I prefer mine on the Tempura-ish side (no corn meal or bread crumbs), and this is what I have pretty much settled on:
1 white onion
45 grams AP flour
45 grams corn starch
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup beer
Coat evenly and shallow fry in cast iron with canola oil for 3 to 4 minutes, flipping halfway.
Not perfect, but pretty darned good. I have considered replacing the AP flour with rice flour, but rarely (if ever) have that on hand. Can I make rice flour from just white rice in the Vitamix?
So what’s your fav recipe/method for this delicious fried side?
3 Likes
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
2
I’m going to try yours because all the other ones I’ve tried have failed.
Probably operator error, though. My problem is once I flip, the coating always starts to delaminate.
As for what I like to eat (like if buying in a restaurant), I’m equally happy with your Tempura-type and with the crunchier corn meal or crumbs coated.
We now generally have rice flour on hand (GF daughter) so I might try your recipe with half-half AP and rice. But before that, she did make rice flour in the food processor. But then she had to sift a bit because some larger pieces remained. We don’t have a Vitamix but from what I’ve heard they’re hella fast/powerful (likely orders of magnitude more than our Cuisinart FP) so I think that should work out fine for you.
I recently discovered this at the grocery store and no way am i going back to making my own batter. I do cut back a little on the water. I also use it for deep fried battered cheese stuffed jalapeños. Nice and crispy and seals perfectly for the onion rings and peppers
The Vodka makes the batter lighter. Because vodka is more volatile than water, it evaporates more quickly, which dries out the batter faster and more violently . That creates larger bubbles and even more surface area, in turn resulting in a much crispier crust.
As to the beer, yeast and carbonation in beer acts like yeast in bread, making the batter go puffy as it cooks so it’s thin and light rather than thick and greasy . It’s like Japan’s famous tempura; Ice cold beer is used to make the batter cold. The shock of cold batter hitting the hot oil makes it go super-crispy.
Sure, or even carbonated water. Really any carbonated water works, people use beer to give the batter that little bit of oomph taste-wise. As to the “cheap” part – never want to waste the good stuff on batter. Unlike wine, beer that is not good enough to drink, is definitely good enough to cook with.
I’m fine with it. Sodium Aluminum Phosphate and Monocalcium Phosphate are common ingredients in baking powder. These phosphates have been used as leavening agents for years. Mononitrate Is Vitamin B1 and is added to some products to maintain nutrient content during processing. There is some concern that sodium aluminum sulfate used as a leavening agent is harmful and related to Alzheimer’s, but that ingredient does not seem to appear in this product.
