“Fried pickles! Are you serious?!?”That’s what I hear you saying right now. You can just blame (or thank) my sister-in-law, Erica, for the idea. I try not to make a habit of frying food in my kitchen but I just had to try these. I don’t even like pickles, but everything tastes better when battered and fried so I just had to take on the adventure. You might want to get on a treadmill while you read this!
While deciding what batter to use, I found the Hooters Fried Pickle recipe and couldn’t resist! I’ve never worked with buttermilk before so this seemed like the perfect time to start.
Fried Pickle Ingredients:
Based on the Hooters Fried Pickles recipe
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
11 oz. jar dill pickle slices
2 cups buttermilk
8 cups vegetable or canola oil
I only had a few cups of vegetable oil in the pantry so I mixed it with canola oil in a large pot and preheated to 350 degrees. I used my thermometer (my favorite new kitchen tool…see my attempt at making homemade taffy) to make sure the oil was at the right temperature before frying. I drained the pickles in my amazing Chef Basket then placed them in a bowl with the buttermilk. Not to promote the Chef Basket or anything, but it can do everything! You’ll see…
While the pickles soaked, I mixed all of the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Once the oil reached the correct temperature, I took a handful of the pickles at a time, dredged them in the flour mixture, shook off any excess and placed them in the Chef Basket over the hot oil. I then lowered the basket in to the hot oil and let them fry until golden brown. Don’t put too many pickles in the oil at once or they won’t fry up crisp. That goes for anything you fry. When the pickles were ready, I just lifted the basket by the handles and dropped the crispy fried goodness on to a paper towel to soak up any excess oil. And that’s it! You now have delicious deep fried pickles.
Once the pickles were fried, we were left with some very hot oil and the urge to fry more things. That led to this moment right here…
We ended up frying mushrooms, cheddar cheese, Morningstar Farms sausages, and pizza. The mushrooms were insanely good, the cheese was descent, the vegetarian sausages were kind of inspirational, and the pizza was only okay. We had a great night frying food and I don’t regret a thing. I might just have to wait at least a few weeks before eating something fried again. We’ll see how that goes!
