The Fearless Frying Cookbook

Rating:
Summary: If cooked right, fried food doesn't have to be oily
Review: Seeing the title of this book was a great joy for me. I've gotten a little weary of all the nutrition police screaming that anything other than steamed or boiled food will kill us all.

The author certainly knows his stuff and I was impressed at the variety of foods one can fry and how to fry them as well. Taylor is also telling the truth when he says that if cooked right, fried food is surprisingly not greasy.

I tried my hand at his recipe for Southern Fried Chicken. I followed the instructions to a T: using a deep-fry thermometer and keeping the temp between 365-375 degrees F. The result? The crispiest, most tender and delicious chicken I've fried. Fantastic!

Get this book if you want to re-live the joys of fried food. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: helpful
Review: Taylor's technical information was extremely helpful; giving me the courage to fire up 16,000 BTU's under a big stockpot of 400 degree oil! His suggestion for using potatoes to clean used oil was a great insight. After cleaning the oil, we tried the "taters". Yummy! Recipes are a nice addition to the terrific informative sections.

Rating:
Summary: Frying... did we miss the health watch?
Review: With today's health consciousness it was interesting to pick up a cookbook named The Fearless Frying Cookbook written by Hoppin' John Martin Taylor. This book contained over 125 recipes that are almost all fried in one fashion or another. Recipes have the ingredients fried in butter, olive oil, peanut oil, lard, sesame oil, and vegetable oil to name a few. The recipes obviously do not offer any nutritional information. Many of the recipes are poorly laid-out making the cook turn the pages to look at the balance of the recipe that may only be a few extra lines.

While many cookbooks keep the recipes to the same or approximate serving sizes, this book goes from 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 and 8 to 10 with some recipes designed for 3 and other unusal serving sizes. Almost all of the recipes are quick and easy and contain ingredients readily available at all basic grocery stores. The book is designed with three different font sizes or styles which make it harder on the eyes of the cook, but easier to pull out the ingredients the directions and the prefaces to each recipe.

Recipes include such items as Sopaipillas, Chickpea Fritters with Sorrel, Fried Egg Salad, Fried Calzone, Fried Shark, Sesame Fried Fish, Pan-Fried Crab Cakes, Deep-Fried Turkey Breast, Pan-Fried Pork Chops, Fried Lamb Patties, Okra Fritters, Fried Bananas, and Fried Ice Cream.

Published by Workman publishing, The Fearless Frying Cookbook bills itself as a cookbook with recipes that are "surprisingly greaseless". I give Hoppin' Taylor credit for putting together an entire cookbook on today's most sensitive health topic - frying of foods, but I would have like to see the book contain a few more alternatives to each recipe and the courage to show the nutritional data on each recipe.