Some fried food is so crispy, so crunchy and so incredible that you feel like you've died and gone to heaven.
Some fried food is so crispy, so crunchy and so incredible that you feel like you've died and gone to heaven.
Episode content:
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Find episode transcript here: https://the-best-thing-i-ever-ate.simplecast.com/episodes/fried-and-gone-to-heaven-ft-jeff-mauro-simon-majumdar-and-ali-khan
SPEAKER 1: Who doesn't love great food? It's more than just eating, it's an experience. Do we have any more?
SPEAKER 2: This is the best thing I ever ate.
ALLAN: I love me a good, spicy, fried, meaty, sandwich. The OG classic chicken sandwich at Tumble 22 in Austin, Texas, is the best way to experience some good spicy fried chicken. This thing is a beast. We need to hear some truths. The OG classic chicken sandwich represents a truly complete fried chicken experience. It is by far one of the most habit-forming addictive foods I have discovered in Austin, Texas.
SPEAKER 3: First up making our OG hot chicken sandwich is we're going to tap out our chicken breasts.
ALLAN: We're starting with 8 ounces, half a pound of boneless chicken on chicken breast.
SPEAKER 3: We're just going to tap out the thick part of the chicken. Then we're going to season it and we're going to let this marinate for 24 hours.
ALLAN: So they're dredging it in a flour that's spiked with salt, then it goes into a wash.
SPEAKER 3: Three ingredients in the milk wash, milk, eggs, a little bit of hot sauce. We're having hot chicken, we want hot sauce.
ALLAN: And they're called Tumble 22 because they're literally tossing the chicken in the dredge 22 times.
SPEAKER 3: It's not 21, not 23, 22.
ALLAN: The name of the restaurant derives from the way they make the fried chicken.
SPEAKER 3: 12, 13, 14--
ALLAN: They are serious about fried chicken.
SPEAKER 3: 20, 21, 22.
SPEAKER 4: Do they need to toss it that many times Allan?
ALLAN: I'm going to tell you something. Whatever they're doing, it's working.
SPEAKER 3: Now the chicken is ready to go in the fry.
ALLAN: We've got delicious fried chicken. Now we got to make it Nashville hot chicken.
SPEAKER 3: This is our hot chicken spice. So it consists of cayenne pepper, black pepper salt, little brown sugar, and a few other things that I just can't tell you about.
ALLAN: I just know it's good, and I know I'm going to get it dang hot.
SPEAKER 3: And we're going to have our soybean oil, which we've heated up so it's warm but not hot. And we go the chicken into the hot oil bath. Now we're going to dang hot a little dust to hot spice.
ALLAN: Then this thing lands on a big, beautiful, buttered toasted bun.
SPEAKER 3: There's a pickle.
ALLAN: Southern mayo. Then they top it with kale coleslaw.
SPEAKER 3: That is our OG hot chicken sandwich.
ALLAN: Yes. I'm going to pull the pin, kaboom, and I'm going to put a hurt on this thing. When you bite down in that thing. You're hearing a lot of crunch. Guys, cheesy. You're getting the creaminess from the coleslaw, you're getting that brine and tang from the pickle. Meaty, spicy, flavorful, filling. It's all balanced because it's all heavy handed. This is the best fried chicken sandwich you'll ever have in your whole life, I promise you.
SPEAKER 5: We crave it because of the crunch. We crave the crunch. My deep fried dish that takes me to a higher place is the crispy pata at Salo Salo grill in West Covina, California. Crunching into it is just one of the greatest eating experiences in world cuisine. When you discover it for the first time, it changes your culinary life. Filipino culture is something I've got to know quite well because I've married a Filipino-American and I have inherited this absolutely wonderful slightly bonkers Filipino family who I adore with all my heart.
But they love to eat, and the thing they love to eat most of all is the deep fried Filipino food. The crispy pata is a leg of pork that has been deep fried. The rest of the menu at Salo Salo is fantastic, but the crispy pata to me is the must order dish. This is deep fried heaven.
