Elevate Your Crispy Coatings With A Convenient Pantry Staple

As a winner of multiple James Beard Foundation awards, you might think that chef Alon Shaya would only ever use first-rate, from-scratch ingredients when crafting exquisite cuisine. However, when we spoke with him at the Nassau Paradise Island Wine & Food Festival, he spilled the beans on the fact that's he not above upgrading fare with more run-of-the-mill ingredients. One he has used in the past for a crispy fried batter is also the pantry staple Jacques Pépin uses to thicken watery soup — instant mashed potatoes.

It might not be his go-to ingredient, but it works wonders to elevate fried food in a pinch. He said, "I just don't do it regularly. But if the moment arises, usually when I'm hunting and going through a random hunting camp, there'll be nothing in the cabinets except for mashed potato flakes, and I'll be like, 'I'm going to bread some fish with that.'"

Explaining how he enhanced the dish further with another item from the snack bin, Shaya said of mashed potato flakes, "I grind up potato chips with the breading too." Potato on potato might sound heavy, but Shaya claims it's anything but. "You just get a really light flakiness to it [...] like a light, airy panko. Even airier than that."

While chef Shaya isn't above cooking with rudimentary pantry staples, he does work to elevate those ingredients however possible. One way he does this is by doctoring the egg wash that helps mashed potato flakes stick to the meat. "Usually I'll do whipped egg whites," he said. "I'll whip them until they're frothy. So that creates like this airiness. And then when you fry, the airiness helps keep a much lighter, airier batter."

Quality oil is essential for frying, but it can get pricey if you use it for a one-off cook. However, when we asked if the oil used to cook fish could be reused to fry something else, Shaya was blunt in his response. "Get rid of it," he advised. (A helping of baking soda helps get rid of used cooking oil without creating a mess.) 

Shaya was slightly more open to recycling the oil for another batch of fish. "It depends on what kind of fish you're doing [and] how much you fry," he explained. "Once it starts turning like an amber color, after that point it starts to get weird." When oil is used repeatedly, the quality degrades and it can even begin to taste a bit fishy. If you reuse it for something like crunchy fried chicken after cooking seafood, your poultry could taste a little off. Ideally, swap out your cooking oil between recipes — and don't forget how much heavy lifting a sprinkle of instant potato flakes can do.