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"Fry" is an ambiguous word in English

Here are 3 examples:
Fried egg, fried rice, fried chicken

All these “fry” are different. If you were to use the “fry” in fried rice to fry an egg, you’d get scrambled egg. Fried chicken is done by submerging it in oil, which you won’t do with fried egg or fried rice.

This post is made from the perspective of a Cantonese/Chinese speaker. We have different words for these different types of “fry” (煎, 炒, 炸 respectively)

(Turns out I did post it in the wrong sub and I didn’t realize, and now I feel very stupid. Photon UI has once again screwed me over. Got mad for no reason.)

SchmidtGenetics ,

Fry means to cook with oil.

You have pan frying, deep frying, shallow frying, they all have additional descriptors, and you can usually infer the type from the product. You can always say deep fried chicken, but that’s also assumed when you say “fried chicken” already. If it’s fried different you would maybe say “pan fried chicken” instead.

altec ,

There’s also “air fry”, which is just an aggressive convection oven

themeatbridge ,

Usually, the food has it’s own oil, which is heated by the air around it. That’s how air-frying gets food crispy (but it doesn’t always work).

SchmidtGenetics ,

Usually you need to spray or toss the stuff with a small amount of oil first, or stuff has natural oils. The term is usually for using “another oil” so I would say adding oil would be a must instead of its own oils myself.

general_kitten ,

I wouldn’t say it’s always true. If i fry a duck breast in a pan only with fat from it’s skin i would still classify it as frying even when all the fat is from the duck breast.

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place avatar

In your opinion, what’s the difference between pan frying and sautéing?

ccunning ,

I think they can be used synonymously; sautéing may imply stirring or shaking the ingredients in the pan similarly to stir-frying.

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place avatar

Ah, thank you! I always found those terms confusing. I learned to cook in Spanish, so when I would describe a recipe that included “sautéing” to Anglophones, I would say that I “fried” it because that’s how it’s said in Spanish, and I guess the context helps if you are familiar with the cuisine. Anglophones would think something like deep frying, which would cause confusion or hesitation. Whereas any Latino would know that no one is deep frying sofrito.

BearOfaTime ,

Sautéing doesn’t use anywhere near as much fat as frying does.

To fry something (pan frying) you need at least enough fat to ensure strong contact between the entire surface of the food and the pan. Something like 1/8" (about 5mm).

Now things like pan fried chicken will take more, about half the height of the chicken pieces in the pan.

Deep frying, well, the food should submerge/float.

SchmidtGenetics ,

English and French terms?

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

I thought pan fried was with a lot of oil, like pan fried chicken, and sautéed was with a small amount of oil.

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place avatar

Ok, so they are different??

Let’s say I want use a a small amount of olive oil to lightly fry pressed garlic, chopped onions and green bell pepper enough to make the onion translucent and release the oil from the garlic into the olive oil. The amount of olive oil used is a little more than enough to wet the mix in oil. That would be considered sautéing, not pan frying, correct?

SchmidtGenetics ,

You sauté to soften and pan fry to crispen would be the difference I guess. So starting from a “soft” or “hard” ingredient, but both require same amount of oil and heat. I’ve never thought of them differently, since they’re the same action.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Everything that I have seen called pan frying uses enough oil to partially submerge the food being cooked, while sautéeing is just enough oil to keep things from sticking.

Not the same amount of oil.

BearOfaTime , (edited )

They do not require the same amount of oil, by any measure (Metric or ACU).

Nor do they require the same heat. That’s determined by the food and end goal.

Sautéing green beans at the same temp as a fried egg will make for unevenly cooked beans.

Trying to fry an egg at green been temps will make for a nasty, oil-soaked blob where the whites are rubber and the yolk is hard, and you’ll never brown the whites.

Frying requires a moderately high heat. Sautéing can, but usually lower temps work better. With my pans, frying is about 70% heat, sautéing about 45%.

It also depends on the food.

