they can do it, then so can you.
Here’s what happens when you drop a piece of food into
a deep fryer:
- Dehydration. Free water inside foods and in batters or
breadings will evaporate at 212°F. As soon as your food
hits the oil in a deep fryer, which for most recipes ranges
from 300° to 400°F, moisture will rapidly convert into
steam, releasing itself in a violent cascade of bubbles. This
escape of moisture is what you see when you first lower
food into a fryer. Within a few minutes (depending on the
thickness of your food and temperature of your fryer),
most of the free moisture in your food will have
completely evaporated and the bubbling will slow down.
After this, bound water from inside the food—that is,
water that takes more energy to escape from its cellular
prisons—will continue to be released in small streams of
bubbles. Eventually, after all free and bound moisture has
been expelled, you will no longer see bubbles coming
from your food. At this stage, your potato chip is about as
fried as it’s gonna get. - Expansion. This phenomenon occurs in foods that are
coated in a batter or dredged in a mixture leavened with
baking powder, whipped egg whites, or other ingredients
that cause the formation of air bubbles. Hot air takes up
more space than cold air, so the rapid change in
temperature that occurs when you drop food into a fryer
causes the air bubbles inside the batter around a piece of
fried food to expand. In that way, it’s very similar to the
way that a ball of dough will puff when put into a hot