I think I messed up my template.

Fried Carrot

Tonights many entries are inspired by Jaymeekae. She had this to say:

Inspiration
It occured to me that something the world is missing
is carrots deepfried in batter. Carrots are one of the few vegetables I really like and I think carrots in batter would be fucking awesome, to say the least. You get potato in batter, fish, chicken, even mars bars in certain infamous northern
english fish and chip shops. The world is ready for
deepfried carrots, nay, the world is crying out for them.Let's
make it happen.

So I did. I made it happen in all kinds of ways. Enjoy.

A picturesque picture of some of our ingredients and tools. 

Prepare your carrots for frying. Here you see we have denuded six medium sized carrots. These are from California so of course they're anorexic. You just can't buy nice fat carrots from California. Prepare to lop off their heads and cut into two inch pieces. The pieces will be skewered on bamboo sticks and dipped in hot oil until they talk. Who says medieval torture is dead? 

At only $50 a barrel this oil is a real steal.  

Here are our three main dry mixes. They all look pretty much the same from this distance. Don't drink the Windex. That's for clean up later on. Feel free to smell the Windex at will though.

For our first carrot coating tonight we're going old school; buttermilk and seasoned flour. Any liquid could be used, but water and milk are probably going to be to thin. You will be unsatisfied with anything thinner than buttermilk. Condensed milk is an option if you like sweet carrots. You know, if you like that sort of thing. So anyway, coat your carrot good with buttermilk and prepare to roll it in the flour. 

Coat your carrot well. Our flour is seasoned with salt and pepper to taste. I mix till it looks pretty, but whatever method you use I am sure will work just fine. 

Someone get that carrot to the dermatologist. A double or triple dipping to get a nice thick coating of flour is definately in order. Sheesh, it looks like an 90 year old lady's skin is peeling ten days after she was out in the sun to long. 

Beer Batter. What doesn't taste better bathed in the warm comfot of beer batter? Mix according to directions. You may use beer or water. Don't worry about carding your guests, the alcohol in the beer batter will combust away in the searing oils of your frying pan. Water is a perfectly acceptable alternative for those who would prefer not to have the taste of barley and hops in they fried carrots.  

Make sure your carrots are fully covered. Beware of the dreaded drip.  

Now that's a nice rack. A beautiful golden brown. Nicely formed and with plenty of perk. 

Here we are using pre-packaged hushpuppy mix to coat our carrots. The carrot puppies will be much coarser in appearance and have a rougher tooth feel. Prepare your mix mostly according to the package instructions. Add a bit more milk or water though so the preparation isn't to thick to coat the skewered carrot. 

If you are not careful with your hushpuppy mixture you will see problems similar to those pictured here. The hushpuppy mix dried out. Now this would be great if we were actually making hushpuppies, but we're not. This clumpy, dry oatmeal looking mush is to dry for making our carrotpuppies. Add a bit more milk or water the thin the mixture out, stir well, and you will have a much better base to fully coat your carrot. 

Sshhhh! Carrot puppies sleeping. 

For our next carrot coating we are mixing our buttermilk base together with the flour coating to make a nice thick breading. Basically we're just playing with the method of applying our carrot coating as the taste will be the very same as in our first example. 

Here we see the result of our fried carrot sporting the seasons latest breading fashion. Earth tones are dominant this year. 

MMM...Fry baby fry. 

Finally we'll try a nice cornbread coating. Today We're using a nice yellow cornbread mix peppered with pepper. You may also salt to taste. Mix well. We'll reuse the buttermilk for our base. Get the carrot nice and buttermilky and then cover it in the cornbread mix. You may want to repeat the process several times to get a nice thick coating. Then fry and here's your result. 

Here's a couple of control carrots for you. Not very appetizing in appearance. 

And here's our assortment of fried carrots each on their own stick. Bon Appetit! 

Bonus: Why waste perfectly good carrot peelings?  

Bonus: Here you see from top going clockwise, Hushpuppy Peelings, Straight Fried Carrot Peelings, and Beer Battered Carrot Peelings. 

This photo really doesn't follow any rules for photography. Center focus, indistinct images, dark... But I like it for some reason. It reminds me a lot of WWII era photos. This was a WWII ear plane performing at the air show doing various acrobatic stunts. My camera is limited in the amount of zoom it has. I would have loved to have a telescopic lens to zoom in on all of these planes, but I can't. Do you want to buy me a new camera?

After running Neat Image.

More Formation Flying

Formation Flying by the Yak Pak of Colorado in McCook, NE on Saturday, June 17, 2006