Home › To Fry Smelts › To Fry Smelts
To Fry Smelts
181. They should not be washed more than is necessary to clean them; dry them in a cloth, then lightly flour them, but shake it off; dip them into plenty of egg, then into bread-crumbs grated fine, and plunge them into a good pan of boiling lard; continue gently boiling, and a few minutes will make them a bright yellow brown; take care not to take off the light roughness of the crumbs, or their beauty will be lost, and for this purpose use the wire frame (see fig. 132).
A straightforward deep-fry that depends entirely on keeping the crumb coating intact and the fat hot. Everything else is preparation.
- The hinge: don't touch the crumbsThe whole point of the instruction is that the fried crumb surface should stay rough and craggy. Lower the fish in a frying basket, lift them out in it, and drain them on a rack rather than tumbling them onto paper.
- "Boiling lard" means 350-375F"Boiling lard" is a visual cue, not a literal one \the ffish \tbubbling is water escaping the fish, not the fat boiling. Modern practice for this kind of frying is roughly 350-375F; much cooler and the coating absorbs fat and slumps, much hotter and lard begins to smoke and darken. The recipe itself specifies no temperature.
- "A few minutes" is 2 to 3Smelts are small \feccook through about as fast as the crust colours, so two or three minutes at temperature is usually enough; longer and the flesh dries out while the crumb goes past yellow-brown to bitter.
- CleaningSmelts are traditionally cooked whole, head and all, and small ones are often left ungutted. If you would rather not, slit the belly and remove it, but keep rinsing to a minimum as directed \tthe recipe is explicit that they be dried in a cloth before flouring.
- Flour, egg, crumbsBeaten whole egg, thinned with a spoonful of water, coats more evenly than egg alone. The recipe asks for crumbs grated fine, but from stale bread rather than the uniform commercial sort or panko \tthe roughness it wants comes from irregular crumb.
- Fat substitutionLard was the usual fat for this and gives a clean result. Refined peanut, sunflower or rice bran oil behaves much the same way. Plain butter will not take this heat.
- Batch sizeFry in small handfuls. A pan crowded with cold fish pulls the fat temperature down sharply, and the coating soaks rather than sets.
- YieldAllow 6-8 smelts per person as a first course, closer to a dozen as a main. Serve immediately, with lemon and cayenne or a plain fried-parsley garnish.