- [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- [Female] The following episode of "Charlotte Cooks" is brought to you by Central Piedmont Community College and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Next on "Charlotte Cooks" we're doing beer battered shrimp and onion rings.

(upbeat music) (music ends) Welcome to this edition of "Charlotte Cooks".

I'm Chef Pamela Roberts and joining me in the kitchen today we have Ashley Lineburger and she's gonna be helping me making some beer battered onion rings, right?

- [Ashley] Yes, Chef.

- [Pamela] I'm really glad you're helping me today.

- Thank you.

- [Pamela] Have you done this before?

- No.

- Well you're gonna do just fine.

- Thank you.

- So let's make our batter first.

- All right.

- And so with our batter, what kind of ingredients do we need?

- [Ashley] We have flour, eggs, baking powder, salt, and some beer.

- Well, that sounds like a real simple batter.

- Yeah, very simple.

- Why don't we show everybody how it goes together.

- [Ashley] First we're gonna beat our eggs.

- [Pamela] We don't have to get it light and fluffy or anything like that?

We're just gonna break it up so it goes into the dry goods really easy, right?

- Yes, Chef.

So I'm gonna pour in my eggs.

- [Pamela] Okay.

- [Ashley] And I'm gonna pour in my flour.

- There you go.

- And you're gonna whisk that together and you have some baking soda or baking powder here?

- [Ashley] Baking powder.

- That's gonna give it a nice light lacy texture and we're gonna use a pinch of salt.

Then we're gonna add our liquid.

What's our liquid?

- Beer.

- [Pamela] We're just gonna add it slowly and we don't need this whole thing do we?

- [Ashley] No.

- So now what we've done is we've taken onions and we've cut them into nice, big juicy pieces.

Juicy onions.

What are we gonna do with these?

- We're gonna dip 'em in our batter.

- [Pamela] Jenk, jump.

There you go.

So now we've got each of the pieces of onion evenly coated with the batter mix.

Let's go ahead and drop 'em in our hot oil.

- Awesome.

- Our oil is 375 degrees, 350 degrees, either way.

They're gonna start getting beautiful golden brown.

I don't know about you guys, but I love onion rings.

In fact, when I find someone who makes a good onion ring I've been known to follow them around town.

Ooh, look at that.

- Mm-hm.

- [Pamela] That looks great.

What are you gonna do when you graduate Ashley?

- When I graduate from CPCC, I would love to continue my education.

- Doing what?

- I'd love to go to the Culinary Institute of America.

- [Pamela] Oh my goodness.

- Yeah.

- What are you gonna do there?

- I'd love to get my bachelor's degree.

- Okay.

- In culinary arts and either food science or business management.

- Oh, there you go.

- Yeah.

- There you go.

You can do so much with food science.

- Yes.

- Oh my goodness.

Food science is so exciting.

It's a really dynamic aspect of our culinary industry too.

- Yeah.

- It's really, it's very exciting.

In fact, everything you see in the grocery store it started with food science.

- Yeah.

- [Pamela] So when these come out we're gonna put them on this paper towel to drain them.

- All right.

- And then we're gonna put a couple more in there and we're gonna plate 'em and we're gonna have onion rings.

- [Ashley] All right.

- [Pamela] I love onion rings.

- [Ashley] Me too.

- Nothing like an onion ring guys.

I mean really.

My husband and I like 'em better than French fries.

I don't know, do you like 'em better than French fries.

- Oh yeah.

(Chef laughs) Onion rings are amazing.

- [Pamela] You got a nice golden brown on them.

Oh, those look beautiful.

- [Ashley] Yes they do.

- You won't find a frozen onion ring that looks like that folks.

- [Ashley] Oh no.

- [Pamela] Oh no.

Oh no, oh no.

- [Ashley] It's gorgeous.

- All right, we ready for more?

- Yes, Chef.

- Okay, I tell you what, you fry, I'll stick 'em in there.

Okay?

- [Ashley] Sounds good.

- Ooh, yum.

- They smells so good.

- They really do.

So we'll get this batch done.

You know what?

While we're waiting for these to go we can actually put those others on the platter 'cause they're nice and drained now.

- [Ashley] Yes we can.

- [Pamela] Press those down.

- [Ashley] All right.

- [Pamela] To give us room to put those, let's put these on here.

- I'm gonna salt them real quick.

- Salt them, good idea.

- Yeah.

- Good idea.

Just a little bit of salt on top.

The salt is one of those magic seasonings.

It makes a difference.

- Yes it does.

- I'm gonna put the big ones on the bottom.

Oh my goodness, I just wanna eat these.

Can you guys look the other way?

