Crazy Deep Fried Food Facts

I don't care where you're from or who you are, there's nothing like a good piece of fried chicken. I think you're absolutely right. Originally intended to help preserve foods, frying became a common cooking technique worldwide because it makes anything taste just a little bit better. The invention of the frying pan has been credited to the ancient Mesopotamians, which means humans have been frying food pretty much since the dawn of civilization itself, and the origins of some of your favorite fried foods might surprise you. So today, we're going to take a look at some deliciously crispy facts we didn't know about the history of fried foods. Before we get started, be sure to subscribe to the Weird History Food channel. After that, please leave a comment and let us know what other foods you would like to hear about. Okay, fries are up! Widely regarded as nature's perfect food, the churro is made by piping a batter of flour, water, and salt through a star-tipped utensil known as a churrera into hot oil where it fries until it's crispy. Known for their distinct ridged design, churros were traditionally dusted with cinnamon and sugar. In recent years, however, they've increasingly become available in other flavors such as chocolate and caramel, which is great because variety is the spice of life, specifically when that variety is chocolate and caramel. While these pastries are primarily associated with Spain, Portugal, and Latin America, their exact origin is unclear. One theory holds that Portuguese sailors discovered a salty fried food in the shape They brought the frying technique home with them but turned the food from a salty treat to a sweet one. When the Spanish heard of it, they put a twist on the recipe by pushing the dough through a star-shaped tip before frying it. Another theory is that churros were invented by nomadic Spanish shepherds in the Middle Ages, who cooked the treats over an open fire. Their breed of sheep, the churra, had horns that supposedly resembled churros, making it the most fantastical beast that has ever actually existed. But food historians have pointed out that churros are extremely similar to types of fritters enjoyed in the Roman Empire and even earlier in Greece, so they may just be a native part of Mediterranean cuisine. No matter the exact origin, we know that the pastries have been around for centuries and that they were introduced to South America during the Spanish Inquisition. In the U.S., their popularity has been widely credited to Disneyland, which has been selling the snacks since the 1980s. So the next time you tuck into a churro, remember to thank Mickey Mouse and the Spanish Inquisition. Classified as choux pastries, which refers to the high-moisture dough that creates steam during the cooking process, beignets are made with a yeasted, sweetened dough. After it rises, the dough is cut into squares, fried, and dusted with powdered sugar. The word beignet means fritter in French, although the origin of the word can be traced back to the Celtic word beignet, which means to raise. It's also an anagram of binge, and that simply cannot be a coincidence. Although it's often associated with the city of New Orleans, the powdered sugar-coated doughnut-like treat wasn't actually born there, but nobody knows for sure where it did come from. The Romans made a vaguely similar dessert called scriblita out of a high-moisture dough fried in animal fat. There may also be a connection to the fried pillowy pastry sopapilla, which hails from the Andalusian region of Spain. From Spain, the recipe alleged that it made its way to France and later to French Canada. The French-Canadian settlers then supposedly brought the recipe for beignets to New Orleans in the 18th century. If the most popular side dish to have with a burger in the U.S. is fries, onion rings can't be far behind. They're the only reason to go to Burger King if McDonald's is still open. Like many other items in this list, the exact origin of these delicious golden circles has been lost, so unless the creator's name was Johnny Onion Rings, their identity will probably never be known. What we do know, however, is that the first documented mention of the crispy fried snack was in an ad for Crisco and a New York Times magazine in 1933. The advertisement included a recipe that said to slice onions into rings, dip them in milk, dredge them in flour, and then deep fry them. Turning technically edible hunks of garnish into a calorie-drenched meal was a common money-saving trick of the Depression-era kitchen. The then-recipe's publication timing likely dates the creation of onion rings to the 20th century, but no one can really be sure. Regardless, the treat has always been popular and is likely a big contributor to the reported 20 pounds of onions the average American eats every year. Fish and chips is a dish consisted of breaded, fried fish and thickly cut french fries, often doused in salt and vinegar. It is to England what Coca-Cola and apple pie are to the United States. You know, if you deep fried them, which I'm pretty sure people have. The exact birthplace of fish and chips is unknown, but both Lancashire and London claim to be the meal's port of origin. According to the Lancashire contingent, around 1863, a man named Lees started selling fish and chips from a wooden hut in a market in Mosley, Lancashire. When he moved to a permanent shop, a sign in the window read, this is the first fish and chip shop in the world, which either shows incredible foresight or a strong intent to franchise. However, Londoners insist the Lancashire folks are full of it. According to them, a Jewish immigrant named Joseph Mallon opened the first fish and chip shop in the Cleveland Way part of London, also around 1863. Sadly, unless new evidence emerges, the only way to settle the dispute is with some sort of fried fish toss, probably. Regardless of where the first one was, in the beginning, most chip shops were small operations, often run out of people's homes. They didn't truly expand until the Industrial Revolution, which was also when the establishment started popping up in the US. Ever joke about how you could eat your favorite food until you explode? Well, according to legend, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan's first shogun, was so smitten with tempura that he keeled over after eating too much of it in a single sitting. He did not, however, explode. Uh, at least we're pretty sure. That's something you'd mention. Of course, the stuff he liked was probably a little different than what we get today. Tempura was originally made out of balls of minced