Sweet Fried Food?

Not talking about breakfast here, but about regular preparations that are then coated with honey or syrup. Yech! Southern cooking commits this sort of culinary miscegenation (though I'm sure it has many fans).

I see fried chicken coated with honey or sweet sauce (Korean, for one) often combined with a spicy element. Not for me!

Ditto for Chinese sweet and sour fried pork. Just do not get it. That red sweet sauce looks like it will glow in the dark.

Are there any food preps/recipes like that, that you just don't see any virtue in? I don't mean if you hate garlic, name a garlic dish, it is the preparation/combination of flavours I'm asking about that may just seem bizarre or pointless to you.

And before you ask, it isn't a sweet thing only - there are recipes that use chocolate to excellent effect, for instance ( e.g. Mexican), but it isn't normally to add a sweet component, more a cocoa-slightly bitter effect. That works for me. Ditto for the use of Mirin in Japanese cooking.

So, sweet + fried raises only a few memories for me (leaving aside French Toast sorts of things):
1. Fried chicken with honey, which always seemed a non sequitur to me... fried chicken is good and honey is good but they do nothing for each other.
2. Sweet and sour pork... only from the cheapest Chinese restaurants.
3. Battered and fried Monte Cristo sandwiches... with the addition of powdered sugar or maple syrup it moves strongly in the direction of breakfast food again.
4. Deep-fried candy bars... a Scottish favorite, also seen at county fairs right next to funnel cake. Not bad but a little goes a long way.
5. Pumpkin suggests egg rolls with duck sauce... and that is a good one!

I can't think of any more. So, not a disastrous category but hardly a big winner.

[Jenise]

I can't think of anything both sweet and fried that I like--the smell of funnel cakes frying at a county fair is a true stomach-turner. French toast? SPARE ME. French toast and it's sweet breakfast cousins are the #1 reason why I avoid American B&B's. It is no treat for me to wake up to a house that reeks of baking sugar, and they literally all do it.

But I don't hate sweetness in savory preparations across the board, or at least not when there's acidity and heat enough to balance things out. It's just that most of the time, there isn't. I recall loving sweet and sour chicken wings at a Chinese restaurant in my childhood. It was a clear, amber sauce, not very thick but very tart, lightly sweet and a little spicy, and the chicken meat had been pushed down the bone into a ball (often called 'lollipop') at one end. They were delicious and fun to eat, and the dish had plenty of pineapple and green bell pepper too. I would love it again today. But the day-glo red stuff of modern sweet and sour pork? No. And I like Korean fried chicken.

Bottom line: sweet and sour meat dishes don't have to be horrible, they just usually are. Way too sweet, not enough sour. (And of course they suck as wine matches.)

But bizarre and pointless to me while widely accepted as normal and embraced by the rest of the world? If this isn't going too far afield because it's not fried, but grease and sweet are definitely the offenders here: goopy sweet sauces on hamburgers. Mustard's okay but all the rest, ALL of them, are essentially variations on mayo, ketchup and pickle relish and I don't know what about that enhances beef, cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles and onions of the classic American burger. If you actually like the meat and vegetables, their flavor is even MORE pronounced when not diluted with the extra fat and calories of sweet goop!

I don't eat sweets/dessert at all, but I LOVE mochiko chicken (aka Korean Fried Chicken, the real KFC). Can't wait to go to Noreetuh next week
I've had plenty of enjoyable fried appetizers in better Thai/Indian/Chinese restaurants with dipping sauces with some sweetness- fine by me.
Betsy made chicken biscuits with hot honey butter last week, which I liked
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/101 ... its&rank=0
Corn croquettes with a honey/peeper sauce at Manresa
Mushroom "nuggets" with honey/musrtard sauce at Blue Hill at Stone Barns

Ditto for Chinese sweet and sour fried pork. Just do not get it. That red sweet sauce looks like it will glow in the dark.

Agreed that the sweet-and-sour dishes found in most American/Chinese restaurants are an abomination. General Tso's chicken (and its variants) are a tad better. Real Chinese sweet-and-sour is next to impossible to find in restaurants.

Ning mon gai, Chinese Lemon Chicken, is a sweet-and-sour fried chicken variant that is to die for. The recipe is here.

The Thais are very fond of sweet/sour/hot condiments to go with fried meats. And Chinese plum sauce (the real version of that Chinese/American heresy "duck sauce") is, along with hot mustard, my favorite accompaniment for fried wontons.

-Paul W.

Ditto for Chinese sweet and sour fried pork. Just do not get it. That red sweet sauce looks like it will glow in the dark.

The Thais are very fond of sweet/sour/hot condiments to go with fried meats. And Chinese plum sauce (the real version of that Chinese/American heresy "duck sauce") is, along with hot mustard, my favorite accompaniment for fried wontons.

-Paul W.

