the Resurrection and the Curd

Cheese Curds    Attempt 1    6:14pm
Oil at 375
Let curds reach room temperature (they should sweat a little)
toss them around with some flour (to help batter stick)
Mix together:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup beer
batter consistency: 2% milk
Result:
Batter was way too wet, cheese everywhere, have to clean kitchen, tastes amazing. Need to purchase more oil and curds.
Fix:
Much less beer in batter.

Would cajun spice be good in cheese curds? Didn’t someone have cajun curds? I’ll check at the store, but maybe I’ll do that some other time, it sounds like it may be nasty – I think the beer is the best flavor in the batter.
Cheese curds as well as asparagus were on sale, maybe I’ll try some beer-batered asparagus if I have some extra batter.

The light in the kitchen is strobing and it feels like I’m making cheese curds during a climactic scene of an action film. Maybe Coca~Cola would be good instead of beer, it may be too sweet, or not stick together correctly, but maybe I’ll try it if the beer gets boring, or coffee instead of beer, that might be strange; maybe the curds shouldn’t be caffeinated though, not really necessary.

Cheese Curds    Attempt 2    7:24pm
Oil at 375
Bring curds to room temp and toss w/ flour
Mix together:
1/2 cup flour
3/4 ts baking powder
some pinches of salt
a pinch of pepper
1 egg
1/4 cup Natural Ice
batter consistency: pancake batter / shitty pudding
Result:
Still maybe a little too wet, stuck to toilet paper that was being used for grease soak-up which ruined a whole batch, also many came in a large clump because I was not carefully dropping them in.
Fix:
Try cooling the batter before using it, or cooling the curds after I’ve battered them?

I am now cooling a bit of batter and a bit of batter + floured curds, it is 9pm now, and I will try to deep fry again once the deep frier is dry and I can handle eating any more curds.

Cheese Curds    Attempt 3    overnight fridge
Oil at 375
Bring curds to room temp and toss w/ flour
Mix together:
1/2 cup flour
3/4 ts baking powder
some salt
some pepper
1 egg
1/4 cup Natural Ice
Put curds into batter and put into fridge
batter consistency: cold pancake batter/ cold shitty pudding
Result:
Held together nicely, cheese was a bit under melted, I think dipping room-temp curds into cold batter may be the way to do it. Also instead of dropping them into the deep-frier I gently pushed them off the end of a fork so they didn’t splash into the oil and get stuck to the grate at the bottom, once they got to the bottom though I gave the grate a good shake to send them floating back to the top, this way they didn’t break open when having to scrape them off the bottom.
Fix:
Don’t cool curds along with batter.

New recipes found:

from Talon:
3/4 cans of light beer        more:less
3/4 cups flour            1:1
1/4 tsp salt                —
1/2 tsp paprika            —!
1/2 cup flour? for dredging?

from Sam:
1 egg                    1:2
1 cup beer                2:1
1 cup flour                1:1
1 tsp sugar                —!
1/4 tsp salt                —
1 tsp baking powder           ~-1/4

So, taking these recipes into account, I am using either A) an egg that doesn’t belong, or, B) twice as much egg than necessary. I will trust the latter because it doesn’t give me a recipe in cans of beer rather than useful measurements. Due to this conclusion I will have to double my recipe because I do not have any half eggs.

Next issue is that I am not using enough beer, which is alright, mine could definitely taste more like Natural Ice and less like eggs.

Paprika or no paprika? I’m sure Talon’s recipe was intended for a fish fry, but I will try the paprika regardless.

Taking more from Sam’s recipe I will also slightly lower the amount of baking powder in my recipe.

Also Ryan says I should try using corn starch, what is corn starch? I don’t know what the fuck it is. Maybe it’s wet and slimy, maybe it’s dry and powdery, I really don’t know. Depending entirely on how it looks I will measure an amount in and roll with it.

Cheese Curds    Attempt 4    several days later, 7:08pm
Mix together:
1 egg
1 cup beer
1 cup flour
some sugar
some salt
some paprika
some corn starch (couldn’t find it, don’t know what the container looks like)
1 tsp baking powder
fridge batter for an hour, thaw and dredge curds
batter consistency before cooling: wet pancake batter, so after cooling, pancake

Result: Pure excellence, could try some corn starch, but this’ll do pig.

———

Also, might be a new dish on the way, something in the way of the “Bennett” if you don’t know what a “Bennet” is then maybe we should do that next instead.