What isn't to love in the title of it? Craft beer battered fried pickles. Everyone loves craft beer, everyone loves pickles. We all certainly love fried food even if we shouldn't because it's still technically January and that's too soon to give up on our New Year's resolutions, even though a certain large football and commercial spectacle is about to be on TV. And that spectacle requires both beer and fried foods. It's like not having beer and fried foods on the Fourth of July, or Thanksgiving. I'm sensing a theme to our celebrations...
I've added beer to a lot of recipes here before, and one thing I like to do is explain why I used the type of beer I did. Let's face it: beer distribution isn't guaranteed. Many of you readers are not going to be able to snag the Columbia Craft Brewing lager that I used in my recipe, and that sucks for you because they do very well on making a solid standard lager. It's got a clean taste, not a trace of bitterness, and it doesn't feel too thin and weak tasting as you're taking sips. This makes it a perfect food fryin' partner, because it won't yuck up the flavor with hops — no one wants to taste bitterness along with sourness from the pickles.
If you're not fortunate enough to have access to CCB's lager, look for one with little to no IBUs, and no flavorings. If you're not sure, ask your beer store salesperson or brewery bartender for their best classic American lager and you'll come up with a winner. If you're in a pinch, you can use a boring domestic, like Busch Lite (I've had to do this before and you can recover from it. It's a good lesson in planning ahead).
These pickles are pan fried, which means the only special equipment you need are tongs. Tongs are a lifesaver when I fry foods because I suck at using a spatula to try and delicately flip the food without dropping it and sending hot oil directly at my exposed arm skin. It's the worst. Tongs have a very prominent place in my utensil drawer. I have three sets of them just because no one wants to be in a situation where all of the tongs are stuck in a 2.5 hour dishwasher cycle. Tong these pickles when you flip them.
Let's talk about frying set up here. It's of utmost importance, because frying goes very quickly. If you don't have a kitchen helper here, your setup should look like this, left to right: batter, large empty plate, frying pan with hot oil, plate with paper towels. Dip about half of your pickles in the batter and put them on the clean plate, and use your tongs to place the pickles in the hot oil. Immediately start dipping more pickles in batter and placing on the plate, pausing to use the tongs to turn over the pickles as they brown.
Keep dipping, and by this point, you should be taking the first batch out of the oil and placing them onto the waiting paper towel-covered plate. Finish the process and turn the heat off and remove the pan from the burner. It's a flash in the pan process for sure, so have everything ready to go.
Craft Beer Battered Fried Pickles
Ingredients
- 32 oz pickles (dill chips, spears, baby dills, etc)
- 1 egg
- 1 12 oz Columbia Craft Brewing lager*
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp cracked black pepper
- ¼ tsp garlic powder
- t tsp baking powder
- 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup avocado oil (or other neutral oil with a high smoke point like canola, grapeseed, or peanut)
- 1 cup ranch dressing (Whole Foods 365 buttermilk ranch is a favorite)
- chopped chives and dill for garnish optional
Instructions
- Drain the pickles and set aside on a bowl or plate.
- In a large, wide bowl, mix together the egg, the beer, baking powder, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. It may be foamy from the beer but that's okay. Once it settles, mix in the flour, making sure to break up any lumps.
- Begin dipping the pickles in the batter and placing on a plate next to the pan of oil, a safe distance away though.
- Put the oil in a wide frying pan over medium high heat. Once the oil is shimmering, begin adding the pickles to the oil. Make sure not to crowd the pan.
- Use tongs to rotate the pickles as the batter begins to brown on the bottom.
- Remove pickles from the batter with the tongs when golden brown all around, to a plate covered with a paper towel to soak up any remaining oil. Fry in batches til done.
- Serve with ranch dressing garnished with dill and chives.
Finally, the accompanying dipping sauce for fried pickles can be controversial. Some people like honey mustard, some like a remoulade, but the correct people like ranch. It can be a spicy ranch if you must, but a nice creamy dipping sauce takes a little bit of the bite out of the tang of the pickle.
When I was going to make these, I realized the only ranch I had was a bottle of Trader Joe's organic ranch, which I just do not like. Something about it is gross to me, but Patrick is fine with it, which is why we kept the bottle. But when I saw that was the only option, I added the Whole Foods 365 brand of buttermilk ranch to my Prime Now order. The first time I tasted it was with this recipe and WOW. It is so good I'm only going to keep that ranch on hand from now on. It's not worth letting any other ranch take up shelf space.
Whether you're making these for the Big Game, for the Big Commercials, or just because you have a lot of pickles,