"Gross" Things I've Eaten

I saw this clickbait post on weird foods and decided to put up a post with a list of some of the unusual things I've eaten along with my impression. 1) Sheep's Head: It's in the list, but I didn't think it was weird at all. It's delicious, if a bit tedious to eat. Last time I had it at Union Republic in Jersey City at about 2:00 am during a drunken after hours party. It was great. 2) Balut: A perennial favorite on lists of gross foods, balut is awful looking but actually tastes great. Basically, it's egg and duck, both widely eat and enjoyed. In this case, you just happen to eat them together and the duck is also tiny (and you eat the bones, head, beak and feathers). YUM. 3) Fried scorpion: Verdict, not great. Tastes a bit like fried soft shell crab, but without any of the meat. And I have a mild insect phobia, so this was a tough one. 4) That thai liquor (is it vodka? I don't even know) with a dead snake in it. It was fucking gross. It smelled and tasted like rotten snake, unsurprisingly I guess. There is no upside. It's just ruined booze. Thanks for nothing Kevin Kamel. 5) Chicken feet: Overrated. Sorry chinese people, these just aren't good. It's basically just trying to gnaw mushy chicken skin off a foot. just because you can cook something doesn't mean you should. 6) Durian fruit: I had some once and it was basically unmemorable. And yeah, it stinks, but not quite so much as they say. 7) Crickets (and also chocolate covered grasshopper): They served it in a bar in brooklyn as a kinda of bar snack in bowls on each table. They also had it ground up with spices to salt the rims of some of their cocktails. eh. it was fine i guess. i'll take cashews next time though.

Deep Fried Burgers - They're As Good As You Hoped

So I made some fried chicken a couple days ago and was, of course, left with a ton of oil that I didn't want to just pour out and waste.  And no, I don't strain and save frying oil.  I'm not that guy.  But in an effort to be at least a little less wasteful I decided to try out an idea I've been thinking about for a while.  Deep frying a burger.  

Deep frying seems like a prefect way to cook a burger.  Super high, fast heat transfer to get a crispy, brown crust fast enough to leave the interior nice and medium rare.  I looked online for a recipe from America's Test Kitchen or Alton Brown or Serious Eats, but didn't see much.  So I thought, "this must be a bad idea for some reason".  Yet, there was the oil, ready to go.  And I already had the ground beef.  So, what the hell.  

Of couse I needed cheese , but since I was deep frying I couldn't melt the cheese on the burger, so I stuffed it with some decent aged cheddar that i shaved.  I also made the patty pretty flat, since I expected a dramatic shrink when it hit that hot oil.  You'll see in the video I was right about that.  Aged cheddar also worked out well because both burgers got holes when they shrunk up, and a softer cheese would have leaked, but the cheddar stayed in there.  I also made the patties relatively small, about 4-5 oz each I'd guess.  After forming them around the shaved cheddar I salted the outside only, because many chef's say mixing salt thoughout the patty causes it to develop a tougher sausage-like consistency instead of the looser ground meat a burger "should" have.  Let it sit for a few minute for the salt to absorb and that's it, into the oil.  So here's a video of the frying process.  Please excuse how dirty my stove top is, I had just cooked a BUNCH of fried chicken.  Notice how the burger is fully submerged when I put it in and slowly contracts and sticks out of the oil.

And here's a quick look at the interior after I pulled it out.

And finally, here's the first bite.

As you can see, the exterior has a delicious dark brown crust while almost the entire the interior is a perfect, uniform medium rare.  This is much better than the results I've ever gotten with traditional methods of burger cooking.  It's similar to a very hot grill, but much easier and the whole cooking process is really fast compared to a pan.  

So give it a try.  You'll be impressed.  And be careful with the hot oil.