[Josh71]

On 3/7/2017 at 10:46 PM, Anna N said:

I was pretty sure Kerry Beal and I had played with Trisol at some point. 

Here.

 

Thanks for this! I bought 1kg Trisol yesterday lol.

I am courious about it, that's why. 

Wondering what kind of other (chemical?) ingredients that made into Trisol though.

[nickrey]

Seems like it's extracted using acid link here.

 

"Dextrin is a hydrolyzed starch made from various starches such as potato, corn, tapioca, rice, arrowroot or wheat. Wheat starch is a byproduct from extracting gluten from wheat. The wheat starch is sprayed with acid while being agitated and then suspended in water by the acids or enzymes. After maturing, the wheat starch is dried in a roaster where it is continually heated and stirred. The converted dextrin is then taken from the roaster and cooled. It is humidified before packing to keep the dextrin from getting lumpy or foaming. Heating times and acids vary depending upon the manufacturer and the final product usage."

 

Definitely not gluten free, it appears.

 

[JAZ]

On 3/7/2017 at 2:44 AM, Thanks for the Crepes said:

. . . Potatoes will hold in the oven better than delicate seafood, so if I'm doing fish or shrimp and chips, I always fry the taters up first.

 

 

That's interesting. We find exactly the opposite. I assume it's because the fries aren't coated with anything. The batter we use (as Dave the Cook explains above) stays crisp for quite a while, so we do anything coated with it before the fries.

[jedovaty]

Would you consider cauliflower to be a low moisture food?  I'm kind of torn whether or not it is, can justify it either way.  Last time I tried these, they were soggy within a couple minutes out of the oil.

 

On using high-proof alcohol, does price tag make a difference?  I don't drink (although do use wine or sherry or sake in cooking), so it's always a little overwhelming for me.  Maybe a recommendation on a brand would be helpful?

 

Will be experimenting this weekend or next!

[Dave the Cook]

39 minutes ago, jedovaty said:

Would you consider cauliflower to be a low moisture food?  I'm kind of torn whether or not it is, can justify it either way.  Last time I tried these, they were soggy within a couple minutes out of the oil.

 

On using high-proof alcohol, does price tag make a difference?  I don't drink (although do use wine or sherry or sake in cooking), so it's always a little overwhelming for me.  Maybe a recommendation on a brand would be helpful?

 

Will be experimenting this weekend or next!

 

According to the USDA, cauliflower is 92 - 94% water, depending on how it's prepared. That's a little misleading, because most food is mostly water; however, 92% is comparatively high. Snap beans, for example, are 89% and corn is about 70%; potatoes about 75%.

 

We only buy vodka for cooking, so we don't care about flavor (or any other) nuances. I amuse myself by stepping up to the sales counter and saying, as loudly as my nerve will permit, "A pint of your cheapest vodka, my good man!" Last time, I ended up with McCormick. Works fine.

[jedovaty]

 

9 hours ago, Dave the Cook said:

We only buy vodka for cooking, so we don't care about flavor (or any other) nuances. I amuse myself by stepping up to the sales counter and saying, as loudly as my nerve will permit, "A pint of your cheapest vodka, my good man!" Last time, I ended up with McCormick. Works fine.

This is just my style, excellent!

[Thanks for the Crepes]

11 hours ago, jedovaty said:

On using high-proof alcohol, does price tag make a difference?  I don't drink (although do use wine or sherry or sake in cooking), so it's always a little overwhelming for me.  Maybe a recommendation on a brand would be helpful?

 

Hi jedovaty,

 

J.W. Dante is a Kentucky distiller, better known for their bourbon whiskey. As a matter of budget, and as a drinker, I have sampled many cheap vodkas over the years, and have settled on J.W. Dante's version. It runs $12.95 plus tax for a 1.75 ml bottle here in the 

North Carolina government's liquor monopoly. I do not know about pints, but it is better to me than say Aristocrat or some of the similar priced Russian ones. 

 

I had already known that vodka worked well in pie crusts, and it makes complete sense that it would as well in a batter for frying. I will totally use this idea! The trisol idea seems good too, but I doubt I can get it locally.

[jedovaty]

Thank you TC, I have a few large liquor stores around or simply order online, so I'll put that Kentucky distiller on the list.  If I can fry up something that stays crispy or crunchy for more than a couple minutes, maybe I'll try a fry off between a high priced one and a cheap one another day.  So much to do, so little time.

 

I'm beginning to wonder, maybe with something like veggies: would roasting first be helpful, reduce a bit of moisture?  Get them sort of al-dente, especially the tougher ones, before frying?  Low and slow, vs fast and hot?

 

Or perhaps a few days in the freezer, sort of a half-arsed freeze dry might be interesting tactic <- this might be better alternate for proteins.  Freeze some sous vided chicken or pork?

[paulraphael]

I would spend the absolute minimum on any booze that's going into a deep fryer. People can't even taste the difference between vodkas when they're mixed with fruit juice.

 

In addition to volatility, alcohol offers the benefit of not developing gluten. Not sure if that's of any practical benefit here (it's a reason people use it in pastry dough).

[jedovaty]

Hi: just reporting back a modicum of success.  First attempt was cauliflower.  Baked under just tender, then dipped into a fairly runny batter mix of cornstarch, rice flower, baking powder, vodka, and bubbly water - starch, flour, and liquids all same volume. This went immediately into oil near 400F.  Although a lot of the batter came off in the oil, the texture was exactly what I was looking for, with a very very light battering, crispy.  It retained the crisp for at least five minutes, while I finished the rest of the batch, then into oven for about 20 minutes.  It was still good out of the oven, but didn't have quite the same crackle.  No big, best ever!  Clearly removing the moisture was the key here.

 

We tried raw sweet onion rings in the same batter, this was the bomb.  Because of the runny batter, it left a lot of "open space" on the onion so it creating this neat structure of exposed onion, batter interlinked with some batter and onion, and then batter.  Doing this one again for sure, the open structure allowed any steam to escape.

 

Finally, tried a small piece of fish.  Immediate results were great, but after about 3-4 minutes, the crispy batter became soft.  Into the oven for 20 minutes, and meh, didn't help much.  Took it back to the oven after overnight fridge, and the crispy returns.

 

Going to try with chicken thighs and tenders next time - I plan on sous-vide + karaage style marinade, then chill, remove the excess marinade, let "dry" overnight in fridge, then try frying in same batter as above.  Or, perhaps I'll use vodka instead of sake+mirin in the marinade, then just mix that with katakuriko powder.  Hmmm.

 

Thanks again for the help everyone.

[FeChef]

Try the double fry method i suggested. I use it for wings. I deep fry my wings for a total of 13 min but i fry for 7 minutes, then flash freeze then later in the day, or even weeks, i remove from freezer and deep fry for another 6 or 7 minutes. Still golden brown and crispy even drenched in buffalo sauce.

 

I forgot to mention,and i am not sure how much this affects texture, but i use potato flour. Not starch. I also do not use any liquids. I use a salt rub to draw out moisture and suck in the salt. This makes the exterior wet and sticky to adhere the potato flour. I do not season the potato flour since the wings are already seasoned. This could be why i have such good crispy results.

Edited March 28, 2017 by FeChef (log)

[jedovaty]

Oh, I totally forgot about this.  FeChef, thanks, I didn't mention in my original post, but I've done the double fry method, and results are same, things do get soggy (I tried it a few times actually, things like french fries, chicken karaage, and schnitzel). 

 

After the recent cauliflower experiments, it's likely the moisture causing my problems, with batter/technique second. 

 

That said, I'm going to give double fry a second try next time, and, I'll throw potato flour into the mix of experiments.