THE MANY WAYS TO FRY

 

Samfaina con pollo is a dish of sautéed summer vegetables with chicken. The dish calls for three ways of frying--sofreir, saltear and rehogar. Easy steps that develop a lot of flavor.

Vocabulary tells us a lot about culinary techniques. And Spanish cuisine has almost a dozen words for different ways to fry food. 

Freir is “to fry.” But, sofreir is to pre-fry, or fry lightly. Refreir is to refry. Then there are saltear, sauté; rehogar, to brown; dorar, to brown or “make golden;” sudar, to sweat in oil; sellar, to seal or sear; pochar, to poach in oil, and caramelizar, to caramelize. All of these take place in oil. Olive oil, of course. 

Frying is the cooking process in which the food is immersed in hot oil. The verb comes with its corresponding nouns and adjectives—frito is, you guessed it, a fried food. Fritura means a plate of fried foods, such as fritura malagueña, Málaga’s famous mixed fish fry.  Patatas fritas, fries, are cooked in deep oil. Breaded and battered foods are fried—think croquettes, shrimp.

Fritura malagueña is a mixed fish fry, best when the fish are fried in olive oil. See the recipe here.

For Spanish fries, the potatoes fry in enough olive oil to cover them.  The recipe for how-to make Spanish fries is here. 

Deep-fry croquettes in olive oil. Recipes for three kinds of croquettes, mushroom, ham and cheese-potato, are here. 

Gambas rebosadas, batter-fried shrimp, are a favorite in tapa bars. The recipe is here.

Yes, you can deep-fry in extra virgin olive oil. Heat olive oil to a temperature of 360ºF/ 180ºC. This is well below the smoking point of olive oil, 380ºF to 410ºF.  At this temperature a crust forms on the surface of the food, so the oil doesn’t penetrate it, but it doesn’t brown too quickly, allowing the interior of the food to cook thoroughly.

Sofrito, though, is more than the act of frying. Sofrito is procedure, technique and result. It means gently frying ingredients in olive oil to give new flavors and complexity to a finished dish. 

Sofrito usually begins with slow frying of onions, garlic, sometimes peppers, in just a little oil and often finishes with the addition of chopped tomatoes. The tomatoes, too, are “fried” until their liquid cooks away. Sofrito, if sieved, can become a sauce in its own right. But usually it is the first step in a more complex dish. Paella, for instance, starts with sofrito, to which are added chicken or rabbit, other vegetables, seafood. Rabo de Toro, braised ox-tail, starts with a more complex sofrito with leeks and carrots as well as the onion and garlic to which the pieces of meat are added.

Sofrito builds flavor for paella. Start with garlic and peppers, add vegetables, brown chicken or rabbit, then add tomatoes, rice, liquid. Paella, step by step, here.

Pochar and hacer sudar are subcategories of sofreir. Pochar is a word poached from English. In Spanish, the word for poaching an egg is escalfar, not pochar. Pochar is used specifically to mean cooking something, usually chopped onions, in oil at a very low temperature without letting it brown. Figure 20 minutes. It’s okay to cover the pan. Sudar is similar, meaning “to sweat” the onions in oil until softened. Not exactly frying, although it does take place in the medium of olive oil. 

This brings me to the subject of sliced or diced potatoes destined to be incorporated in the famous Spanish tortilla de patatas. While a Spanish cook would probably say, “freir las patatas,” I tend to say, in English, “poach” the potatoes in olive oil. Because, although the potatoes are immersed in lots of oil (which is drained off),  you definitely don’t want high frying temperatures. You want the potatoes to cook slowly and never brown. (Don’t worry, if you use olive oil, they do not soak up a lot of oil.)

Saltear just means sauté. Writing recipes in English, I invariably use the word “sauté” when I mean for you to fry cut-up food in some oil. Sauté comes from the French word, sauter, meaning “to jump.” The idea is to keep the food moving around in the frying pan. The Spanish equivalent is saltear, which doesn’t actually mean “to jump,” (that is saltar), but “to skip over.” If you’ve ever watched an experienced cook flip a pan full of chopped onions with a jerk of the arm, you know what saltear is. Salteado de champiñones is a sauté of mushrooms. Salteado de guisantes or habas is a vegetable sauté of peas or fava beans. Either could be topped with a huevo frito, egg fried in enough olive oil to nearly cover it.

Salteado de champiñones, mushroom sauté, is the perfect side dish with grilled steak. Recipe is here.

Salteado de guisantes, a dish of fresh peas sautéed with ham, topped with an egg.  See the recipe here.

