Tags
beer batter, deep fryer, deep frying, fish, fish and chips, fried, frying, rellenos
This is the final installment of ‘what happened to that first batch of oil in my new deep fryer.’ So far, I’ve made zucchini sticks, deep fried mac’n’cheese, some buffalo wings, and a batch of doughnuts. Not too shabby. After each day that I used the fryer, I strained that crud and lost little bits out of the oil and cleaned the fryer before returning the oil. When I was done, I kept the fryer bucket covered and in the fridge. (Any cool and dark place will do just fine though.) Cleaning everything out in between uses and storing it properly will make your oil last much longer.
The last things to be fried before the oil flew up to the great dump in the sky were some chili rellenos and fish and chips, both of which were beer battered.
Let me take a minute here to say that the fish was the last thing to be fried and also the last thing to be dipped in the beer batter before both the oil and batter were thrown out. The batter because of the fear of germs and the oil because fish makes it smell funky. Doughnuts with a hint of halibut? No thank you.
To beer batter something, you just toss it gently in seasoned flour (just like Three Stage Frying!) and then dunk it into the beer batter. Batter has a hard time sticking to moist items, like stuffed chilis or fish pieces, and the flour helps the batter stick to the ingredient to be fried.
These were just some roasted pasilla chilis that were stuffed with cheese, hot peppers, onions and corn. A happy little vegetarian dinner. Sorry, no recipe it was some windfall ingredients that I had a while back and popped into the freezer a month ago and I have no clue what it cost to make it. Don’t be ashamed of your thrifty-ness and and creative ability; if your friends know about it, they will start giving you things they’re not clever enough to use up or don’t have the time for.
Here’s my fish and chips, made from some halibut that my Daddy slew up in Alaska. Any white fish that you like would be great. I did oven fries because shit was just getting a little to real around here with the new deep fryer.
Basic Beer Batter
Makes 3 cups, which is enought to fry quite a few things – cost approx $1.24 per batch
Ingredients
- 1 egg ($.16)
- 1 can cheap beer ($.58, yep I know, really cheap beer)
- 1 1/2 cups flour ($.25)
- 1 Tbs lemon juice
- Pinch salt
Just mix everything together until it’s almost lump free. I like to store my batter in a tall, slim container so that I can get maximum dunkage and minimal waste.
This beer batter will keep in the fridge for a day or so, I wouldn’t push it more that 2 days though.
