Hi
I stink at deep frying.
Most recently I bought a box of coconut shrimp with simple directions. Deep
fry at 375 for 2 1/2 minute. I even bought a thermometer. Does anyone
remember my grease fire that burnt a wall in my old house? :-) Funnel cake
gone wrong.

Well, I had the grease at 365, added the shrimp, in 45 seconds they burnt
and filled the house with smoke
Got them out of thwere fast, before the oil was flavored. Got the oil down
to 250 and the next batch came out perfect in 1.5 minutes.

Why such a difference in time and temp than the directions said?
Well, at least I stink at cooking the least healthful food and I'm ok with
foods that are better for us :-)
Tara

Tara & Guy wrote:

> Hi I stink at deep frying. Most recently I bought a box of coconut
> shrimp with simple directions. Deep fry at 375 for 2 1/2 minute.
> I even bought a thermometer. Does anyone remember my grease fire
> that burnt a wall in my old house? :-) Funnel cake gone wrong.
>
> Well, I had the grease at 365, added the shrimp, in 45 seconds they
> burnt and filled the house with smoke Got them out of thwere fast,
> before the oil was flavored. Got the oil down to 250 and the next
> batch came out perfect in 1.5 minutes.

I suspect your thermometer is drastically wrong. Put on a pot of
boiling water and see what it says.

Pastorio


>
> Why such a difference in time and temp than the directions said?
> Well, at least I stink at cooking the least healthful food and I'm
> ok with foods that are better for us :-) Tara

Tara & Guy wrote:

> Why such a difference in time and temp than the directions said?

The directions probably meant Fahrenheit.

Tara & Guy wrote:
> Hi
> I stink at deep frying.
> Most recently I bought a box of coconut shrimp with simple
> directions. Deep fry at 375 for 2 1/2 minute. I even bought a
> thermometer.
(snippage)
> Tara

I don't bother with what the darned directions say, nor with a thermometer.
It's a simple matter to figure out if oil for deep frying is not hot enough
or too hot. Step back (this is important!) and flick a drop of cold water
in the oil. If it freaks out (so to speak), it's probably too hot. If it
doesn't do much of anything, it's not hot enough. You want it to start to
bubble but not splatter.

You have to figure, if you're tossing in frozen food it's got ice crystals
on it. So if a drop of cold water makes it go nuts and try to splatter,
turn down the heat. When the same test results in a reasonable bubble but
not splatter action, try a piece of the item (in this case, shrimp) and see
how it goes.

By the same token, those ice crystals are going to significantly bring down
the temp of the oil. So, cook [whatever] in batches and let the oil come
back up to what you've determined is the ideal temp before adding the next
batch.

Good luck, Tara

Jill

In article >,
says...
> don't bother with what the darned directions say, nor with a thermometer.
> It's a simple matter to figure out if oil for deep frying is not hot enough
> or too hot. Step back (this is important!) and flick a drop of cold water
> in the oil. If it freaks out (so to speak), it's probably too hot. If it
> doesn't do much of anything, it's not hot enough. You want it to start to
> bubble but not splatter.
>
>
I think it would be much safer dropping in a bread cube - the test is the
same - if it bubbles up furiously, it's too hot; if it barely sizzles,
it's not hot enough, etc. But in this case I'd definitely depend on a
thermometer (just test it in boiling water first to make sure it's
functioning properly).
--
Donna
A pessimist believes all women are bad. An optimist hopes they are.

On Sat, 03 Jul 2004 13:29:08 -0400, "Tara & Guy"
> wrote:

>Hi
>I stink at deep frying.
>Most recently I bought a box of coconut shrimp with simple directions. Deep
>fry at 375 for 2 1/2 minute. I even bought a thermometer. Does anyone
>remember my grease fire that burnt a wall in my old house? :-) Funnel cake
>gone wrong.
>
>Well, I had the grease at 365, added the shrimp, in 45 seconds they burnt
>and filled the house with smoke
>Got them out of thwere fast, before the oil was flavored. Got the oil down
>to 250 and the next batch came out perfect in 1.5 minutes.
>
>Why such a difference in time and temp than the directions said?
>Well, at least I stink at cooking the least healthful food and I'm ok with
>foods that are better for us :-)
>Tara