SPEAKER 6: Today we're making pasta or pork legs traditional Filipino dish. We're going to make a marinade.
SPEAKER 5: Fish sauce, black pepper. Lemongrass is going to add almost like a little tropical flavor.
SPEAKER 6: We're going to add pork.
SPEAKER 5: So you've braised it. What that's going to do is take the pork to the point where it's not just falling apart and stringy, but it's just cooked so the leg will hold together. And it goes into the oven for 40 minutes at 350 degrees just to finish the cooking and to really develop those flavors. And then when it's deep fried, it just puffs up. Best pork rinds you ever, ever ate in your life.
SPEAKER 6: Now we add tomato, vinegar, and our papaya.
SPEAKER 5: To give it a little acidity, a little salt. And it is one of the most addictive things you will ever, ever eat. That first bite, you have to get a balance of the two textures. One is that beautiful juicy pork underneath the skin and you've got to get the right amount of the crunchy skin.
And you mess with me, and I will cut you up. The outside is crunchy, so crunchy you could hear it across the restaurant when you eat it. The inside is soft and juicy and just delicious. Actually, it makes you get that little kind of shiver. That's why this deep fried dish really does take me to heaven.
ALLAN: Fried food to me is the greatest experience in the history of food. You can fry anything and it will be better. Find me a food that doesn't taste better fried and I'll find you a liar, and that's you. I love corn on the cob. I've been eating it my whole life. Guess what I haven't been eating, fried corn on the cob. And I'm talking about the tempura elotes at Proxy in Chicago, a whole basket of deep fried tempura fritter goodness. That's when we've hit the mark. That's when we can change the world.
Normally elotes are corn on the cob rolled in mayonnaise, cotija cheese, spices, lime. It is a wonderful experience, but it's missing one thing, being fried. Andrew Zimmerman is a wizard with this corn. He invented something the world has never seen.
ANDREW ZIMMERMAN: It's just a corn fritter.
ALLAN: No, it's not. It's a game changer. It's pure deep-fried fantasticness.
ANDREW ZIMMERMAN: The first step in making the tempura elote, we have to cut the corn off the cob, just like Mama Mauro used to.
ALLAN: Like a little baby.
ANDREW ZIMMERMAN: Now the next thing we need to do, make a tempura batter. We're going to use pretty basic Japanese tempura flour and very cold soda water.
ALLAN: Soda water is the key. All that gas and there makes it even more bubbly. Mix it all together until it's all homogeneous.
ANDREW ZIMMERMAN: We want a thin bit of batter to sort of hold all the corn together, we don't want a bunch of batter with corn stuck in.
ALLAN: Then they fry the fritters.
ANDREW ZIMMERMAN: When the cold batter hits the oil, the temperature change causes even more lift, so it gets lighter and crisper.
ALLAN: Maximum crunchy fritter batter. But they're not done. Every great fritter needs a great sauce. They put this squiggles of fantastic Japanese mayo.
ANDREW ZIMMERMAN: A tiny bit sweeter than most American mayonnaise.
ALLAN: Still not done, bro. They freshly grate a ton of grana padano cheese. Then comes some chopped fresh chives on top, a squeeze of fresh lime, generous dash of chili powder. It's like all my favorite flavors in one. You eat them and you've never felt such a crunch in corn at the same time. Fresh sweet corn plus fried crunchiness of tempura, it's all mingling with that Japanese mayo. And you go back in and then you look down, and it's gone.
SPEAKER 8: Who doesn't want a donut sandwich, you ask like a five-year-old kid. Excuse me, kid. What would you like to have a breakfast? Donuts and eggs and cheese. Yeah. The best fried thing I've ever eaten is the donut breakfast sandwich at Straw in San Francisco. It's basically a fried egg tucked inside of fried donut with some fried potatoes on the side. I feel like a kid having a dream breakfast.