These are really good.

Nice job Ashley.

- Thank you Chef.

- [Pamela] So nice and crisp and light.

It's that baking soda and the beer that makes this beautiful like this.

Oh my goodness.

Those look like they're nice and done, don't they?

- [Ashley] Yes, they do.

- [Pamela] A light golden brown, light and fluffy.

Ooh yum, they look delicious.

- [Ashley] Yes, gorgeous.

All right.

- There we go.

- [Ashley] There we go.

- [Pamela] There we go.

Oh my goodness.

Can you guys hear this crunch crunch crunch over here?

I mean yummy.

All right, a little bit of salt.

- [Ashley] Yeah.

- [Pamela] Ashley, why don't you take these and put them on that plate.

- [Ashley] All right.

- [Pamela] Look at how beautiful they are.

- [Ashley] They're gorgeous.

Doesn't get much better than this.

- No, it doesn't.

I like this better than the blooming onions.

Those great big flower things.

You know, you can actually do those but I like these so much better.

Oh, that's beautiful Ashley, nice job.

- [Ashley] Thank you Chef.

- [Pamela] We made these from Vidalia onions.

There are our beer battered onion rings.

(upbeat music) Nothing goes better with beer battered onion rings than beer battered shrimp.

Right Amaris?

- Right.

- So joining me on this segment is Amaris Wilkins and she's gonna help me make some beer battered shrimp.

So first we're gonna make some beer batter, right?

- Right.

- So let's put that egg in there and whisk it up.

Same as with the onion rings, we're gonna use pretty much the same batter.

We're using an egg.

You put that in the bowl and you loosen it up.

You wanna add some beer.

We're gonna watch it froth up.

Ooh, big foamy.

Isn't that fun?

- [Amaris] Yeah.

- [Pamela] Pinch of salt, another pinch of salt and some baking powder.

And we're using baking powder so that the batter gets light and crispy and really, really, it's not heavy.

We want it to be light.

All right.

So now, oh, it smells good.

But the beer smells good anyway.

We're gonna stir that flour in here until we get a consistency of a pancake batter.

How's that?

Oh, that looks good.

- Yeah.

- Dip a shrimp in there.

Let's see what happens.

One of the things that we're gonna look at here is we're gonna dip a shrimp in there.

And if the batter just completely runs off like water then it's not thick enough.

So we'll add a little more flour and if it stays on there then we are going to be good to go and drop it into the oil.

That looks like it's gonna be perfect, doesn't it?

- [Amaris] Yes.

- So Amaris, just drop that right in our oil.

We've cut the shrimp so they're not gonna curl on us when we cook them.

And so we're gonna have nice long pieces of shrimp when they're done.

And make sure you season it before you dip them in your batter.

Oh, they look great.

So Amaris, you're about, you're not quite halfway through are you, you started bake shop this semester aren't you?

- Right, right.

- Oh, that's awesome.

Do you like to bake?

- Yes, I do.

I actually work at local bakery here.

- Well, are you learning a lot there?

- [Amaris] Yes, yes, yes, yes.

- You're gonna learn a lot.

when you get into bake shop, do you like culinary school?

- I do so far.

It's pretty fun.

- What's your favorite thing so far?

- Probably knife skills.

- Knife skills, yeah, you've got wicked good knife skills, girl.

- Thank you.

- You keep practicing because you have really good ones.

Do you like fried food?

- [Amaris] I do.

- [Pamela] What's your favorite fried food?

- Probably chicken tenders.

- Yeah.

- Chicken tenders.

- I know, yeah.

Chicken, you know, sometimes I'm driving down the street and I can't help it, but I'll drive by one of our fast food places that smells like fried chicken.

- [Amaris] Right.

- [Pamela] I just gotta go make fried chicken.

I love fried chicken.

Ooh, all right.

Fish some of these out that are done nice and golden brown.

We're gonna drain them.

The nice thing about doing shrimp the way we've cut these is that they're not gonna curl up into little bitty circles but they're gonna stay in nice and long and they're gonna look like a good substantial shrimp for you.

I think they're done.

Oh, they look fantastic.

Amaris, you did a great job on these battered shrimp.

- [Amaris] Thank you.

(upbeat music) Welcome Thomas.

You're gonna show us how we're preparing these shrimps so they don't curl up into little circles and you're gonna show us a little different procedure for cooking the shrimp.

We, we did battered already and now we're gonna do... - [Thomas] We're gonna do breaded.

- [Pamela] And what's the difference?

You're gonna see it.

So show us first how we're gonna take these shrimp and make them so they don't curl up when you cook them.

- You get your shrimp and you're gonna just lay it on its back while holding it.

