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Welcome back to School of Walks channel. This is the courses section of the channel and we're really enjoying or I'm really enjoying uh showing you um some real detail around the core techniques of Chinese cooking. This is lesson three in deep frying. Really, it's the howto of deep frying. Having touched on uh all the various different fats and the setup of deep frying and being prepared for your deep frying, I am prepared. I have my equipment here, which is lesson one, ready to deep fry and drain or strain uh the excess oil. And then I've got various different um dishes, I guess, very quick, simple uh dishes to show you certain quirks around deep frying that uh might help you overcome those quirks
uh and deep fry in the best possible way at home. So, uh the first uh dish that I'm going to do is some spring rolls. I've got some uh fish and some uh very simple stir- fried egg here that I'm going to use to demonstrate. Pes is great for deep frying because it's a very natural barrier to the oil then like sort of really making your deep fried foods over greasy. But the oil temperature needs to be right as well. Um and how you deal with certain things uh like your pastry um is also quite important. Um, so with this, I've got my fish can be quite wet. So, I've dried it on this clean kitchen paper here and dabbed it dry and then salted that fish.
And the drier any wet ingredients, the better when you're putting into um your spring roll pastries or dumpling pastries or anything like that. When my dad used to come home, he used to make things like spring rolls and he'd just do very simple fillings um you know mainly for ease so that he just had to concentrate on rolling them and then frying them. Um I've got some uh spring onion here uh and some coriander. You know why not? Um put a little bit in there uh whilst we got it too. Um and just this seasoned eggs. So, it's just salt and sesame oil uh in this. When you're uh rolling spring rolls, there are various ways to do it.
The most traditional way is to roll it really tight, um like so uh into the middle. Uh take a little bit of egg to dab across and then uh fold the center in kind of like an envelope. And then continue rolling from there. And just make sure you've got enough egg to stick that envelope um together. and you roll it, tighten it, roll it, tighten it, roll it, tighten it. Now, I wanted to show you spring rolls because this traditional method um when you dunk it into the hot oil um will crisp up relatively well, but I'll show you another fold where it's the same sort of folding method except what we're doing is I'll allow a little bit more air um in the wrap. And the reason being is
that if you create little air pockets in your pastry when you're deep frying, then the oil can kind of go in and out of that those air pockets and crisp up as much of the pastry as possible and not just the outside. Um, and I'll show you what difference that makes when we actually get to the frying. So you roll it up similar to before to the middle, but then when I fold the sides over, I'm kind of purposefully leaving a bit of a gap and an air pocket into the pastry. And then same again as I roll and fold the rest of it. So, if you ever have bitten into really, really crispy one ton or spring roll, it's because whoever's made it has thought about this rolling process where I'm
going to try and leave a little bit of a gap or tunnel of air here before I then finish rolling that pastry. And you can see they're two, they're exactly the same ingredients rolled ever so slightly differently. And the idea with that is that the oil can really travel through that spring roll and crisp that pastry up even more. Now this oil is fizzing. I've got here a vegetable oil stroke rice brand oil half and half mix. Mainly just cuz I've topped it up from the uh from lesson two. So, I'm going to cook these in these two half batches, you know. And I'd highly recommend when you're deep frying that you always do things in very comfortable batches because if you put too many ingredients into your hot oil, the oil
can come right up the pan and it will also sort of cool the oil down too quickly. If that oil cools down very quickly, it won't fry properly and things will start to stick together. Especially if you're, you know, using sort of wetter batters or battered ingredients. Um, you don't want anything to stick together at all when you're frying. You want every piece to be nice and separate. Once your um pastry has had its initial seal, you want that oil to cool down slightly anyway because you need to cook whatever's inside the pastry through. So, yes, we've got fish in here. Um but it's only like a thin uh piece of fish inside each spring
roll. Um so, it shouldn't take more than sort of four to 5 minutes or even 3 to 4 minutes to cook these spring rolls up. What you don't want is for that golden brown to turn dark brown. You can see these spring rolls, they've they fried nice and quickly. That tight sort of roll around the spring rolls. The fish inside once it's had 3 or 4 minutes will continue to steam in its own steam and kind of continue to cook through. Uh, so the first deep fry, the tighter, more traditional spring roll or fold, you can see there. But when they come out, if you've deep fried something nicely, actually, there shouldn't be loads of