The Spanish way to fry an egg, immersed in olive oil. Directions for how-to are here.

A word that doesn’t exist in Spanish is for Chinese stir-fry. The technique of quickly frying cut-up foods at extremely high temperatures seems, well, foreign. I think this is because expert wok frying really does reach the smoking point of olive oil. If this is your thing, use sunflower oil, aceite de girasol. I do a lot of stir-frying. I do use olive oil, but I keep the temperatures below the smoke point. Basically, a Spanish salteado with soy sauce. 

Rehogar means "to brown in oil." Chefs sometimes say to “sellar” meat or chicken in a hot pan with a little oil. Although sellar means “to seal,” what they really mean is “to sear,” to rehogar or brown the surface, which develops the Maillard reaction, converting proteins and starches to deep, savory flavors. 

Brown chicken pieces in oil--rehogar--with a few cloves of garlic before adding liquid to finish their cooking. (Recipe below.)

A refrito of garlic.

Other terminology for frying includes refrito, which means refried, as in that Mexican dish, refried beans. In Spain, a refrito often is a quick fry of garlic, perhaps with ham, that is added to a cooked dish as a finishing touch. Spoon it over cooked vegetables, baked potato, grilled fish or lentil soup immediately before serving. The recipe for garlic refrito is here.

The recipe below for Samfaina con Pollo, a Catalan dish of sautéed vegetables with chicken uses three of these frying techniques. It starts with a sofrito, continues with a salteado, or sauté, with eggplant and zucchini. The chicken is rehogado, or “browned” before being added to the vegetables. Each step contributes flavor and complexity to the finished dish.

Sauté of Summer Vegetables with Chicken, Catalan Style

Samfaina con Pollo (Samfaina amb pollastre)

Ready for the sofrito, salteado.

You can vary the quantities and proportions of the vegetables. 

2 medium onions (10 ounces)

3 cloves garlic

2 frying peppers (8 ounces)

1 red bell pepper (8 ounces)

1 large zucchini (14 ounces)

1 medium eggplant (14 ounces)

4-5 tomatoes (1 ½ pounds)

3 + 2 tablespoons olive oil

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Red pepper flakes (optional)

Sprig of fresh thyme

For the chicken

½ chicken, cut up (1 pound 10 ounces)

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Thyme

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves garlic

3 tablespoons Spanish brandy

Water, if needed

For the samfaina:

Chop the onions finely. Slice the garlic. Cut the peppers into ½-inch pieces. Cut the zucchini and eggplants into ½-inch dice. Remove cores from the tomatoes. Grate them, discarding the skins.

Stir or flip the onions.

Sofreir the onions and garlic.

Place the garlic in a skillet with 3 tablespoons of the oil on medium-high heat. When garlic begins to sizzle, but before it browns, add the chopped onion. Sauté the onions, stirring or flipping them frequently, until they are completely soft, 10 minutes. Regulate heat so the onions don’t brown. 

Raise the heat and add the two kinds of chopped peppers. Continue to move the onions and peppers with a wooden spoon or paddle until the peppers lose their liquid and begin to sizzle. Turn down the heat and continue sautéing until peppers are sofritos, fried until soft.

Add remaining 2 tablespoons of oil. Stir in the diced zucchini and eggplant. Add about 1 teaspoon of salt, pepper and red pepper flakes, if using. Continue sautéing on medium-high heat until all the vegetables are softened, 5 minutes. Add the tomato pulp and juices and sprig of thyme. Turn up the heat until tomatoes begin to splutter. Lower heat and cook the samfaina, uncovered, until vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes more. 

Samfaina, ready to serve, is vegetarian. Add chicken to it, if desired. 

For the chicken:

Season the chicken pieces with salt, pepper and thyme. Allow them to come to room temperature. 

Heat a heavy skillet on medium-high. Add the oil. Lightly crush the garlics, without peeling them. Add them to the skillet. Place the chicken pieces in the skillet, skin-side down. Let them brown very slowly without moving the pieces around in the pan, about 5 minutes. Turn the pieces and let them brown on the reverse sides. When chicken is nicely browned, carefully add the brandy and cook until the alcohol is cooked off. 

Either add about ¼ cup of water to the pan to finish cooking the chicken or else transfer the pieces to the samfaina pan to finish cooking with the vegetables. 

Add chicken pieces to the samfaina vegetables. 

Samfaina is quite similar to Pisto, a summer vegetable dish that has appeared in various manifestations in this blog, vegetarian and with meat or fish added. Here’s one of them: Pisto with Pork.