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The art of frying
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| Good fried food should be crispy and have a lovely golden color, it should not be too greasy and, most importantly, it must be served piping hot. The final result depends on a whole series of variables, beginning with the fat used for frying. |
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| 1. |
Although vegetable oils are primarily used today, for a long time people used lard, one of the commonest animal fats in the Italian countryside. Nowadays it is less popular because of health considerations, this is because the high temperatures reached during the frying process can generate compounds that are not in keeping with the modern tenets of healthy eating.
Leaving aside for a moment these negative considerations, lard can be used to provide some very excellent frying results, such as chips that are crispy on the outside and tender inside, a combination that is hard to achieve in any other way. In the North of Italy lard is still used for frying crescentine and gnocco x, traditional Emilian specialties, but it's in the South that the use of lard is still fairly widespread. Butter and margarine may also be used for frying.
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OILS MADE FROM SEEDS AND OLIVES |
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| 2. |
There are diverse opinions regarding the best oil for frying. One of the main factors influencing the successful outcome of your frying enterprises is the smoke point. This terms refers to the temperature at which the oil begins smoking, unleashing harmful substances that have an unpleasant, acrid taste.
Olive oil, rich in oleic acid, has a smoke point of around 190°C, which is more than sufficient to qualify it as an excellent all-round oil for everyday frying purposes, which generally require no more than 150-160°C. Oils made from seeds, on the other hand, are composed primarily of linoleic acid which is more fragile and easily broken down; in this case, the harmful substances are released much sooner.
Apart from the smoke-point consideration, olive oil is preferable (especially if regarded in the long term) because it is a better quality oil and capable of conferring a more outstanding flavor to fried food, although you can certainly go ahead and use seed oil once in a while.
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By changing the type of cooking medium (animal or vegetable), however, we also change the flavor and many chefs like to change the type of oil they use depending of the requirements of the menu. Lard, for example, is often used in bakeries to fry certain pastry items (sfrappole, zeppole...), while many cooks prefer peanut oil for deep frying, a procedure in which the entire piece of food is literally submerged in oil.
Olive oil, on the other hand, is preferred for quick frying jobs, but, we repeat, there are no universal rules. The marketplace offers a variety of vegetable-oil blends designed to avoid creating the telltale smell that inevitably accompanies this procedure, an odor that, due to its lipid base, tends to adhere to clothing, curtains and carpets etc.
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Apart from the selection of the oil, in order to fry well you must have an abundant amount of an oil that is fresh, i.e. not one that has been used before for frying, and at the right temperature. Try not to let the food items you are frying touch each other so that they are completely surrounded by boiling oil. We recommend drying the food well before frying to avoid painful splattering when you put the food into the hot oil.
You can keep an eye on the temperature by using a deep-fryer with a self-regulating thermostat or by using a special cooking thermometer. If you don't have these instruments available, you can simple toss a little piece of bread into the oil and see what happens. If it immediately turns black, the temperature is too high, and if it takes several minutes to brown, it's too low.
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AS IS, WITH FLOUR OR IN BATTER |
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| 5. |
If the food to be fried is able to withstand x heat well, as in the case of potatoes, then we can plunk it into the oil with no further ado. But when dealing with more delicate foods (little fish, mollusks, eggplant or zucchini) it's generally best to lightly dust them with flour before frying, making sure you shake of the excess flour.
The breading process involves first dipping the food in beaten egg and then rolling it in breadcrumbs, a process that may be repeated a couple of times. Many cooks dust the food in flour before dipping it into the beaten eggs. After breading it's a good idea to let the food stand for a few minutes so that the different layers will stick to the food better.
Batters may also be spiced up by adding a little parsley, lemon peel, liqueur or other things, depending on the type of recipe. The temperature setting is also determined by the kind of frying you're doing, the size of the piece of food involved and the freshness of the oil. As a rule of thumb, the smaller the food item is, the higher the temperature should be, whereas, if you're dealing with bulky chunks of food, it's best to keep the temperature a bit lower so that the food will cook evenly all the way through, without burning on the outside and remaining raw on the inside.
Once you have drained and removed the fried food, you still need to eliminate excess oil by placing it on some absorbent paper towels for a few moments; then, after a quick salting (it does little good to add salt while food is frying and may cause dangerous splattering), your fried food is ready to serve. The choice of wine depends on what exactly you have fried, remembering always that Lambrusco, thanks to its marked tannic quality, is one of the most pleasant and effective ways to cleanse the palate of the inevitable greasy sensation associated with eating fried foods.
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