oil dripping off that pastry. Now, these pastries here, same spring rolls, but much lighter in feel because of all the air pockets around that fold. Um, are going to go in to the same oil. It's on a medium heat now. Just holding that temperature um uh nicely. In fact, whilst we're doing the deep fry lesson, why not test the oil with them frying and see how hot that actually is. It's roughly 165° C. So, not too hot. Um, which is good because I want the pastry to crisp up, but I don't want again I need to cook the filling inside through. But you can see they're floating in a certain way because I folded those pastries with so much air inside them. That's what makes them slightly harder to cook. So, if you're doing it like
this, where you want to go really super crispy, that's sometimes what's useful with these um uh these sort of nests, these bamboo um frying nests, is that you can kind of hold stuff down into the oil uh using that. Um obviously stay safe, keep your hands nearby uh ready just in case it pops out. Um, but that's going to fry that nicely so you get a nice even golden brown cook on that medium heat in this frying oil. Next up, I've just got some chicken thighs here, boneless, skinless with a little bit of red curry paste and some fish sauce and a pinch of sugar in there. Now, I've done that on purpose to get some good balance of flavor in
there, but also the sugar um to sort of talk you through if you're marinating your meats or fish and then you're going to deep fry, there are ways and means of doing that without burning the outside of that um of that meat or the protein. Now, I'm going to mix that through with that fish sauce or the flavor. The white powder on this is a just a little bit of um corn starch uh and some rice flour. Mainly to help stick that paste, but also give a slight almost creamy texture to the paste or the marinade around the meat. It's not to make a batter, but that creaminess and that slight bit of flour will help to create a very thin layer of flavor or paste that sticks to your protein very well. This chicken will form a natural
crisp edge around the meat when I deep fry it. I'm going to take a couple of these pieces and wrap a bit of egg around that. And then a whole load of flour. And this flour mix here is a combination of plain flour, about 80% plain flour, 20% corn starch. And this flour mix I'm going to use to make a dry batter out of the same chicken. So I can show you the different texture between your sort of nonbatted flavored or marinated chicken versus your dry batter uh chicken before I then get onto a wet batter, more like a fish and chips or tempura batter and show you the different sort of styles of deep fried finish you can get from um just treating your ingredients ever so slightly differently. When you're deep
frying sort of thicker pieces of meat like this, I like to start it, if you're cooking it or deep frying it the Chinese way, you start it with a high enough heat to really immediately seal that piece of meat. Once your oil is hot enough and it's fizzing, you can see that those chopsticks fizzing in that oil, then you carefully lay your meat into the oil and it will seal immediately once it's had its initial like 30 seconds to a minute on this high heat. At that point, because it's a thick piece of chicken thigh, I'm going to turn the heat down to medium heat. So, it starts to kind of simmer and continue to fry. And really, with a piece of chicken thigh like this, it's off the
bone, so it doesn't need excessive amounts of time, but you need to at least cook it for a good sort of 8 9 minutes, maybe push it to 10. Um, and so we're going to keep that frying away for a good eight to 10 minutes on a medium heat. You will notice the bubbling of your fresh chicken or your fresh meat that's gone into hot oil or fat is quite vigorous at the beginning. As the chicken starts to dry out, then those bubbles will become fewer and less vigorous. And that is when you know that the chicken is pretty much cooked through once you've got that change in the bubbling or that real like vigorous bubbling of that oil. if you've used sugar or like dark colored pastes or marinades in your meat that it will
brown very quickly. So if that's the case, then turn your heat right down to a low to medium heat to cook through for that amount of time. So it cooks the meat through, but it doesn't burn the outside. Whilst that's frying, we may as well try the spring rolls. You can see like it's mainly this sort of center and that may be less crispy in on this one than the sort of more airy fold. You can see the pastry on that there. I'll try the more airy fold. You probably can hear the difference in the crunch from the area fold, that lighter spring roll fold versus the traditional. Oh, look at that. I've just noticed that bubble
has changed from that vigorous bubbling away to a sort of more of a gentle bubbling. At this point, I know that my chicken is cooked. And that's actually only taken about five minutes in the end. Look at that. The color on that. It looks like it's been charred on a barbecue, but only ever so slightly. Let those pieces of chicken sit. I'm bringing this oil back up to high heat. And then swapping out my sort of light coated marinated chicken. the same chicken but with this very dry dusty white batter.