Hey Tara!
Funny you should mention deep frying today. Yesterday my son brought
his backyard type turkey fryer over and we filled it half full of
peanut oil, then we lit the propane gas to heat it up. We had five
pounds of peeled and deveined shrimp to fry. We found that dipping and
swishing the shrimp in the batter and then just heaping them on a
dinner plate worked well to get them from the kitchen out to the
backyard. Then we used tongs to pick up individual shrimp and drop
them into the hot fat for cooking. Each one took one to two minutes to
brown nicely and then we scooped them out. Everybody seemed to like
the shrimp. We also cooked some softshell crabs but apparently I
didn't know the proper way to clean the crabs before frying. The gills
had been removed from the crabs but they still had this yellow stuff
in them that probably should have been removed before frying them. I
thought they tasted wonderful but my wife was a little taken aback
watching me eat them with those little legs dangling out of my mouth!
Kinda like eating fried terantulas!

Something else I discovered doing the backyard frying yesterday. Be
very carefull putting only small amounts of food in the hot oil to
cook. If you fill the bottom of the fry basket it cools your oil down
too much and it takes a long time to heat back up. If you cook like a
half dozen or so shrimp at a time, they don't cool the oil down very
much and they cook fairly fast.

Regards,
Bill

Bill,

Sounds like a great seafood fry. Then yellow stuff in crabs is edible. A
lot of it is the liver and many swear by it and a few swear at it.

Jeff
"Bill" > wrote in message
...
> On Sat, 03 Jul 2004 13:29:08 -0400, "Tara & Guy"
> > wrote:
>
> >Hi
> >I stink at deep frying.
> >Most recently I bought a box of coconut shrimp with simple directions.
Deep
> >fry at 375 for 2 1/2 minute. I even bought a thermometer. Does anyone
> >remember my grease fire that burnt a wall in my old house? :-) Funnel
cake
> >gone wrong.
> >
> >Well, I had the grease at 365, added the shrimp, in 45 seconds they burnt
> >and filled the house with smoke
> >Got them out of thwere fast, before the oil was flavored. Got the oil
down
> >to 250 and the next batch came out perfect in 1.5 minutes.
> >
> >Why such a difference in time and temp than the directions said?
> >Well, at least I stink at cooking the least healthful food and I'm ok
with
> >foods that are better for us :-)
> >Tara
>
> Hey Tara!
> Funny you should mention deep frying today. Yesterday my son brought
> his backyard type turkey fryer over and we filled it half full of
> peanut oil, then we lit the propane gas to heat it up. We had five
> pounds of peeled and deveined shrimp to fry. We found that dipping and
> swishing the shrimp in the batter and then just heaping them on a
> dinner plate worked well to get them from the kitchen out to the
> backyard. Then we used tongs to pick up individual shrimp and drop
> them into the hot fat for cooking. Each one took one to two minutes to
> brown nicely and then we scooped them out. Everybody seemed to like
> the shrimp. We also cooked some softshell crabs but apparently I
> didn't know the proper way to clean the crabs before frying. The gills
> had been removed from the crabs but they still had this yellow stuff
> in them that probably should have been removed before frying them. I
> thought they tasted wonderful but my wife was a little taken aback
> watching me eat them with those little legs dangling out of my mouth!
> Kinda like eating fried terantulas!
>
> Something else I discovered doing the backyard frying yesterday. Be
> very carefull putting only small amounts of food in the hot oil to
> cook. If you fill the bottom of the fry basket it cools your oil down
> too much and it takes a long time to heat back up. If you cook like a
> half dozen or so shrimp at a time, they don't cool the oil down very
> much and they cook fairly fast.
>
> Regards,
> Bill
>
>
>

On Tue, 06 Jul 2004 20:37:12 GMT, "Jeff Russell" >
wrote:

>Bill,
>
> Sounds like a great seafood fry. Then yellow stuff in crabs is edible. A
>lot of it is the liver and many swear by it and a few swear at it.
>
>Jeff

I think I'll do it again! I will definitely get a dipping utensil like
a big metal spoon to dip the food out of the hot oil. The long tongs
worked pretty well dropping the shrimp into the hot oil
"individually". If I had been using a simple dusting or coating of
flour on the shrimp, they wouldn't have been all sticky and stuck
together on the dinner plate like my shrimp with the batter that had
the consistancy of thickened pancake batter. The tongs made it easy
enough to pick up one shrimp at a time and carefully drop it into the
hot oil. Also, even though the turkey fryer had a fry basket which was
really a huge perforated bucket to drop food into the fryer to
cook...it holds way too much. It's better just to fry a few pieces
individually so you don't cool the oil down too much. As I dropped the
individual shrimp into the hot oil, they sank for a couple of seconds
and then floated right back up to the surface. All I had to do while
they were cooking was just tap the shrimp with the tongs to flip them
over in the hot oil, and then when they browned on the bottom I took
them out.