Agree about the Thai cooking - we have several quite good Thai restaurants locally. They moderate the sweetness and pair it with spice/heat and it usually works out well.

You are also right about the horrid standard cheap Chinese glowing read sweet sauce - don't know who came up with that but it became so popular that customers expected it and would probably have rebelled if they had been presented with a Sechuan sauce with any sweetness or a Chinese Hoisin or sweet bean sauce used too liberally

The only sweet/savory combinations I appreciate are SE Asian foods. And sometimes the Thai gets a little too sweet for me. The key is balance and if the sweet/acid/heat is not well balanced, I'm not going to enjoy the meal. I haven't a clue what the chicken and waffles craze is all about. I always thought it was ridiculous as a meal creation, and I haven't changed my mind. I like a good scone with sugar crystals on top (mostly for the crunch), but from there it's just a slather of butter. Don't care for waffles, pancakes or French toast -- don't like syrup. Like a good honey though. especially on a flaky buttermilk biscuit. Sweet and Savory -- it's complicated!

[Robin Garr]

Mexican churros or Italian zeppole? I'll take a taste of that, when the circumstances are right.

Good thinking, both lemon chicken / General Tso's and zeppole.

I recall introducing an Indian workmate of mine to zeppole, from a street fair. I think he was boggled by sugar after the first few!

I like Moroccan bisteeya that has chicken and powdered sugar.

I like Moroccan bisteeya that has chicken and powdered sugar.

But that uses a modest amount of sugar to work with the other spices and it is in proportion, not eve really sweet.

Excellent recipe (if long) at https://aglobalgarnish.com/2011/12/31/b ... -invented/

Lot of work, but worth it once in awhile.

I like Moroccan bisteeya that has chicken and powdered sugar.

But that uses a modest amount of sugar to work with the other spices and it is in proportion, not eve really sweet.

Excellent recipe (if long) at https://aglobalgarnish.com/2011/12/31/b ... -invented/

Lot of work, but worth it once in awhile.

Okay. How about the proportions of baked ham with pineapple rings and glaze? Or pineapple on pizza?

Loathe both of those. Ask an Italian what they think of pineapple on a pizza, but first make sure they have no knives handy.

More interesting thoughts! Baked ham with glaze is good stuff, though the topic here is fried food.

I'm not a fan of "Hawaiian" pizza -- pineapple with spam (or ham, which is more common here) -- but that's only if 'tomato pie' is part of your heritage or your upbringing. When I've bought pizza for workmates of Indian heritage, they know nothing of tomato pie but do know that they like sweet and spicy... so it's pineapple + jalapeno on top! ((...and avoids meat, another plus for that team...))

ETA: Bsteeya is great stuff. It is a lot of fussing about. I haven't made one in a while. Hm...

ETA: Bsteeya is great stuff. It is a lot of fussing about. I haven't made one in a while. Hm...

I haven't either but I think I may have SWMBO fired up as sous chef, as it is indeed a lot of work. Oddly enough, my favourite North African cook book, Mourad's New Moroccan has no recipe, although he talks about it as one of the recipes he grew up with.

ETA: Bsteeya is great stuff. It is a lot of fussing about. I haven't made one in a while. Hm...

And half the fun is the alternative spellings- I usually use b'stilla, but see pastilla, bastilla, bisteeya as well.
Even better if you get squab,

I think it was originally squab, but could be wrong. The versions I most like use boneless chicken thighs for maximum flavour.

And yes, the first vowel after the B is more a glottal stop I think and there is a strange trill at the end that sounds rather like the French 'hier'.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_h35_JZZFo

I've always made it with chicken thighs, too, but using squab sounds even better!

In the hopes of reducing work a little, which of the little dark-meat game birds yield the most meat per? I know squab are bigger than quail, though it's easy to get quail with most of the bones removed for you. Pheasant is bigger yet, right?

I've done quail ballotine and it is a lot of work to bone a dozen quail. Squab would be interesting though.

Having ready made ras el hanout saves a bunch of prep time too.

Loathe both of those. Ask an Italian what they think of pineapple on a pizza, but first make sure they have no knives handy.

I'll make sure I'm packing my piece.

[Jenise]

I like Moroccan bisteeya that has chicken and powdered sugar.

But that uses a modest amount of sugar to work with the other spices and it is in proportion, not eve really sweet.

Excellent recipe (if long) at https://aglobalgarnish.com/2011/12/31/b ... -invented/

Lot of work, but worth it once in awhile.

I love that their starting phyllo layers look as bad as mine always do/will.

I love that their starting phyllo layers look as bad as mine always do/will.

Yeah, Moroccan cuisine tends not to be as fussy about presentation as French. As long as most of the camel ends up on the plate you are good!

[Jenise]

Camel! Speaking of which my neighbor just acquired two baby camels. How often does anyone get to say that? I am promised an opportunity to visit.

Watch out - they spit!