Dear Tamar:
I've been cooking for decades, but have never been able to shallow fry without a total mess on my hands. I can get a good finished product, but the oil splatters everywhere. I use a wide cast iron skillet with between 1/4 and 1/3 inch canola oil. I have one of those flat mesh screens but it doesn't do much against the splatter. I find the idea of using a thermometer every time tedious, but is that what I should do? Thank you!
-Learning to Fry
Dear Learning to Fry,
The following story I know only secondhand. Frying falafel in a muumuu—a sartorial detail that places me in infancy at the time—my mother caught on fire. She ran, muumuu flaming, into the bedroom, where my father lay on the bed, watching tv. My mother shouted to alert him, to which he replied: “Ssssh, Aime-lah, I’m watching the news.”
I remember the second frying disaster, at least in a fragmentary way. I was four. My mother was frying sliced potatoes when the pan, and eventually the whole kitchen, went up in flames. I dragged my 10-month old brother out of the apartment by the heel of his yellow onesie. We lived in a third-floor walk up; I assume someone intervened before I began thwumping him down the stairs. While I waited for the firemen in an apartment below, neighbors cooked me a whole potato in their new microwave. It was rubbery and terrible. I remember silently lamenting the planned fried potatoes’ tragic end.
I bear scars of other trauma, but I’ve emerged from those two events unscathed—if anything, stronger. I’ve passed through the figurative fire, and lived to tell. I love frying. I fry, either shallow or deep, at least once a week—often enough that when a British-Roman cook described her Sicilian partner’s mother (also Sicilian) as constantly frying some vegetable or fritter in a little pot of oil, I saw myself in her description: Sono io, sempre a friggere.
I offer you my history not to prove my expertise, but to agree with you: Frying is tempestuous. When it goes bad, it can go very, very bad. I’ve had as many bad frys as good ones.
While some splatter is inevitable, some can be mitigated. The first variable to consider is liquid. The drier the item you fry, the less water there is to bubble up into hot oil. Get what you’re frying very dry, patting it with a towel just before adding it to oil. If you’re frying something breaded, try to breadcrumb a fairly uniform layer—so underlying egg is thoroughly covered. Don’t include salt in your breadcrumbs. It will encourage water to the item’s surface—and cause sputtering. Season the innermost ingredient. If you’re frying something without a coating, season it well, then pat its surface dry just before coating.
I don’t think there’s any reason for you to hunt down a thermometer every time you fry. But you should control the temperature of your oil resolutely. Don’t start frying until a breadcrumb sizzles and fries the instant it hits the oil. Turn down the heat beneath the oil when splatter begins. Once you’ve lowered oil temperature to halt splatter, you’ll likely turn it up again. Fiddling will continue, in this manner. If you don’t want to be fiddling and adjusting, dig out a thermometer. It’s either/or.
I also recommend using more oil—an inch, rather than your 1/4-1/3 inch—which will keep food’s surfaces in contact with only oil, rather than the pan’s side or bottom. And I recommend a higher-sided vessel than your cast iron pan. There’s no reason not to use a dutch oven or saucepan for shallow frying, just as you would for deep frying. It will catch a good amount of splatter, just by getting in its path.
Dear cook, I hope this advice gives you wings to fry with. None of this will prevent a fire—or, it didn’t, in my mother’s case. She was frying in deep enough oil when hers escaped the stove. (I’m not sure whether she dutifully patted her ingredients dry.) Do not fry in a muumuu, turn off the tv before beginning, and know where your children are, and you should be moderately safe.
Totally agree with all this sage advice. I would just add that if the fat you're frying in (and why not extra-virgin olive oil, she suggested) spatters, you just wipe the spatters up once you're done. Think of it as part of the technique of frying.