Whether you use corn starch, potato starch, a mixture of flowers like I have doesn't really matter in terms of like the technique of deep frying here. But the double fry with this dry batter really works a treat. Um, so we can we'll seal it and cook it through in a similar fashion to the just marinated chicken. So in with that dry battered That egg in that dry batter has helped to stick that excess corn starch or flour mix. I'm going to bring that heat down in about a minute's time uh to medium to low heat just to fry that chicken through and cook it all the way through the meat. The last deep fry after this crispy dry batter fried chicken uh is going to be more of a fish
and chips or tempura style batter. So using the same mixture of plain flour, 80% plain flour and 20% corn starch or corn flour. I've got some garlic powder in here, a little bit of salt, and then I quite like to color it um with a bit of turmeric. So, half a teaspoon or so of turmeric, some Kashmir chili powder, similar amount of both. And before I pour any liquid into this, what will become a wet batter, I'm going to just dip my fish into that seasoned flour so that when I create the batter, I can then just dip this dry sort of flowered dredged fish into that batter we're going for a consistency with this fizzy water halfway between a sort of single and double cream texture. Kind of like
making a pancake batter. You can see at the moment this batter is a little bit on the thick side. So I'm going to add a little bit more water. That fizzy water, those bubbles in that, the air in that will make this fish and chips batter very, very light. Similarly to that spring roll where you adding a bit more air into it to get that extra sort of crispy texture. Little dash more should do the job. Now you can see that dripping consistency of the batter I think is just right. My fish can go in. Meanwhile, my crispy fried chicken has had a good 7 minutes of deep frying on a medium heat. And look at that. Don't forget this is exactly the same flavor as the marinated chicken there just coming out.
A completely different texture, completely different dish from that dry, dusty white batter that I put around it. I will double fry that before we finish it. And to double fry, you want to make sure that oil is really nice and hot and it will get an extra crisp to finish. Not to say that this chicken is not going to taste good. They're just different dishes. Second fry for this extra crispy chicken. High heat. Literally 1 minute should do the job. That chicken is cooked already. I just want it to go super crispy. It will still be vigorously bubbling, but you'll hear that sizzle turn into more of a bubble. And you'll know that then the batter on
the outside of this chicken is really nice and dry. And that's when you can take it out. And you can see and hear how crunchy that's going to be. Double fried chicken. Look at that. So, I'm going to take this piece of fish, dip it well into that wet batter, and then just very carefully lay that into the oil. In the same vein as the technique of deep frying the chicken, that piece of fish is quite thick. So, it needs that initial seal on a high heat for a good 30 seconds to a minute before I then turn the heat down to a medium heat. And I'll show you. I wouldn't usually do this because you want it to sit in the oil, but you can see it's already
had that good seal all the way around that piece of fish. So, that wet batter is protecting the wet fish from getting too greasy. You know, it's got that protective case, that layer around the fish. And that is the sign of a good batter. If it protects that fish, allows the fish to steam within that protective layer. And that's how you get a good sort of succulent flaky bit of fish inside a really crispy fish and chips batter, a wet batter. Not dissimilar to the chicken. I'd say that making a fish and chips if it's I' this piece is sort of medium thickness, maybe 8 minutes of frying all together. Sometimes at home what I do is I do an initial fry of 3 to 4 minutes, take it out, let it sit, and then put it and I
have the oven on a really high heat, 210, 220, and I finish the fish and chips on a tray like this in the oven or in an air fryer. That way you can get a few pieces onto a tray, finish it off together. So, this piece of fish has had a good eight minutes of cooking. You can hear it sizzling away, but this is actually only on number five out of nine on the induction hob. So that sort of medium heat to cook the fish through whilst that initial high heat to seal this batter around the fish. It's really important even with the color of the turmeric and the little bit of chili powder in there. It hasn't gone over dark. It's just this perfect golden finish. And more importantly, once you've drained it well through the
right deep frying equipment, it shouldn't be super greasy. It should just be crispy and crunchy. So hopefully you can see that with deep frying is much more of a skill than just kind of taking your ingredients and dunking it in some hot oil. you know, that change of heat or the way you might fold something, the way you might make your batters from dry to wet or even halfway in between really makes a difference. As much as doing all this deep frying is probably giving me loads of spots. Just looking at these different like perfectly deep fried foods is [snorts] literally making my mouth water. you've seen the difference between the two various um ways of folding your pastry and your spring rolls. You're um
just marinated chicken. Even though it's been sitting there for a while, it's really juicy inside. And as I said, there's a lovely light almost crust from that paste with a little bit mix of no more than a tablespoon of rice flour and corn starch. This double cooked dry batter chicken. Look at that inside. It's the simplicity of this in terms of really understanding the technique of deep frying as opposed to anything else. It's all about the technique. Putting that extra layer of dry batter around, treating it the right way in the right controlled oil environment is what makes this so moorish. I've been waiting all day for that. And then this wet fish and chips batter has the perfect crunchy sound.
Guys, if you get this right at home, you will 100% see why everyone in the world loves crispy deep fried anything. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe. Ding. Hit that notification bell. You want to learn more? Let everyone know.
