I already covered my "Thai" Beef Salad in another post; tonight was very similar but with a whole bunch of fresh long radishes instead of tomatoes, and sweet chilli sauce instead of a real chilli as the SO has a painful mouth ulcer. One thing I finally got right was deep-frying the rice vermicelli. Often I just soak this in some hot water and then toss around in a stir fry, but I've had some success frying it and getting it to puff up. However as I don't usually have many litres of oil lying around the kitchen, I'm always tended to use less oil than I should, and usually in a wok since that's what a lot of recipes recommend.
Tonight I thought that the main thing that's made it difficult in the past is the shallow level of oil, as some parts puff up and push other parts out of the oil, so you end up frying them longer than you should, the oil burns, and some parts fry shut before puffing up. So... why am I using a giant bowl of a pan with a flat gradient? That's crazy!
So I heated up my smallest, heavy-based saucepan, and added about 200ml of vegetable oil. I flattened out a handful of loops of vermicelli and the SO dropped them into the pan. The first nest fried so quickly, that the entire pan was suddenly full of puffed rice noodles, all in a big nest that could easily be removed. Success! They were absolutely perfect, very light and crackly, and the oil was completely clean afterwards so we'll happily use it again. One day maybe I'll own a proper deep-fryer, but until then, I'll use a deep layer in a hot pan, set well back on the stove :)
Tonight I thought that the main thing that's made it difficult in the past is the shallow level of oil, as some parts puff up and push other parts out of the oil, so you end up frying them longer than you should, the oil burns, and some parts fry shut before puffing up. So... why am I using a giant bowl of a pan with a flat gradient? That's crazy!So I heated up my smallest, heavy-based saucepan, and added about 200ml of vegetable oil. I flattened out a handful of loops of vermicelli and the SO dropped them into the pan. The first nest fried so quickly, that the entire pan was suddenly full of puffed rice noodles, all in a big nest that could easily be removed. Success! They were absolutely perfect, very light and crackly, and the oil was completely clean afterwards so we'll happily use it again. One day maybe I'll own a proper deep-fryer, but until then, I'll use a deep layer in a hot pan, set well back on the stove :)
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