Straw Restaurant is carnival-themed. You walk in and you're just like hit in the face with these smells, fried, savory proteins. But then you also smell sweets that are also fried. And your brain's like, I don't know which way to go. So let's have both.
SPEAKER 9: To make the donut breakfast sandwich, we have to make the donuts first.
SPEAKER 8: They add in the flour, salt, yeast, sugar. Then they stir wet ingredients, milk, egg, and melted butter.
SPEAKER 9: As soon as the dough is done proofing, we take it out of the fridge and then we start to work with it.
SPEAKER 8: In the proofing process, the yeast gets released, which causes really strong amazing flavor. That's what you smell when you walk by bakeries. That's the yeast being released.
SPEAKER 9: This is my most favorite part.
SPEAKER 8: So when you fry this all up, it's like bringing something that's already so good skyrocketing out to the sky.
SPEAKER 9: You want like a light brown color, not too dark. It gets easier after you make a couple of hundred thousand of them.
SPEAKER 8: They pour on this gorgeous vanilla bean glaze.
SPEAKER 9: We use two whole donuts to create the sandwich, which is just much better than one.
SPEAKER 8: And fried egg. You get all these gorgeous crispy fried edges sprinkled with jack and cheddar, this gorgeous spread of bright green avocado, and then the donut on top with a nice heap of the hash browns. I like to cut it in half. That's when you see the egg do its magic and work its way out. It's the sweetness of the fried vanilla donut. It's a really great balance for the savory fried egg. I think it's like some scientific evolution of flavors that really just hit your head in the right way. And I'm addicted. Just fry it all up together.
SPEAKER 10: I have got to talk about this. Are you guys ready? Are you ready? Are you sure? Chicken fried ribs. Yes, baby, these are chicken fried ribs. You heard it right here. We are talking fried, fried, fried. Chicken fried, deep-fried fried goodness. Fox Brothers Bar-B-Q in Atlanta, Georgia. If you're anywhere in the vicinity, you've got to pull over. I think when you get to the pearly gates, you're probably going to be served chicken fried ribs right when you get there.
I love ribs. I love pork, and that's the way it is. I'm like, really? Like ribs, you're going to fry them? I mean, ribs, why would you mess with ribs? They're perfect the way they are. But this, it was a bit of one of those aha moments. It's like, wow, these are delicious. This is one of those dishes where somebody in the kitchen went a little crazy. They had these leftover ribs, they threw them in a batter, they threw them in the fryer, and lo and behold, chicken fried ribs. St Louis-cut spareribs, there's a good amount of meat on those things.
JUSTIN FOX: The spareribs sit a little further down, kind of under the pork belly. So the ribs are going to be a little fattier, a little juicier.
SPEAKER 10: What they do is they put a nice dry rub on it. They give them a little massage.
JUSTIN FOX: I'm going to take a little brown sugar since we are in the South. People like things a little sweeter here. What it's going to do is it's going to melt and make a really nice glaze. So I think my brother is out of the smokehouse. He's probably waiting on these ribs. I'm Justin Fox, the good Fox brother. We're ready to put this rack of ribs on the smoker. These are going to sit in here for about 4 and 1/2 to five hours.
SPEAKER 10: You want it nice and tender. You don't want it completely off the bone because you still want it to hold its shape.
JUSTIN FOX: This rack has been thoroughly smoked, chilled overnight. It's ready for us to do our magic. I don't think anybody likes to bite into a bone, so the best way to do it was to put meat on both sides of the bones. So essentially, you get two ribs on one of our fried ribs.
SPEAKER 10: This is worth the cheat day. They make this beautiful batter. It's flour, it's buttermilk, and it's all the same sort of seasonings that are in the dry rub. Then they're going to take the spare ribs and dip them in this batter and they're going to deep-fry it.
JUSTIN FOX: It's Fox Brothers fried rib heaven right there.
