North Arlington All Stars

Temperature has been set and the oil is heating up. Unfortunately, the only thing the display shows is the target temperature, not the current temperature. So you just have to wait until the red light goes off.


The food is cooking. Action shot!


Tots! This is the first thing I tasted and it was amazing!


Broccoli bites and cheese sticks. Note the lack of tots in this picture. The pepper jack kind of disintergrated, but the cheddar was ever better than I thought. Like when you make nachos and the cheese burns on the edge of the plate? OMG.


The florets of the broccoli got burned. I was worried that the batter would be too think in between each little floret, but that's probably just what I wanted. Or just less cooking time.



And lastly, the fish. VERY good.

Labels: deep fryer

The fryer itself is clean and ready to go. I have it set up on the back patio table.


The oil and the rest of the wet ingredients. The batter recipe calls for beer and seltzer. The marinara is for the cheese.


The dry ingredients. The fish batter has flour and baking powder. I might make a bread crumb coating for the cheese.

I'm fairly confident that this will go off without any problems. I suppose the only unknown is how messy this will get. After all, if I can do it on the stovetop in a pot of oil, I can do it in an actual deep fryer.

The Menu

1. broccoli bites
2. cheese sticks, 3 kinds: mozzarella, cheddar and pepper jack (OMG!)
3. fish (cod)

The batter for all three will be the same, for ease. It is a beer batter that I found for the fish and it sounds just fine for the other two. In the future I will need to focus the batters, depending on what I'm frying. A batter for sweet things, for example, and a straight tempura style batter.

Everything is washed. Next up - the fryer.

This is the first post of the day that will recount my adventures with my new deep fryer.

I hope to document every step and every delicious bite, but obviously pictures will take a backseat to me not burning the house down.

I have one data point of experience with deep frying and it was many years ago when I made tempura batter for shrimp and asparagus on the kitchen stove in a pot of oil. It worked OK, but it was dangerous and it made the apartment stink like grease for several days.

Now that I have a house with a deck and a backyard, I can do the frying outside!

This is gonna be great!

Labels: deep frying