How To Make Fried Pickles

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Fried pickles are surprisingly delicious, considering they are nothing more than some cut-up pickled cucumbers fried in batter. They don’t have to be challenging to make, however, and can actually be a great thing to make at home whenever you have some hot oil to hand.

Make sure to use this Fried Pickles recipe to try this frying technique! Also, don’t forget to make Homemade Worcestershire Sauce to use when making your fried pickles!

How To Make Fried Pickles

Fried pickles are one of those things that most people can only really enjoy when they are out at a restaurant, or anywhere that tends to serve fried chicken.

Considering it involves using hot oil, as well as attempting to fry something wet, which is usually the most dangerous type of frying, most people don’t really ever give it a try.

However, so long as you have the technique down, making some delicious fried pickles at home can be surprisingly easy!

You just need to understand the techniques and methods to ensure that you not only get a crispy, tender coating but no oil explosions either.

What Kind Of Oil Should You Use?

The choice of frying oil is the first thing to consider when frying anything, but especially when frying something as delicately flavored as pickles.

The most common choice of frying oil is undoubtedly going to be a simple vegetable oil, but for its cheap cost and for its neutral flavor profile.

However, while vegetable oil is the easiest to reach for, there is nothing stopping you from trying out something different.

Peanut oil, for example, is well known for having a much higher smoke point, allowing you to get a much higher temperature, and thus a much deeper brown coloring on your crust.

If you want more flavor and don’t mind the cost, however, you could always go for something like lard or beef tallow.

While this will probably cost way more than a simple bottle of vegetable oil, there is something incredibly satisfying and luxurious about frying anything in pig or beef fat.

Everything has that meaty, savory greasiness that tastes incredible, and it lasts a surprisingly long time, so long as you filter the oil after frying it.

How Do You Get The Pickles Coated In Their Dredge Properly?

One of the biggest troubles with trying to fry anything is the endless frustration in trying to get the batter and dredge to actually stick to the pickles.

Whether because the dry dredge isn’t clinging to what you are trying to fry, or because the wet mixture just isn’t getting stuck onto your pickles, getting the dredge to actually stay on can be a real challenge.

This is especially vital when frying pickles, or really anything with a high moisture content, because if the dredge isn’t properly applied to your pickles, you might end up with an explosion.

If the hot oil hits the liquid in the middle of the pickles without being covered by dredge, it is likely to instantly evaporate and splash oil absolutely everywhere.

So to avoid all this disaster and just get the egg to stick, you need to be really careful when adding the pickles to the dry and wet mixture.

Instead of just dunking it in, really mix it around in both the wet and dry mixture to ensure that absolutely everything is coated.

If you find that your hands or whatever tool you are using are getting caked in batter or dredge, then consider using only one hand for the wet, and one hand for the dry.

This wet-hand, dry-hand technique ensures that the dry and wet ingredients don’t mix, making it very unlikely for any caking to occur as long as you are careful.

How To Stop Oil Explosions

Oil explosions are one of those things that are pretty much inevitable if you cook for long enough.

Deep frying always has its risks, and it almost seems like any suitably large pot of oil is just waiting to explode.

So here are a few steps to ensuring that no explosions occur on your frying day.

– Avoid Any Water Near The Pot

The biggest thing you can do to avoid any oil explosions is to ensure that absolutely no water goes near your pot. This means both ensuring that the pickle juice in the pickles themselves doesn’t get into the pot without a dredge coating, but also no errant water from the sink.

If water falls in, you can expect it to instantly evaporate and explode, so keep everything dry near your pot!

– Keep An Eye On The Oil Temperature

Another thing to keep in mind when frying in oil is to not heat the oil too much. You want to keep your oil at a comfortable frying temperature, but your oil could just as easily continue to heat up without you noticing.

If you accidentally heated your oil to 500 Fahrenheit and then tried to drop a dredged pickle into it, you might end up with an explosion!

So keep checking your fry oil with an instant-read thermometer to ensure nothing terrible happens.

– Use Only Clean Oil!

One final thing to keep in mind is that you are using only the cleanest oil possible.

Contrary to popular belief, you can absolutely re-use your frying oil, but if you aren’t processing it by removing all of the little blackened and brown bits at the bottom of the pot, then you might be at risk of further oil explosions.

To best remove the little browned bits from previous fries, run the whole pot of oil through a paper towel-lined sieve to catch all of the errant black bits and end up with perfectly clean, reusable oil.   

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