Adventures in deep frying
Apr. 9th, 2011 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleHad an amusing time yesterday afternoon at the weekly "gate party".
Over on the other side of the ranch, there's a little driveway at a gate, with a small flat area and a picnic table, which has become the designated spot for an impromptu party every Friday afternoon. Our lunatic neighbors up the hill said that they were going to bring burgers, so they suggested - in jest - that I make french fries to go with them.
I can't resist a challenge, so I did. I packed up two crates with the Stovetec, a bag of wood, a gallon of oil, suitably chopped potatoes, and other accouterments. It was a great opportunity to test a whole bunch of things at once while entertaining the local redneck/pyromaniac contingent.
I haven't been using the Stovetec all that much; it's not until you get more experienced cooking with wood that you realize what a miracle we've got in bottled propane. I ran a few tests at home first to make sure it was going to behave. My standard test is to heat a gallon of water for ten minutes. On a restaurant range, this gets the water from 50F to just shy of boiling, an easily remembered standard. The Stovetec sometimes reaches that power, when it's well warmed up and running on nice dry madrone, but more often it only gets to about 70% of that level.
Cook's Illustrated provides an unusually convenient french fry recipe, starting with the potatoes in cold oil. You heat them on high for 15 minutes without touching them, then start stirring gently for another 10 minutes. You *must* use Yukon Gold potatoes - russets, apparently, turn to mush. This makes it especially easy since the raw potatoes are sturdy and don't break, and they don't turn brown after cutting, either.
Turns out this was a match made in heaven. The Stovetec provided exactly the right amount of heat, and three batches of fries (2 lb each) were all done inside of an hour. Just to be prissy I brought sea salt that had been hand-collected by local hippies, and ground it in a mortar ]before sprinkling it on the fries, which turned out to be a very worth the trouble.
The guys here LOVE primitive technologies and were fascinated by the stove. Even I was kind of impressed to see how little wood it ended up using - I had brought two grocery bags filled with kindling, and left having used only half a bag.
Hilariously, what had started as a warm sunny afternoon turned very awful very quickly, right in the middle of the whole process. The skies opened up and started dumping us with sleet and hail. Fortunately, someone had an umbrella in their car, so he held it over the pot of oil so as to prevent the fries from getting ruined. The whole field turned into one big mudhole inside of about five minutes.
Which, of course, only made it better. That's what's so great about living here, there's a great sense of fun and frivolity and nobody minds getting dirty. Burgers and fries never tasted so good!
Over on the other side of the ranch, there's a little driveway at a gate, with a small flat area and a picnic table, which has become the designated spot for an impromptu party every Friday afternoon. Our lunatic neighbors up the hill said that they were going to bring burgers, so they suggested - in jest - that I make french fries to go with them.
I can't resist a challenge, so I did. I packed up two crates with the Stovetec, a bag of wood, a gallon of oil, suitably chopped potatoes, and other accouterments. It was a great opportunity to test a whole bunch of things at once while entertaining the local redneck/pyromaniac contingent.
I haven't been using the Stovetec all that much; it's not until you get more experienced cooking with wood that you realize what a miracle we've got in bottled propane. I ran a few tests at home first to make sure it was going to behave. My standard test is to heat a gallon of water for ten minutes. On a restaurant range, this gets the water from 50F to just shy of boiling, an easily remembered standard. The Stovetec sometimes reaches that power, when it's well warmed up and running on nice dry madrone, but more often it only gets to about 70% of that level.
Cook's Illustrated provides an unusually convenient french fry recipe, starting with the potatoes in cold oil. You heat them on high for 15 minutes without touching them, then start stirring gently for another 10 minutes. You *must* use Yukon Gold potatoes - russets, apparently, turn to mush. This makes it especially easy since the raw potatoes are sturdy and don't break, and they don't turn brown after cutting, either.
Turns out this was a match made in heaven. The Stovetec provided exactly the right amount of heat, and three batches of fries (2 lb each) were all done inside of an hour. Just to be prissy I brought sea salt that had been hand-collected by local hippies, and ground it in a mortar ]before sprinkling it on the fries, which turned out to be a very worth the trouble.
The guys here LOVE primitive technologies and were fascinated by the stove. Even I was kind of impressed to see how little wood it ended up using - I had brought two grocery bags filled with kindling, and left having used only half a bag.
Hilariously, what had started as a warm sunny afternoon turned very awful very quickly, right in the middle of the whole process. The skies opened up and started dumping us with sleet and hail. Fortunately, someone had an umbrella in their car, so he held it over the pot of oil so as to prevent the fries from getting ruined. The whole field turned into one big mudhole inside of about five minutes.
Which, of course, only made it better. That's what's so great about living here, there's a great sense of fun and frivolity and nobody minds getting dirty. Burgers and fries never tasted so good!
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-09 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-09 11:33 pm (UTC)On the topic of deep frying, I've been playing with frying chicken in an old largish pressure cooker, which is a bit frightening at first. However, the chicken is quite good.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-10 07:45 am (UTC)