There’s one thing magical about watching an ingredient go right into a deep fryer. Listening to the oil sizzle and seeing dough puff or batter flip golden brown in a matter of seconds is a reminder of how enchanting cooking will be. 

If the transformative, fast-acting technique of frying meals in oil is thrilling for you too, then there’s an much more visually intriguing cooking technique that may instantly seize your consideration: frying in salt.

When cooking creator Roice Bethel (@roicebethel) shared a clip of himself cooking chips and popcorn in a pan stuffed with salt this spring, the video rapidly amassed over 15 million views. It’s satisfying to observe: popcorn kernels are submerged in plain salt, then seconds later begin to puff into the snack you recognize and love. 

Stunned followers chimed in with a myriad of questions — fairly a number of of them requested for Bethel to attempt frying rooster in salt — and one commenter even talked about that “I’ve my culinary diploma, and I didn’t know you may deep fry in salt.”

This cooking technique does work simply because it appears within the viral clip, nevertheless it wasn’t invented by Bethel. As a substitute, frying in salt — or extra typically, sand — is a course of with historic roots that spans international locations and centuries.

How does sizzling salt frying work?

When deep frying in oil, the fats surrounding the meals is what transfers warmth, cooking the submerged components. Within the technique of sizzling salt frying, you’re merely changing oil with salt, which may evenly distribute warmth on all sides of the meals. Sizzling sand frying is a similar approach that depends on the identical warmth switch system, however replaces salt with sand.

Identical to you’ll be able to take a look at the temperature of oil earlier than frying, you’ll discover that Bethel makes use of a thermometer to gauge if the salt in his pan is at a excessive sufficient temperature for cooking. 

You’ll be able to solely sizzling salt fry in the identical sorts of vessels used for deep frying in oil. For instance, you may sizzling salt fry in a cast-iron skillet or carbon metal wok, however you shouldn’t use a Teflon-coated nonstick skillet. The salt will get highly regarded and might injury a synthetic nonstick floor or burn you if you happen to contact it.

A food-grade, coarse salt is finest for this system — finer seasonings like desk salt can be tough to sift off the components you cook dinner, and coarse granules are much less prone to take in moisture. Except for that, one residence cook dinner explains on Reddit that “one can use any salt; simply let it warmth for quarter-hour to let the risky compounds evaporate (like iodine). Similar goes with sand as effectively.”

Most significantly, solely fully dry objects must be fried in salt. Any damp ingredient, like rooster or steak, will trigger the salt to stay, leading to a dish that’s too salty, and the salt is not going to successfully make moist components, comparable to batter, develop into crispy.

The place does sizzling salt frying come from?

Though there isn’t a lot details about sizzling salt or sizzling sand frying on-line, it’s clear this can be a approach that has been round for tons of of years and remains to be used immediately, particularly by road distributors throughout a number of international locations in Asia, together with Bangladesh, Nepal, China, and India. 

Kurush F. Dalal, an archaeologist and culinary anthropologist, explains that “sand frying is what is completed throughout India… Indians even make popcorn on the streets this manner. It’s generally used throughout Northern India in winters to roast candy potatoes. It’s extremely cost-effective and a really controllable course of.”

Dalal notes that “Historically, in many of the world salt was too valuable a commodity to deal with so casually,” emphasizing that frying in sand is what you’re much more prone to see in India.

Frying in salt is extra budget-friendly than frying in oil, and frying in sand is inexpensive than both possibility. You may also reuse sand or salt many extra occasions than you reuse cooking oil, and cleansing up after cooking with these supplies is far less complicated.

Fryums — colourful, puffed chips typically constructed from potato starch — are one of many different components you would possibly see distributors in India frying in sand or sometimes salt. In China, chestnuts have traditionally been fried in woks stuffed with sand throughout winter, and distributors in Bangladesh typically toast peanuts in pans of sizzling, black sand.

In case you’re desirous to attempt sizzling salt or sand frying your self, I like to recommend beginning with one thing many distributors cook dinner with this system and also you probably have already got in your pantry: popcorn.