Regards,

Bill

"Tara & Guy" > wrote in message
...
> Hi
> I stink at deep frying.
> Most recently I bought a box of coconut shrimp with simple directions.
Deep
> fry at 375 for 2 1/2 minute. I even bought a thermometer. Does anyone
> remember my grease fire that burnt a wall in my old house? :-) Funnel
cake
> gone wrong.
>

You didn't learn from the first time to try deep-frying outdoors?
A suggestion: Next time-Outdoors, and use a long-handled basket made just
for that purpose.

>"Kswck" sputters:
>
>"Tara & Guy" wrote:
>>
>> I stink at deep frying.
>> Most recently I bought a box of coconut shrimp with simple directions.
>Deep
>> fry at 375 for 2 1/2 minute. I even bought a thermometer. Does anyone
>> remember my grease fire that burnt a wall in my old house? :-)
>
>You didn't learn from the first time to try deep-frying outdoors?
>A suggestion: Next time-Outdoors, and use a long-handled basket made just
>for that purpose.

Then why bother at all... all that will accomplish is keeping the house from
burning, but until it's figured out *why*, the food will burn just as well
(BADLY) outdoors as indoors. Duh!

It should be quite problem-free to deep fry a few shrimp... the OP is doing
something incorrectly and doesn't know what, obviously. The oil is too hot,
there is no other reason for burned deep fried food ... but very scanty info is
offered, don't even know if it's a thermostatically controlled deep fryer or
simply a potful of oil heating on the stove... perhaps that new thermometer is
inaccurate. Don't really need any stinkin' thermometer... next time tune in
the oil temperature by cooking just *one* shrimp at a time... by the 3rd
shrimp, if any kinda cook at all, the proper temperature will be zeroed in....
now just refrain from overloading the batches to prevent sodden/soggy and no
one will need to instead *burn* their food outdoors like a friggin' IMBECILE...
Kswk is *obviously* NOT any kind of a cook, he's more of a fercocktah fireman.
LOL

Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha. . .


---= BOYCOTT FRANCE (belgium) GERMANY--SPAIN =---
---= Move UNITED NATIONS To Paris =---
*********
"Life would be devoid of all meaning were it without tribulation."
Sheldon
````````````

It was a large, deep pan of vegetable oil
I tested the thermometer with boiling water (good idea Jill and everyone
else!)
I only put in one layer at a time
The oil was deep enough that they could float
Maybe I'll try baking the next time :-)
Tara

PS I'm fine with non-fried foods. My family never ate fried foods or
potatoes (one of my faves) growing up, so I never saw them being made. Last
night I grilled chunks of zuchinni with a mixture of S&P, Italian dressing
and Vietnamese Sauce - that I can do :-)
> It should be quite problem-free to deep fry a few shrimp... the OP is doing
> something incorrectly and doesn't know what, obviously. The oil is too hot,
> there is no other reason for burned deep fried food ... but very scanty info
is
> offered, don't even know if it's a thermostatically controlled deep fryer or
> simply a potful of oil heating on the stove... perhaps that new thermometer is
> inaccurate. Don't really need any stinkin' thermometer... next time tune in
> the oil temperature by cooking just *one* shrimp at a time... by the 3rd
> shrimp, if any kinda cook at all, the proper temperature will be zeroed in....
> now just refrain from overloading the batches to prevent sodden/soggy and no
> one will need to instead *burn* their food outdoors like a friggin'
IMBECILE...
> Kswk is *obviously* NOT any kind of a cook, he's more of a fercocktah fireman.
> LOL
>
> Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha. . .
>
>
> ---= BOYCOTT FRANCE (belgium) GERMANY--SPAIN =---
> ---= Move UNITED NATIONS To Paris =---
> *********
> "Life would be devoid of all meaning were it without tribulation."
> Sheldon
> ````````````

Get an electric fryer. Works for me. They come in many different sizes.
Pat