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This staple of Southeast Asian cuisine enhances all kinds of dishes, J. Kenji López-Alt writes.
As a line cook in the early 2000s, I learned exactly how addicting fried shallots can be: If, after painstakingly frying them, I left them anywhere in sight, I’d wind up with an empty jar as other cooks grazed on them throughout the day. The same thing happens at home now if I leave them out, in reach of my wife, Adri, and my 5-year-old daughter, Alicia.
But, for as quickly as they’re gone (and as time consuming and finicky as frying them can be), I find I prefer to buy my fried shallots from Asian supermarkets. It’s a convenient, cost-effective move that can infuse so many dishes with flavor and crunch. Not to mention, having them on hand means I can replace them faster than they can disappear into Alicia’s belly.
They may not be as good as freshly fried, but the time, effort and money you’ll save is more than worth it. And most cooks I spoke to regularly turn to them.
“I’ve probably only a made them myself a dozen times in my life, and even then most of those times would be because I ran out of the store-bought,” the Malaysian Australian food writer and chef Adam Liaw told me.
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Crisp, sweet and aromatic, fried shallots are a staple condiment of Southeast Asian cuisine, frequently appearing in salads and noodle dishes, or paired with eggs and rice. When Adri and I spent a few days in Nong Khai, a town on the Thailand-Laos border, we had several delicious Isan salads at DD Restaurant. One tossed pork belly with fresh red onions, tomatoes and herbs in a sweet-sour-spicy sauce made with fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar, garlic and Thai chiles, and was finished with a shower of fried shallots.
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