OhmsLawn , (edited )

With sautéeing, the heat is being transferred from the pan to the food, with the thin layer of oil serving to increase the contact area and prevent sticking. It’s a low-fat cooking method.

With pan frying, it’s the hot oil that’s doing the cooking, with the pan heating the oil, not the food directly.

Edit: link

tastingtable.com/…/difference-sauteing-frying/

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Yes, that is sauteeing because you using a small amount of oil to keep the food from sticking and the oil kid of coats the food.

Pan fried chicken uses multiple cups of oil ao the chicken is partially submerged. If you tried to pan fry onions and green peppers the same way as pan fried chicken the oil will splash out when you put them it in due to the amount of moisture and hot oil.

Note: while I am based in the US and pan frying is probably used to mean the same thing as sauteeing somewhere else, I haven’t stumbled across that usage in a recipe before.

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place avatar

thank you!

intensely_human ,

“Saute” is french for jump, or jumped. Sauteing is this action: media.tenor.com/…/cozinhando-cooking.gif

It’s a method of frying in the sense that “stir frying” is a method of frying. Sauteing is frying in a pan, such that you’re turning the stuff over regularly by this tossing action.

One of the outcomes of sauteing is that your stuff gets browned in a randomized, pleasantly-varied manner, since with each toss-and-catch some items flip over and others end up on the same side again.

ccunning ,

Maybe with hot oil?

I don’t think confit would be considered frying.

SchmidtGenetics ,

Slow frying would be an apt description for a confit duck breast.

EherVielleicht ,
@EherVielleicht@feddit.org avatar

https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/a9730f0e-219d-4e55-a814-e6d46fc7809d.jpeg

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Lars is so dreamy!

DarkDarkHouse ,
@DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

A true deep Fry meme

son_named_bort ,

Shut up and take my upvote!

EherVielleicht ,
@EherVielleicht@feddit.org avatar

https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/b3979a61-8e1f-4fb6-b3bf-5b2bf506abb9.jpeg

Alue42 ,

https://i.imgur.com/qbib2Fc.png

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Wait until you run into the other usages of the word!

But frying food is just using direct heat and oil to cook, regardless of the depth of the oil. And, you’d be surprised how deep the oil is when some people fry eggs or rice. It isn’t too unusual for eggs to have enough oil that they more or less float on top of it, though that isn’t done for scrambled eggs.

The word fry is also used to mean baby fish, electronics being damaged by surges or excess voltage/amperage, and sometimes even to indicate that someone is inebriated via drugs other than alcohol. Plus there’s irregular uses of the word.

Speculater ,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

And the most common use of the fish version is to describe a person or animal as a “small fry” when comparing them to another similar group.

Ensign_Crab ,

Don’t forget vocal fry.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Even worse, trailing off vocal fryyyyy.y.y…y.y.y…

xeekei ,

You forgot the small fry that will be vader someday later.

corsicanguppy ,

… which is a term based on the word for small fish.

OlinOfTheHillPeople ,

https://imgur.com/qbib2Fc

Donebrach ,
@Donebrach@lemmy.world avatar

No, it isn’t.

JeSuisUnHombre ,

“To fry” means to cook in oil or fat. A distinction we can make is “deep fry” like the chicken, and “pan fry” for the other 2. We don’t use woks as much here so really the only difference between fried rice and a fried egg is whether you stir it or flip it, but both are still cooked in a pan with oil.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Deep fried and pan fried chicken are two different things even though both are cooking chicken in oil.

intensely_human ,

Frying is basically conveying heat to the food via oil

TheAlbatross , (edited )

We have some oddly obtuse language for cooking in English.

We use the same phrase to describe foods that are high in temperature and contain lots of capsaicin (hot). We can use spicy, I suppose, but it gets a little odd describing foods with lots of spices that aren’t chili pepper. I generally say “well-spiced” and that gets the message across. We hardly have a way to distinguish “types of spicy” flavoring, such as that from chili, horseradish or peppercorns. I’ve seen some people start to say mala (loan word, 麻辣) for numbing spice, but that’s uncommon and new.

