"deep fry" news and stories

Like they say, ain't no thang like a chicken wang. Er, rather chicken wing.

I realize that we're posting about main dishes all day today for Slashfood's Super Bowl Week, and traditionally, chicken wings are eaten as appetizers. However, if you eat two dozen chicken wings the way I do with a small bowl of rice on the side, you can pretty much consider these chicken wings a main course.

These wings are based on a recipe that I first manipulated out of a college roommate, who got it from her friend's mother. I took lecture notes, my roommate gave me the recipe. Now, it's a very loose set of instructions, since I first got it form a Korean mom, and there's no such thing as "recipes" for Korean moms. There is always room for customization, which I had to do last night because my guests are on a low-spice diet. I know. Could there be anything worse than a low-spice diet?

If you're planning on frying up your turkey for Thanksgiving, you probably should avoid propane-powered gas fryers. Although some chefs endorse them, often citing fast heating times as one of their reasons, Consumer Reports and product safety-testing nonprofit Underwriter Laboratories (UL), has found them to be unsafe. Most of the dangers pertain to fire risks because the units are highly combustible and a spillover of oil can cause the whole unit to ignite. Most tip over easily and many have no thermostat controls, which would prevent the cooking oil from coming close to "600 degrees [F],...the flash point of oil."

A safer alternative is an electric fryer. UL endorses the Turk N' Surf, which has a safety shutoff and adjustable thermostat. It is also safe enough to use indoors and produces a finely fried turkey.

If you already have a gas fryer and are not planning to replace it before Thanksgiving, keep some of these safety tips in mind:

• Use outdoors on a flat, fireproof surface, away from buildings, pets and children.
• Never leave it unattended and keep a close watch on the oil temperature.
• Use very well insulated pot holders when touching the unit and wear safety goggles to protect your eyes from to possibility of oil splatter.
• Keep an all-purpose fire extinguisher nearby in case anything goes wrong. You might want to have the number for take-out on speed dial, too, as a backup.

[Thanks, Marc!]

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Sometimes, holidays just beg to be celebrated with fried foods. Yesterday, to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, Jessica made churros and posted about them on her blog, Su Good Eats. Jessica tells us that churros got their start as a French dish, not a Mexican one, since they are based on choux pastry, which is typically used to make eclairs and cream puffs. In this case, of course, it is deep fried and rolled in a cinnamon-sugar mixture to make a crispy and delicious snack that you'll want to eat as soon as it's cool enough to pop into your mouth. Coincidentally, the recipe came from the same cookbook that was our cookbook of the day yesterday, Rick Bayless's Mexico One Day At A Time!

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