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Deep-fried pizza, long the exclusive domain of the Scots, has landed Stateside. Slice America noticed it on the menu of Brooklyn, New York's Atlantic ChipShop a little more than a month ago. After some pestering on our part, chippie owner Chris Sell let us into his kitchen to film the process. Our cameraman shot some video footage above while ChipShop kitchen manager Randy Carpenter fried up a couple slices for us.
Deep-fried slices at the Brooklyn Heights restaurant are $3 each and begin their lives as plain pies from My Little Pizzeria on Court Street in downtown Brooklyn. The pizza is refrigerated first because, as Mr. Carpenter points out, if it's fresh and the cheese is already melted, it won't hold the batter. Cool slices are dredged in flour then dipped in batter before taking a 2- to 3-minute dip in a bath of 500-degree oil.
A bright-yellow battered slice is dropped into the deep-fryer, dives below the surface for just a moment, and resurfaces with a light-golden tint. The oil around it hisses and bubbles while the shell puffs up noticeably. After a minute or so on one side, Mr. Carpenter flips the slice with a shallow wire strainer and weights it down with a large fryer basket so it cooks evenly. Cooking time is only as long as it takes for the batter to "brown out," achieving a dark golden color.
The slice is cut in half, to make eating easier, plated over a smattering of greens, and sprinkled with parsley for a prettier appearance. The batter forms a light, crisp, puffy shell around the pizza, the interior of which is quite hot.
The overall effect is that of a mashup between a Jeno's Pizza Roll and a mozzarella stick. It's actually quite tasty, if you're into pizza rolls and mozzarella sticks (which we at Slice America are).
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