Test Kitchen - Fried Pickle Chips

My first encounter with fried pickle chips was at Bull City Burger & Brewery in Durham, NC within the first few weeks it opened. I had visited the restaurant back when it was still in the making, running my hands along the gorgeous reclaimed wood furniture crafted from old barn doors. My first encounter with the place was during an Alternative Spring Break program I participated in during my senior year at Duke University - it was a restaurant dedicated to sourcing from local farmers (one that we visited in particular) from food to furnishings. When I went back later to have a burger and brew, I saw fried pickle chips on the menu. Wondering what they were, I snagged a side order and whoa, they were awesome.


When the most recent Test Kitchen ingredient was dill pickle, it didn't take me long to conclude that I had to make fried pickle chips. After all, Duc still needed some education on Southern-style food right? These bad boys aren't complicated to make though and offer a lovely combination of tang and crunch. Give them a try!

Step 1: Ingredients (yields 3-4 side servings)

• 1 jar (24 oz.) whole dill pickles, sliced
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• oil for frying

Step 2: Prepping ingredients
Slice up dill pickles and blot as dry as possible. I let my slices sit on absorbent paper towels to soak up the juices, switching every time the paper got saturated. In a shallow bowl, mix together flour, black pepper, and garlic salt. In a deep bowl, beat together egg and whole milk.


Step 3: Frying
Start a deep fryer (if you have one) or a deep saucepan with enough oil to cover three of your pickle slices if they stacked on top of each other. Heat it up. Flick some of your flour into the oil to check when the oil is hot enough to use (flour should start bubbling). The long part of the process may just well be the batter portion. Cover blotted pickle slices in flour. Then dip in egg mixture. Then cover in batter again. Place into oil and watch it sizzle. Pull out when golden brown.


Step 4: Finishing
As you pull them out of the oil, either let them drain excess oil through a wire net strainer or lay onto paper towels to absorb. Let cool enough so as not to burn your tongue, and enjoy! Careful of hot pickle juice though.


The next Test Kitchen ingredient: yellow split peas
"Split peas are an agricultural or culinary preparation consisting of the dried, peeled and split seeds of Pisum sativum. They are peeled, in that in addition to not being in the seed pod in which they grew, the splitting process also removes the dull colored outer skin of the pea. They come in yellow and green varieties. The peas are round when harvested and dried. Once dry, after the skin is removed, the natural split in the seed's cotyledon can be manually or mechanically separated, in part to encourage faster cooking due to increasing the surface area exposed to heat." [Wikipedia]

These beauts are next in our Test Kitchen line-up with a recipe to hit two weeks from now. As always, let us know on Facebook what you think we should make with it and/or what you'd like to see done. Comment when the picture is posted!


Photography by Duc Duong.