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.
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.
In your opinion, what’s the difference between pan frying and sautéing?
I thought pan fried was with a lot of oil, like pan fried chicken, and sautéed was with a small amount of oil.
Ok, so they are different??
Let’s say I want use a a small amount of olive oil to lightly fry pressed garlic, chopped onions and green bell pepper enough to make the onion translucent and release the oil from the garlic into the olive oil. The amount of olive oil used is a little more than enough to wet the mix in oil. That would be considered sautéing, not pan frying, correct?
You sauté to soften and pan fry to crispen would be the difference I guess. So starting from a “soft” or “hard” ingredient, but both require same amount of oil and heat. I’ve never thought of them differently, since they’re the same action.
English and French terms?
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.