- [Pamela] It's already been deveined on one side, right?

- [Thomas] Yes.

- Okay, so it's not the deveined side.

It's the other side right?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- [Thomas] So you're gonna lay it on its back and you're gonna take a simple small knife and along the stomach of the shrimp you're gonna just make shallow incisions.

- [Pamela] Are you going all the way or just little bitty ones?

- [Thomas] No, just little bitty.

- Okay.

- And then you're gonna take your shrimp and push it down and you're gonna crack it.

You're gonna feel the pop.

So you're just- - Looks like you're breaking its back.

- Yep.

It's gonna have to see a chiropractor pretty soon.

- Yeah.

- So.

- [Pamela] You definitely wanna feel that crack don't you when you push it down there, right?

- If you don't feel a pop, you didn't do it right.

- If you don't feel the pop, it's gonna curl on you.

Oh, that looks great.

- We already have a few already popped.

- [Pamela] Okay.

- [Thomas] So what we're gonna do is we're gonna season them with a little bit of salt and pepper and you wanna season them before you dredge them in your breading.

So that way, you know, each piece has seasoning.

If you season your flour, then you're not sure if each piece of shrimp is being seasoned.

- You took my words.

I was just gonna say that.

I'm so glad you brought that up.

That shows you listening in class.

'Cause I say that.

- Yeah.

- A lot of people will come and say, well I seasoned the flour.

Well, you can't be sure that the seasoned flour is gonna get on your product.

But if you season the product you know that it's well seasoned, right?

- [Thomas] Right.

- [Pamela] All right.

- Next, you're gonna take your shrimp and you have three containers here.

First one's gonna have flour.

Then you're gonna have an egg wash, which is just beaten eggs and water.

And you're gonna have your breadcrumbs.

Today, we're using panko 'cause I love the Japanese.

- I do too.

It's really crunchy.

- Yeah.

- And it's light and fluf, a lot better than the Italian bread crumbs, I think.

- Right, yeah.

- 'Cause they're bigger, they're fluffier and it just makes a really nice crunchy unit, doesn't it?

- It does.

- So once we show, show us how we do that.

- So you're gonna grab it by the tail and you're gonna dredge it in your flour.

- [Pamela] And the reason for doing that is to get all the moisture absorbed off of the surface of the shrimp and then we're gonna add egg wash and that's gonna moisten that flour and it's gonna give us a surface that allows the breadcrumbs to stick to it.

If we didn't use the flour and I'm sure you guys have all experienced this when you've bought frozen like onion rings in the grocery store and you cook them and all the breading falls off, right?

Well that happens because a moisture gets between the product and the breading and by putting the flour on first and then your egg wash and then your breadcrumbs, you don't have any barriers between the product and the breading.

So it's gonna stick.

The breading are all dry ingredients.

And the batter as you've seen can be beer, can be seltzer.

It could be a lot of different things but either way it's always delicious.

Right?

- Right.

- Either way, you can't go wrong.

How are they coming?

They look good.

- [Thomas] Really good.

- [Pamela] Oh, they look like they're perfect.

Look at that beautiful golden brown.

Oh good job, Thomas.

These are so crispy.

- I like to have that crunch when I... - Yeah, you know, what is it you like about that crunch?

- It's just a texture.

Like when you're eating it, it really gives it that fresh freshness when you don't have that crunch you know that it's either been sitting out or wasn't really cooked all the way.

- [Pamela] Like soggy, French fries, right?

- Yeah.

I can't stand soggy french fries.

- No, I'd rather eat potato chips than soggy French fries.

But I like potato chips too.

Golly, it's fried food.

We just like fried food, don't we.

We can't help ourselves.

I love the way these come out nice and straight when you use that technique to break its back so to speak.

All right, Thomas great job.

- Thank you.

- [Pamela] Look at that.

- [Thomas] That looks perfect.

- [Pamela] It does, doesn't it?

Look at that, team effort.

Good job.

Good job.

Good job.

Good job.

Here we have our battered shrimp and here we have our breaded shrimp.

The breaded shrimp has a little bit more texture.

The flavors are pretty much gonna be the same 'cause we didn't really season them any differently.

But it's a matter of, do you like battered crunch or do you like breaded crunch.

Next, we're gonna be making a contemporary apple fritter and joining me in the kitchen to put that together is Kelly Dopkeen.

- Hi.

- Kelly, you're one of our students and you're almost ready to graduate aren't you?

- That's true.

- Well, I'm glad you're here with me because I'm gonna miss you.

- Well, thank you for having me.

I'm excited to be here.

- Let's make our batter first and what are we gonna use in our batter?

