For many Americans, the best part about going to summer carnivals has everything to do with the tasty assortment of deep-fried snacks offered at various stands and food trucks. However, by learning how to deep-fry all your favorite foods, including cheese curds, Oreos, and Twinkies, you can bring the carnival right to your own home kitchen.
Next to learning the right way to deep-fry hot dogs, you may be interested in preparing a more unusual snack: deep-fried butter. While the idea of deep frying sticks or pats of butter in hot oil may initially sound unappealing, in the world of deep-frying, anything goes. Since foodies regularly get excited over deep-fried jelly beans and balls of macaroni and cheese, fried butter topped with honey or powdered sugar is guaranteed to please.
Though, to successfully prepare this unconventional treat, you need to follow certain protocols. For starters, you want to batter and fry your butter only after it’s been frozen for at least 12 hours. You can fry either whole sticks or individual pieces for better control over the end result.
To start, cover your butter in cinnamon sugar and freeze it on a lined, evenly-spaced baking sheet. In the meantime, create a batter with ingredients like flour, baking powder, and buttermilk. Upon bringing a pot of cooking oil to roughly 375 degrees Fahrenheit, work quickly to dip individual pieces of frozen butter into the batter and fry no longer than two minutes.
Helpful tips to consider when making deep-fried butter
While following this mode of preparation seems fairly straightforward, buttermilk batter may not be the best way to keep your frozen butter from melting during frying. You may end up with nothing more than thin, over-fried dough with no butter in sight. If you do happen to make your own batter, make sure the mixture is thick enough to fully coat the butter without sliding off haphazardly. Better yet, use a spoon or skewers to poke and dip each piece of butter before frying.
Alternatively, you can also fry butter using refrigerated biscuits. Similar to how you can turn funnel cakes into French fries, butter encased in butter-flavored biscuit dough is somewhat easier to prepare and eat. Simply freeze small balls of butter, wrap them within fully sealed pockets of biscuit dough, and fry. Whichever way you decide to prepare this carnival treat, the one thing you should never leave to chance when deep-frying is the temperature of your oil.
Use a food-grade thermometer to make sure your cooking oil is somewhere between 325 and 375 degrees Fahrenheit. If the oil isn’t hot enough, your frozen butter will have to stay in the pot for a longer period of time and may inevitably melt. All in all, when covered in honey and powdered sugar and prepared correctly, deep-fried butter can only be described as sweet and crispy dough encasing small pools of melted goodness — every butter lover’s dream.
