There is a reason that restaurants serve fried foods, and that could be because people dislike frying foods at home.  The grease gets on every single surface, and a storage place is needed for at least the oil as well as the frying vessel.  The flour, batter and/or breadcrumbs also have a tendency to get everywhere.   Finding a place that serves gluten free fried foods is a rarity.  If we're lucky, the place will have a dedicated potato fryer so that the fries don't mingle with the flour & breadcrumb fried foods.  There are a few places that will serve fried foods that are gluten free, but they aren't on every streetcorner.  

In the past few weeks I brought out  my old cast iron dutch oven.  I used to use it in a charcoal grill, to brown meat and make stews.  I had thought of using it to fry before, but instead had a turkey fryer and really didn't want to have the dutch oven so close to an open flame with hot oil.  Since I've been in an apartment, I haven't really used it at all, and in fact, prior to the past few weeks, I really haven't been cooking anything to an extent beyond baked chicken, vegetables and sometimes rice.  

It was with trepidation that I finally bought some peanut oil and filled up the dutch oven and tried to fry my first food in this apartment.  Several months ago, I had been browsing the local asian mart and was looking at the shrimp flavored chips.  These are a puffy fried food usually served with roast or steamed poultry in an asian restaurant.  I loved them as a kid and always tried to ration out my share when we got them from the local take out or at the asian restaurant we would go to several times a year.  I even recall the days when my mom or dad would have bought a box of them from the store and would fry them at home in the garage and my siblings and I would snack on them almost as soon as they were out of the oil filled wok.  There were also fried wonton skins, with a light dusting of granulated sugar.

I decided to look at the ingredients on the box.  It was pretty simple, tapioca starch, shrimp puree and food coloring.  Tapocia starch?  Yup, I didn't see a specific gluten ingredient on there.  Looking at the others, I read them to find that wheat wasn't used in these things.  The box cost about a buck, so I purchased it and stuck it in the closet for a few months until I could get the dutch oven from my parents (where I was storing it).  

A few weeks ago, after getting the dutch oven and the oil, I finally opened the box and started frying the chips.  Just like I remembered, these strange, somewhat translucent, hard brittle disks that looked something like deformed poker chips.  When the oil was hot enough, I dropped one in.  In less than a second the disk looked like it unfolded, floating up through the oil and uncurling into a white puffy mass.  I snatched it out, let it drain for a scant second and bit into it.  Crisp and melting with the odd but delicious umami flavor of shrimp.  

I didn't do the entire batch that day, just about 10, plenty as a fried food and repeated this behavior.  Soon I was ready for more.  Last week I tried some mozzarella sticks.  Simple string cheese dipped in a mix of rice flour, sweet rice flour, cornstarch and potato starch (your basic gluten free flour), then egg, then a gluten free crushed corn flake coating. 

I'd prefer breadcrumbs on these, but I think that the corn flakes will do rather well on chicken.  I may also try to use some quinoa/corn flakes.  But the fried cheese sticks worked and tasted good with my pasta.

Even more recently, Serious Eats had a gluten free article about beer battered fish.  I had forgotten about those sorts of things, except the one time out in the Cape Cod area where I had gotten a gluten free fish & chips.  I decided to make it using some flour and some of my gluten free ale.  It worked out somewhat well, but I didn't exactly follow the recipe (I'll do that and link to it when I can get a working keyboard since I can't copy and paste links.  my paste button has replaced my "m" key since that and the arrow keys won't work.)

I sliced three zucchini, dipped them in flour and batter and fried them, serving it with a cayenne pepper mayonnaise.  I then fried up the cod in the same flour and batter, serving this with a lemon pepper mayonnaise.  It was quite good, though next time I'll make the sauces before hand so I could get it properly together and measured rather than throwing things from the cupboard to make a dipping sauce.  

With the left over batter, I added more flour, until it became stiff, then cut pieces off and deep fried these balls of dough.  These were great as well.  I can't wait until I work at making some doughnuts and funnel cakes.  I just have to space these things out because it's so difficult to clean afterwards and I doubt my body will take a constant barrage of fried foods.