Deep Fried Water Is the Latest Bizarre Food Trend | What Is It and How Is It Made?

With home isolation during the pandemic came many food trends, some more bizarre than others. First, there was Dalgona coffee, then the easy-to-make sourdough bread starters, and then came the chicken made of flour and water. The two ingredients are used to make a vegan meat substitute called seitan, which surprisingly tastes like meat, writes Elite Daily.

The TikTok food trends don't end there. One of the strangest recipes to hit social media is the deep-fried water. If you thought you're an accomplished home chef, think again because this recipe, which sounds like a joke, will blow your mind.

Firstly, if you think that it's as simple as frying water in hot oil, it's not. Also, that's not recommended at all since it can cause the oil to splutter and lead to serious injuries. It also doesn't look like what you may have imagined. People have been uploading videos of making small fried balls that are covered in bread crumbs. What goes inside it? Water combined with a chemical that changes the liquid.

Deep-fried water is not a result of rolling an ice cube in egg, flour, and breadcrumbs. People have also warned others from trying it at home because if you don't get the science right, it can lead to an injury.

The recipe is made using a chemical compound called calcium alginate — a gelatin-like substance made from chemicals like aqueous calcium chloride and aqueous sodium alginate, according to Vice. The chemical binds the water in a liquid membrane making it look like jelly. This recipe first showed up on the internet in 2016. It was initially created by YouTuber, chef and fried food aficionado, Jonathan Marcus. He had coated the water in flour, panko crumbs, and eggs. Then, he fried the balls in peanut oil for an event called The San Francisco Stupid Sh** Nobody Needs And Terrible Ideas Hackathon. However, you can fry this in any oil of your choosing, if you really want to try making it at home.

"First of all it’s surprising that you can turn water into an edible dish, and it’s a little bit comical to fry it after," James Orgill, a chemical engineer and YouTuber who runs the channel The Action Labs told Vice. "It seems ridiculous to say, even impossible," he added.

Orgill, who has successfully frozen an electric spark in solid ice among other things, took up the challenge of frying water. He also got it right on his first try. "There were a lot of cooking channels doing it, but nobody seemed to be talking about the chemistry behind these edible polymers, which I used sodium alginate to make,” he said.

People have eaten this bizarre food and it doesn't really taste like anything. It also doesn't have any nutritional value since eggs and flour when fried isn't really great for our health, according to Distractify. You could dip it in sauce and give it a try, if you really like taking chances with what you put on your plate.

Again, mixing water and hot oil is a bad idea, and even though the water will turn to jelly, if a little bit of water escapes the globule it can splutter and explode.

References:

https://www.elitedaily.com/p/this-flour-water-chicken-recipe-on-tiktok-is-raising-eyebrows-64182417

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgzewq/people-deep-fry-water-youtube-tiktok-food-trend

https://www.distractify.com/p/deep-fried-water-trend-tiktok

Cover image source: The Action Lab/YouTube