Fried Shallots (Bonus Recipe: Shallot Oil!)

Fried shallots: crispy but delicate. Flavorful but not overwhelming. Opaque but transluscent. Like a perfect woman, beautiful and deep-fried. Or something.

These buggers are another example of Vietnamese culinary ingenuity. Use them as a condiment for anything and everything Vietnamese and, sometimes, Thai. Banh mi missing that certain something? Stick ‘em in there. Your labor-intensive Vietnamese salad bowl has no crunch? Throw these on top. Children too fussy? Toss ‘em outside and sit down on the couch and eat these straight while wearing nothing but your underwear and a shirt that says DUKAKIS ’88.

BONUS RECIPE: An inevitable byproduct of making fried shallots is…shallot oil! Use this to fry anything and everything, and it’ll imbue whatever you’re frying with a certain, as the French say, l’ fried shallot-y flavor d’awesome.

And now for an actual, genuine, 100% Voice of Experience moment. Don’t heat up the oil before you throw these guys in, or else you’ll deep-fry them to a crisp before you manage to fumble all of them out and onto the paper towels to drain. Heat up the oil with them in it.

Fried Shallots and Shallot Oil
Adapted from Mai Pham’s excellent The Best of Vietnamese & Thai Cooking.

Ingredients:
1 cup thinly sliced shallots, separated into individual rings
1 cup vegetable oil
cheesecloth (NOTE: do not eat)

I said, THINLY sliced!

Directions:
1. If you are a patient and mature person who donates to charities and doesn’t surreptitiously stare at obese people on the street, spread out the shallot rings in a monolayer on a towel and let them air-dry for 20 minutes.
2. If you are impatient and self-centered and you happen to own something you call “the pokin’ stick,” just toss the shallots into a small saucepan and pour the vegetable oil over them. If they’re not quite covered, add more oil until they are.
3. Turn the burner to medium heat. Depending on the amount of oil needed to cover the shallots, it’ll take 10-15 minutes before the oil starts to bubble slightly around the shallots, and the shallots themselves begin to crisp and float to the top.
4. Stir the shallots occasionally with a chopstick or fork to keep them from frying totally together.
5. When the shallots are golden – NOT brown – and able to keep their shape without flopping when you pick them out with the chopstick, remove them from the oil with a large fork, slotted spoon, or other oil-draining implement of choice. Drain the shallots on a bed of paper towels.
6. Once the shallots have cooled to room temperature, store them in a sealed glass container in the fridge. They’ll keep for a month.

Personally, I don’t see the point to any recipe that doesn’t involve rubber band contraptions.

7. When the oil has cooled down to room temperature (give it a good several hours), strain it through some cheesecloth and store it at room temperature in a sealed glass container.

So.  Awesome.