Monday, March 24, 2008

Crispy cucur anyone?

Got this via email and could not resist sharing it.......

The idea was that the molten plastic bottle would be mixed with the hot oil and when the hawkers were making the banana fritters, the molten plastic would coat the banana fritters, giving them their crispy texture. Not sure if this is true.

A friend apparently read in the paper a while ago that a team of reporters tried doing what the hawkers were alleged to have done. They put a mineral water plastic bottle into a pot of hot oil. Sure enough the plastic bottle melted, but rather than getting completely mixed with the hot oil, the molten plastic actually formed clumps on the surface of the oil. If that did not put you off from trying to fry banana fritters in the clumpy plastic-hot oil combo, the smell from the melting plastic would probably do.

This team of researchers also experimented on using different types of flour and they actually found that the crispiness of the banana fritters was determined by the type of flour used.

So this plastic in hot oil story is probably just another urban legend. It is probably a tale told by a less successful banana fritter hawker, envious of his/her more successful competitor.

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