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.)
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.
There’s also “air fry”, which is just an aggressive convection oven
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.
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.
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).
Maybe with hot oil?
I don’t think confit would be considered frying.
Slow frying would be an apt description for a confit duck breast.
No, it isn’t.
You forgot the small fry that will be vader someday later.
Frying is basically conveying heat to the food via oil
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.
“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.
Deep fried and pan fried chicken are two different things even though both are cooking chicken in oil.
Scrambled egg is still fried egg
You can make scrambled egg without any oil or butter if you have a really good non-stick pan.
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.
Fry is the name for baby fish.
This is why you sometimes have to make it specific by saying “deep fried” or “pan fried”.