meat, fish, or vegetables. In the 18th century, chefs began frying whole fish or vegetables, which helped the dish go from a midday snack to a full meal. In the 20th century, tempura is often served on top of rice or soba noodles. It generally consists of vegetables, meat, or seafood fried in a light batter and served with soy sauce. The batter is traditionally made of soft flour, eggs, and very cold or sparkling water, and a variety of other ingredients including mushrooms, seaweed, squash, carrots, okra, lotus root, onions, and green beans can be used in the dish. Although people think of it as Japanese, Portuguese missionaries introduced tempura to Japan in the 16th century. Its purpose was to provide a meatless dish during holy fasting days, and its name comes from the Latin ad tempura quaresma, which translates to in the time of Lent. Prior to the introduction of tempura, fried foods were not part of Japanese culture, but it quickly became popular as a snack. Japanese cardiologists have been thanking the Portuguese ever since. The 1991 movie Fried Green Tomatoes chronicles the friendship and possible romance between two young women who open a cafe in a small Alabama town in the 1930s. The titular fried green tomatoes are one of the cafe's specialty dishes. Also at one point, Chris O'Donnell gets hit by a train. It's a good movie. The dish, which usually consists of unripe tomatoes dredged in a cornmeal mixture and then deep-fried until crispy, originated in the Midwestern or Northeastern U.S. in the late 19th century, potentially introduced to diners by Jewish immigrants. A recipe printed in the Chicago newspaper The Daily Interocean in 1877 recommended fried green tomatoes as being a breakfast dish, and they were a popular dish in different parts of the U.S. in the first few decades of the 20th century, but recipes were rarely actually published. By the 1970s, fried green tomatoes had lost their popularity, but after the movie's release, the dish gained a mighty second wind and widely came to be perceived as a classic Southern recipe, even though it's anything but. But then they made a movie with Kathy Bates, and they've been famous ever since. There's Nothing Scottish About Scotch Eggs Sorry, Scotty. Hey, he wasn't Scottish, either. The scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg encased in sausage and coated in breadcrumbs, then deep-fried until crispy. That little voice you're hearing in your heart, begging for mercy? Ignore it. What does it expect you to do? Eat health food? The dish has a number of proposed origins, but none of them take place in Scotland. The first theory is that scotch eggs were invented at a London retail store called Fortnum & Mason in 1738 as a snack for wealthy travelers. Another story suggests the dish, originally called a scotty, was created in the Yorkshire town of Whitby in the 19th century by a business known as William J. Scott & Sons. Still, others believe it may derive from a North African dish first recorded in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Finally, the scotch egg could be a British take on the Indian curry dish Nargisi Kafta, in which a hard-boiled egg is coated with spicy minced meat. But just like that car in the background of Braveheart, the scotch egg does not belong in Scotland. Fried chicken wings have been on menus across the U.S. since at least the 1850s, but the spicy, saucy version known as buffalo wings doesn't appear to have debuted until more than a century later, and they didn't truly take off in nationwide popularity until they teamed up with pizza. By the 1960s, a buffalo couple named Frank and Teresa Bellissimo had become famous for supposedly creating this take on fried wings, which they had been serving at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo as early as 1964. However, around the same time, John Young was serving breaded whole chicken wings at his Buffalo Wings and Things franchise in his own variation of the restaurant's signature mambo sauce. Although it doesn't prove they were the originators, the recipe for buffalo wings that is widely used today does seem to be closer to the recipe that the Bellissimos used in their restaurant. Whatever the case, buffalo wings popularity really began to soar in the 1970s, when pizzeria owners in Buffalo began serving them as a side dish. In the early 1990s, nationwide chains like Domino's and Little Caesars jumped onto the pizza and wings bandwagon, and there was no looking back after that. Made of thick cornmeal batter fried until it's crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside, hush puppies are a side dish generally served with fried fish or shrimp. Their dense form and crunchy outer shell make them a satisfying treat that can also be used for home defense. Though they're typically associated with the American South, no one knows where or how they were invented, but several theories exist. The most common of those is that when fishermen would start cooking their catch, the dogs would smell it and howl for food. To hush their pups, the fishermen fed them fried bits of dough. Oh, that's a fun one. Let's hope it's that one. Another theory places their origin with Cajuns in Louisiana, who would batter, fry, and eat salamanders, which they called mud puppies. But because eating the slimy little amphibians wasn't winning them any friends in high society, they kept hush about the practice. Others believed that hush puppies were invented by a formerly enslaved person, Romeo Govan, who was a well-known cook in the area around Bamberg, South Carolina, in the late 19th and early 20th century. He hosted fish fries where he served, among other things, red horse bread. Red horse is the common name of the river-dwelling fish Moxostoma carnatum, and the bread was made of cornmeal batter fried in lard. What people called red horse bread in South Carolina then came to be known as hush puppies elsewhere for reasons unknown. Sort of like how chips mean something different depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on. Whatever the case, in 1934, the fried cornmeal concoction received what was likely its first real attention outside the Southern U.S. when the author of a travel piece in the Harrisburg Sunday Courier wrote about eating, and loving, hush puppies while visiting Orlando, Florida. Curiously, she apparently skipped a visit to Universal Studios on that trip as her review makes no mention of the Jaws ride. So what do you think? Which of these fried food facts surprised you the most? Let us know in the comments below and while you're at it, check out some of these other weird history food videos.