That’s just a few examples.

Most of our more precise language for cooking comes from other languages, like French. To saute, to braise, bain-marie, julienne, sous vide, etc. I’m not sure why English has so many lexical gaps specifically around cooking.

It’s gotten WAY better. Some recipes from, like, the colonial era, have instructions like “cook well in a cold oven until done”, so progress has been made, it’s still often imprecise and clumsy.

odium ,

I’m not sure sure why English has so many lexical gaps specifically around cooking

Have you seen British “cooking”?

BearOfaTime ,

Lol, have my upvote.

Now baking… The Brits seem to get that.

It’s all a result of history.

Hell, Brits were still under austerity through the 60’s, and didn’t really recover financially from WWII until the 80’s.

There are some great shows on Amazon done by historian Ruth Goodman and friends. Victorian Farm, Tudor Farm, etc. “War Farm” really shows how difficult the Brits had it until post-WWII. I’d watch them in sequence, because it’s great insight to the different periods.

almost1337 ,

“cook well in a cold oven” at least makes sense in the context of the time. Ovens then were not supplied continuous heat - instead, they were fired up to a high heat, and then as it slowly cooled food was baked in them according to the current temperature. A cold or slow oven would be at the low end, and a hot or quick oven would be shortly after it was first heated.

TheAlbatross ,

This is a great point. It wasn’t like every home had a thermometer in the oven and therefore they had to use different terminology and identifiers for indicating oven temperature. Similarly, this is why American recipes measure in volume vs weight, most homes didn’t have scales, they had cups and spoons.

These were also “precise enough” for the era. Perhaps these lexical gaps form as more styles of cuisine become more common and other cooking methods are used.

I’ve noticed this with some Indian recipes. The instruction “to grind” specifically refers to using grinders, either mill or wet grinders, that just aren’t common in the US and that can create some ambiguity in how finely to chop or grind something.

Jayjader ,

The English royal court became french speaking after the normands invaded, around 200 or 300 years ago. Nobles and royalty can afford lavish meals and dishes.

They can also regularly afford meat, whilst it was the peasants who tended to the animals. Thus pork (from porc) vs pig, beef (from boeuf) vs cow, poultry (from poulet) vs chicken.

It doesn’t explainall of the gaps, but it’s an important part of the explanation.

teft ,
@teft@lemmy.world avatar

Around 2 or 3 hundred years ago? William the Conqueror was 1066 homie.

Jayjader ,

You’re right, thanks for the correction

BearOfaTime ,

And the well-heeled like keeping the distinction between them (French-speaking) and commoners (English-speaking).

It’s interesting, because that’s part of why Shakespeare was such a big deal - not only writing and performing in English for the Common Man, but was skewering the well-heeled while also expanding English.

Neat stuff.

sxan ,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I think y’all are missing the point. OP points out that in their native language, Cantonese, they have different words for each of these kinds of cooking. In English, we apply modifiers, if anything; “deep fry”, “air fry”, but we don’t have different words for the different types of frying.

That’s all they’re saying. Eskimo words for snow. Oregonian words for rain. Georgian words for “you’re an idiot.” Apparently, in Cantonese, they have a lot of different words for different types of frying.

arefx ,

Sometimes after an aggressive cannabis consuming session I myself even become fried.

EffortlessEffluvium ,

Scrambled egg is still fried egg

cordlesslamp ,

You can make scrambled egg without any oil or butter if you have a really good non-stick pan.

BearOfaTime ,

Nope, nothing ambiguous to me.

To fry means to cook in a fat. That is all.

That’s like saying “blue” is ambiguous simply because there’s also 13 different Pantone blues.

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

Never mind the small fry. The word "put" has enough different meanings to fry your CPU.

pH3ra ,
@pH3ra@lemmy.ml avatar

English cooking vocabulary matches the sofistication of their cuisine

deegeese ,

Fry is the name for baby fish.

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