SPEAKER 10: Roll your sleeves up, grab them with your fingers, and start eating. As anything that's fried, you get that nice, crispy outside. And then when you bite into it, because that pork has been smoked so slowly, it's soft and it's tender and juicy. The fried keeps the crunch on the outside and keeps the juicy on the inside. It's like a little bit of heaven in your mouth.
JUSTIN FOX: Come and get them, chicken fried ribs.
SPEAKER 8: When these first hit my mouth, I was like, what is happening? I never thought I could experience anything like this before, but it's happening right now. And yeah, that was dramatic, but it's just how I felt. When I'm thinking about what I've eaten that has me fried and gone to heaven, it has got to be the sugar toads at the Dabney in Washington DC. I for sure have the most unique fried food. What is a sugar toad? Is it an amphibian coated in sugar? No, no, it is actually a blowfish tail, which is also bizarre but fantastic.
SPEAKER 11: The name came from the flavor of the fish being very sweet and then the fish themselves being ugly. So they said it was sweet as sugar and ugly as a toad.
SPEAKER 8: They also just like blew my mind because who takes a blow fish tail and decides to treat it like a buffalo wing?
SPEAKER 11: We're going to start breading the sugar toads now. We've got our breading mixture, just a nice organic AP flour, corn starch, onion powder, garlic powder. This is cayenne. Just to add a little bit of heat to it.
SPEAKER 8: And in a separate bowl, they put in some buttermilk and hot sauce.
SPEAKER 11: Then this is a really important part. Take the sugar toads and they go into the buttermilk, go into my breading. And then I just let it sit there for a second.
SPEAKER 8: And what that does is it gets into all the nooks and crannies and gives us that really crispy, crunchy exterior.
SPEAKER 11: So these guys are going to get fried in a deep fryer with canola oil.
SPEAKER 8: So it gets really golden and crispy and crunchy. Then they put it in a hot honey glaze. Then you have a beautiful salad on the side and a signature buttermilk dressing. And thank you for that. Take a bite. And you just first of all freak out. The herbaceous creamy buttermilk. Next thing that hits your palate, a crispy crunchy exterior that's hot and sweet. Then you hit the meat of the sugar toad, which is tender, light, flaky. It's a flavor explosion, and they are my favorite fried food I've ever eaten.
SPEAKER 12: Crispy pig ears, my turn.
ALLAN: Did he say pig ears?
SPEAKER 13: Yes. Oh my God, they're so good.
ALLAN: Pig ears?
SPEAKER 13: These crispy pig ears are unbelievable. I mean, they're so good. One of the most memorable fried dishes I've ever had were these crispy pig's ears with peach mostarda at Pizzeria Toro in Durham. Trust me, ridiculously delicious. I love everything from the pig and I love pigs ears. In Mexico, they do pigs years in tacos, but I've never eaten them deep fried and on their own. This dish is a mountain of crispy pig ears that are like French fries. They start by cooking these pig's ears in broth with celery, carrots, and onion.
SPEAKER 12: After 4 and 1/2 to five hours, these pig's ears are nice and tender. And I will take these now and put them in the walk-in and cool them overnight so that they get nice and solidify them and slice them up on the slicer here. Now I'm going to break them apart to this more like snacky bit-sized kind of pieces.
SPEAKER 13: Then they make this seasonal fruit mostarda. They combine water, white wine, dry mustard, cayenne, bay leaves, mustard seeds, sugar, golden raisins, dried apricots, dried cherries.
SPEAKER 12: After about 45 minutes or so when our mostarda base is reduced down by about a third, it's ready to go onto the fresh peaches.
SPEAKER 13: Then they dredge the meat in AP flour seasoned with salt and pepper. And then they deep fry them until really nice and browned and crispy and crunchy and irresistible. And you want more. You can't stop. Everything is addicting about. It is the crunchy, crispy, golden brown crust, but then it's the chewy that you want to have more of. But then you dip it with that sauce, I can't have enough of that sour, sweet, spicy combination. It has everything that somebody would say, oh, you make something addicting. It has it all. Please try them, you won't regret it.