- So the first thing we're gonna do is combine our dry ingredients.

- Okay.

- So we're going to start with our flour, white sugar, baking soda and some kosher salt.

I'm just gonna give that a nice little stir together and then we're gonna move on to our wet ingredients.

- [Pamela] Okay.

- Whole milk, melted butter, and then one whole egg.

- And now you're just gonna whisk all that together.

- Yes.

- Okay.

And you whisk that Kelly until it's nice and smooth, right?

- [Kelly] Yes, get all these lumps out.

- And it's not gonna be a real thick batter.

We're just gonna use it as a nice, thin, crispy batter.

So it's gonna be light and lacy isn't it?

- [Kelly] Yes.

You're all set.

Now we'll just place that off to the side.

- We're gonna let that rest for a few minutes while we cut the apples, right?

And so for the apples, we're gonna be using a Granny Smith because they're nice and sour and we're using a Honey Crisp because they're nice and sweet.

A lot of times our apple fritters are made with chopped apples, but we are just gonna cut these into wedges and make them that way.

So cut your wedges and then stand it up and cut your seeds out.

And then you can just go ahead and cut all your wedges very, very easily without having to worry about an apple core or anything like that.

When you have all your apples cut, we're just gonna take them and we're going to dip them into the batter and then we're gonna place them into the oil.

And it's been on the heat and it is up to 360 degrees.

And that's just what we want it to do for it to cook fast enough to turn a beautiful golden brown and not turn our apples completely mushy.

- [Kelly] Just gonna go ahead and dip these in.

- And while that batter was sitting there for a few minutes what's happening too, is that flour is starting to absorb all those liquids we had in there.

So it's gonna really create a nice coating on those apples.

- So right before you drop them in you just wanna let any excess drip off.

- Ooh, beautiful.

- That sizzle.

- That's beautiful.

And it's getting all nice and crispy and lacy already.

I bet you you could flip these and get those nice and golden brown.

Oh yeah, look at that baby.

- [Kelly] There we go.

- [Pamela] And we're just pushing them down below the surface so they get golden brown.

So we're just gonna do this for a couple of minutes until they all get golden brown on either side and you wanna see that bubble action.

If you don't have that bubble action, you're not frying.

Ooh, look at those things.

- Okay.

These can go right into our prepared cinnamon sugar.

- And so how much sugar and cinnamon do you have?

- I have equal amounts.

- Equal amounts, okay.

- Yes.

- [Kelly] So I'm just gonna coat these now in the cinnamon sugar and you wanna coat them while they're still hot.

- So what do you like about this?

- I like that it's a different take on apples.

It's just another thing you can do after you get back from the apple farm.

- Yeah, there you go.

- And you've got your bushels of apples.

If you wanna do something other than apple pie.

- It is a nice way of using up those extra apples that are like hanging out in the counter, right?

- Mm-hmm.

- It is nice.

Look at how nice and golden brown they are and they smell so nice.

Oh my goodness, it smells like autumn in harvest.

I bet most people wouldn't even think about doing this for dessert, right?

- No.

- Let's just fry some apples.

(laughs) - But it was pretty quick.

- Absolutely, it's quick.

- [Kelly] It's easy.

- [Pamela] Yes.

And the nice thing to put with this on the side, maple syrup, right?

Oh my goodness.

Just a little drizzle of maple syrup on these babies.

Yum, yum, yum.

Oh, that's great Kelly.

- All right, our little beauties.

- You wanna put this on the side or do you wanna drizzle?

- Oh, I think we should drizzle.

- Okay drizzle.

- Yeah.

- [Pamela] Ooh, beautiful.

Generous drizzle.

- Oh yeah.

And then some nice powdered sugar to top it off.

- [Pamela] And so here we are, modern fried apple fritters with cinnamon sugar and maple syrup.

Thank you Kelly.

- Thank you.

- This is a wonderful little treat.

So thank you very, very much.

I'm glad you were here.

- You're welcome.

- [Pamela] Good luck when you graduate.

- Thank you.

- [Pamela] If you'd like the recipe for these delicious morsels you could get them off of our website at pbscharlotte.org or you can send me an email at Pamela P-A-M-E-L-A dot Roberts R-O-B-E-R-T-S @cpcc.edu and I'll be happy to send you a copy of the recipes.

I really wanna thank everybody who joined me on the set today are my wonderful students.

I couldn't have done it without them.

There's a whole production goes on because of these students and we really appreciate them.

So thank you for watching this episode of "Charlotte Cooks" and we'll catch you next time.

(upbeat music) (music continues) - [Narrator] A production of PBS Charlotte.