Fry-Day Jan 16th 2009 - Fried Chicken

We started with a whole Murray's Chicken. I like Murray's because they are farm-raised and you can look up the code on the chicken to see where it came from. We butchered the chicken and followed a recipe for Colonel Sander's KFC chicken, but it didn't taste anything like that. It was much better!

About a year ago I had a bad dream about KFC chicken and ever since then I cannot eat it. Mind you, I used to work there when I was in high school. I digress, let me tell you more about the chicken. It was nice and crisp on the outside and juicy on the inside. And the flavor of the meat was so good!

We learned that you need to turn the temperature dial lower when you cook chicken - because the insides take longer to cook than, say, a potato peel. Duh. So by the time the chicken was done, we were all starving. That is why the photo is a little weird. I made cottage cheese/sweet potato gnocchi in a pesto sauce first and our chicken went straight into the gnocchi bowls because everyone wanted to eat all the pesto sauce. So that explains why the chicken is in a bowl of green stuff. The legs were the tastiest pieces and if we do chicken again, I'd look for a pack of just chicken legs I think.

While I was prepping the chicken, the men wanted to see what fried gnocchi was like. We all gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up! Here's a picture. Sorry they look like little turds. You'll have to take my word for it that they were good.


After dinner we played a really fun game called Wise and Otherwise. The hot oil sitting in the fryer was too tempting for my husband so he made up some pancake batter to turn into Funnel Cakes. The first try was undercooked and gross (on the right). Second batch was much better (left). You can see them side by side here.

Fry-Day Jan 9th 2009 - Fried Olives

The focus of this Fry-Day was all about Fried Olives. A while back, the NY Times food blog, Bitten, featured a short article about deep fried olives, and I haven't been able to get that idea out of my head since. We used Trader Joe's Garlic-Stuffed Olives and basically followed the NY Times directions, rolling them on a paper towel, then flouring, egging, and bread-crumbing.

We used canola oil for the frying.

Also pictured are fried potato peels which were an excellent alternative to composting the peels. Just drop the peels into the oil and wait for them to pop up to the top. We make our own homemade ketchup which is what you see in the little blue condiment bowl. Homemade ketchup is an essential for any serious fry-day-er. Someday I'll post the secret recipe, if you are lucky.

We had lentil soup and a salad with our fried goodness and shared a whole wheat baguette. There was a little leftover bread, so I turned it into french toast and fried it. Oh my! Fried French Toast is amazing! Serve with powdered sugar on top.

At the end of the evening, I strained the oil and put it into a glass jar to reuse next fry-day.

Equipment

Fry-Day was born when two neighbors realized they could share ownership of a deep-fryer and restrict themselves for the sake of health to only using it on Fridays - hence - Fry Day, and the Fry-Day Blog. Welcome!

Our equipment of choice is the Cuisinart CDF-100 Compact Deep Fryer. It's got a small footprint on the countertop and has a built in carbon filter in the top so that our apartments are less likely to stink like grease all weekend.