Double Fry Is The New Fry | Frying Tips You Must Know

Ever wonder what’s the right way to get the perfect crust on your fried chicken? The fried chicken or fish that we eat at restaurants has this majestic glassy crunch that is irresistible. Getting this crunch for your homemade food is not an unachievable task. All you have to do is double fry your food. Yup, you read it right, the secret is to fry your food twice! The double frying technique is not only for fish or chicken. You can double fry other food too. Once you eat double-fried French fries, I swear you’re going to have a hard time going back to the original method.

The Scientific Reason Behind Crust Formation

Frying is a dehydration process. When you put your food into oil, the water trapped on the surface of the food starts boiling. This means the drier the food, the better will be the crust formation. However, there is water trapped beneath the crust of your food that has a hard time escaping. This creates a bubble trapped under oil which hinders the crust formation. This is where the double frying method steps in and solves the problem. The double frying method allows the trapped water to come to the surface and escape as steam.

Why The Double Fry Technique Works

After the food is fried, moisture at the center of the food travels to the surface. As the food cools, this moisture makes it soggy again. When you fry this food for the second time, this moisture is boiled off, forming a nice, crispy crust on the food. Also, after the first fry, there is already less water in the food which makes crust formation much easier.  Another reason for the crust formation is that the first fry changes the microscopic structure of the food. The air pockets in food, that are all twisted in the beginning become simpler and straighter when the food is fried. Upon the second fry, the water easily escapes through these straightened pathways giving a crispier, drier fry to the food.

Fried Chicken – Just The Perfect Food

While making fried chicken, there are a lot of things that we want. We want our chicken to be crispy and crunchy on the outside. We want juicy, succulent, well-seasoned meat, and of course, A WHOLE BUNCH of flavors. To achieve all this, it’s really important to understand what you are doing. Making fried chicken seems to be a pretty simple thing to do. Take chicken, coat it in a batter, and fry it. But if this really all the effort you’re doing, you’re kind of just hoping for the best. By doing the minimum effort, you clearly want to achieve a lot of things. Balancing the time required for cooking the meat and the time required for cooking the crust is quite important. The time and temperature must be right to achieve the ideal crispy and juicy fried chicken.

The double fry method makes this work easier. Half of the cooking is done in the first fry and the other half is done in the second fry without the crisp being compromised. Another tip is to utilize used oil instead of fresh oil. Used oil gives the food a better color and the best flavor. In fresh oil, the chicken takes a longer time to brown which destroys the texture of the food. If you have brand new oil, you can add one or two tablespoons of old oil into it so that it does the job right.

Double Fry Is The Best Fry For Potatoes

French fries are the glue that is keeping our lives together. As obsessed as we are with these fried stacks of carbohydrates and starch, we are very particular about them. Good crispy fries always seem to be very difficult to make at home. Let’s be honest we’ve all tried corn flour and rice flour and what not to attain that breathtaking crunch. Turns out crispy French fries can be easily made with the double frying method and here’s why.

The first round of frying the potatoes is done at a lower temperature. This allows the initial cooking of potatoes to happen. The first fry does not produce any crisp. The second fry is done at a fairly high temperature, which leads to the formation of a fine crust. Some people also suggest that blanching the potato chips before frying gives a better outcome. You can blanch the potatoes with a bit of baking soda first and then double fry them to get the best, crispy texture.