Fried Dill Pickles

More Weird Stuff From My Life


Pat and I have become friends with many of our neighbors that have been coming down here to St. simons Island on vacation for most of the past thirty years or so. Many are the children or other relatives of the original owners of the condos we live in, so many people that we end up hanging out with at the pool basically grew up here in the summers and holidays.

We’re only spending our third summer here, but we're fortunate that we’ve been adopted into the “Sea Palms Colony Clan” and now they’re starting to make demands of me and my cooking talents.

I’ve already hosted a couple of what I call my “Drive By, Pool Side BBQ’s” over the past couple of years, and now some of the wives are starting to challenge me with specific recipes and dishes that they like, that they eat in the local restaurants, or that they otherwise enjoy.

Most recently, the topic at the pool has been something called “Fried Dill Pickles.”

Well, you know me and my big mouth…I said that it had to be easy, and when the dust settled I was forced to spend this evening figuring out how to fry a dill pickle—because I’ll be serving them poolside tomorrow afternoon.

It turns out that it really is easy, and after surfing the internet to look at some examples, here’s what I came up with to fry me some dill pickles this evening:

1 egg
½ cup of milk
1 tbsp Crystal hot sauce
½ tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
½ tsp salt
½ tsp white pepper
½ tsp black pepper
½ tbsp flour

1 cup of flour

1 quart of dill pickle wedges

Enough oil (peanut, canola, or Crisco) to make a puddle ¾” deep

First things first…toss your oil into a deep skillet or a shallow boiler and crank up the heat on the stovetop so that you can get somewhere near 350 degrees F. Temperature is your friend here, so use a candy thermometer or whatever other appliance you have to check your oil temperature else you’ll have greasy, floppy, limp dill pickles.

As I understand it, women hate limp pickles…fried or otherwise…but I digress…

Next, beat your egg up real good in a medium mixing bowl, then add the milk and spices and stir it all up.

In a separate bowl, dump in your flour, and add a little salt and pepper if you want to. I actually added a little cayenne pepper just to add a little Emeril style “bam” to the mixture.

Once your oil has heated, dredge your pickle wedges in the flour, then into the egg/milk mixture, then back into the flour, then do it all over again. Build yourself a nice thick coating of batter on the outside of your pickles.

Now toss them into the oil a half dozen at the time, and watch them sizzle away, turning them once or twice until they are golden brown. Lay them in groups on a stack of paper towels on a plate on the side to drain and cool.

Sprinkle a little salt and cayenne pepper over them, maybe make a horseradish sauce or mustard sauce for dipping, and step out of the way of the stampede because THESE THINGS ARE TASTY.

I can hardly wait to put my cooking where my mouth is tomorrow afternoon.

Regards y’all

The Redneck Gourmet