7 Boozy Deep-Fried Alcohol Treats

“My…heart…my…liver…tell…my family…it was worth it.”

~Consumers of fried alcohol

Ever since Reese’s came up with the groundbreaking decision that sweet things taste good with peanut butter, it’s been a commonly accepted practice in American culture to ignore “common sense” or “that pain in your chest” and combine things that are delicious, logic be damned.  Do you like beer, and meat?  Meatbeer!  Do you like doughnuts, and hamburgers?  Get that man a fucking Luther Burger!  Do you like Taco Bell (read as: are currently drunk and on the way home from the bars) and Doritos?  How the fuck have you not had a Doritos Locos Taco yet, that’s literally the sole reason why Taco Bell is still a viable fast food establishment!  What is wrong with you!?

The point being, when America loves two things, like, say, a Labrador Retriever and a Poodle, we like to force them together through unholy acts and hope that we end up with a pleasing end result, like a Labradoodle.  Well, guess what.  We love fried food.  And we love booze.  We think you can guess where this is going.

We’re going to get a Labradoodle drunk and then feed it a shitload of fried food.

Wait, what’s that?  Oh, no, we’re just going to tell you about people who deep fry alcohol.  Yeah, that sounds pretty good, let’s do that.

7 Boozy Deep-Fried Alcohol Treats

                                                                      (photo courtesy of thrillist)

Back in the halcyon days of 2006, we were presented with Fried Coke, and we recoiled, unsure how the laws of physics could be so readily dismantled in the name of arterial blockage.  “But, Coke is liquid” we said, shaking, tearing at our hair, and ripping at our clothing.  “How can you deep fry a liquid in liquid!”  Once we activated the cheat mode of “soak batter with liquid, and fry the batter” we realized that, sure, Fried Coke is a delicious way to ensure you meet your maker earlier, happier, and plumper than you might otherwise, but as far as liquids you can fry go, it’s pretty tame.

Enter alcohol.

Once we learned that you can deep fry a liquid, it was just a matter of time before alcoholic fried treats began waging a two pronged attack on our long-term health and longevity.  And we’re so happy about it.  Here are some ways that you can nuke your liver while making your stomach sobbingly shout, “Thank you sir, may I have another.”

Deep-Fried Frozen Margarita

We wrote about this particular item in one of our Fried Food articles, but we feel it’s important to re-state this sentiment—holy shit it’s a deep-fried frozen margarita!  The purpose of this drink is probably to make sure that everyone who consumes it immediately falls to their knees chanting, “After me, the deluge,” but for those of you who, like us, don’t feel like you’ve had an accomplished day unless you’ve consumed several dishes or beverages that leave you feeling empty, hollow, and actively ashamed after you’ve finished, this is the perfect breakfast beverage for you.  They start by taking funnel cake batter and mixing in the ingredients of a margarita (including tequila).  Once the batter reaches a flavor profile that encourages the eater to go, “Wooo!  Cinco de Drinko, bitches!” it’s ready to be fried.

At this point you might be thinking, “But America Fun Fact of the Day, I’m here, sitting at a traffic light trying to sneak a pull from my gin flask I never leave home without, and I’m reading your article on my phone.  Anyway, gotta jet, got a damn child custody hearing to get to, but before I go, is there a way to make this alcohol soaked fried monstrosity even more alcoholic?”  Why, you terrifying wreck of a person, we’re so glad you asked in your rambling, already-half-in-the-bag-even-though-Jesus-it’s-only-10-AM kind of way.  You see, just deep frying some tequila and lime isn’t enough for the Desperados restaurant that invented this for the 2010 Texas State Fair.  No, the end result is then put in a glass filled with another margarita, with a dollop of whipped cream to boot because diabetes will go away eventually if you just pray hard enough.

Deep-Fried Beer

Another Texas invention that’s been featured previously in the archives of AFFotD, Fried Beer was the first attempt by our society to let the nonbelievers, the nondreamers, and the teetotalers who “wake up feeling pretty refreshed because they weren’t drinking and crying until 3 in the morning on a work night” (oh how we loathe them) know that alcohol was something you can fry, and frying alcohol is something that is good.  And oh how good it is.  Fried beer is arguably the most liquid of the fried liquids—it’s made by putting some beer inside a ravioli-like pocket of a dough that closely resembles the flavor of a pretzel and then just deep frying the thing for about 20 seconds.  Now, if a 20 second cook time seems like a very specific, brief, and possibly arbitrary number, think again—this was the carefully calculated amount of time you could cook it where it would still contain alcohol, while not tasting like raw dough splashed in Guinness.

The more we think about that, the more we love the logic.  There’s a sort of defiant pointlessness to the whole endeavor, which pretty much is the most American mindset to have when trying to get people fat and drunk.  Just realize, at some point, this conversation happened.

Mark Zable, Inventor Of Fried Beer:  So okay, I spent three years figuring out how, but I’ve finally done it.  I’ve found a way to cook up fried beer so that it still is alcoholic!

Friend of Mark Zable, Inventor Of Fried Beer:  Oh hell yeah man!  That’s awesome!  I’m excited to try one!  So why did it take so long to come up with?

Zable:  Well, you know, I figured out pretty quickly you could just put it in a ravioli pocket of like, pretzel dough, but I kept cooking it so long that the alcohol got cooked out of the beer.

Friend:  Oh, so like, you spent 3 years figuring out how to cook fried beer so that it’ll still have as much alcohol as a sip of like, a Budweiser?

Zable:  Yeah man!  It’s fried food that can get you drunk, this is a game changer!

Friend:  But wouldn’t you need like, thirty of these things to get like, one beer worth of a buzz?

Zable:  One beer is all you need man!

Friend:  No.  No it isn’t.

The taste of Fried Beer is described as “taking a bite out of a pretzel, and immediately following that with a sip of beer” which, even if it can’t get us loaded without sending us to the hospital for a burst stomach, sounds pretty damn appealing if you ask us.

Deep-Fried Jack and Coke

Deep-Fried Jack and Coke is not some sort of fancy State Fair concoction invented to drive sales of defibrillators in Iowa.  No, this is a recipe that serves to prove that, for all the furry porn and twitter hate crimes out there, the internet is inherently a good, wholesome thing.  And so, southernliving.com sat down and asked themselves, “I’ve fried all that there is to fry.  There are no more fried food recipes for me to impart on the world.  What else is there to do?” before looking down at the eight-ball of daddy juice in their hands and going, “Oh hell yeah, let’s deep fry this son of a bitch, who’s letting you down by going to culinary school instead of taking over at the steel mill now, HUH POPS!?”

And thus, deep fried jack and coke, which is essentially a rum ball made with a cola syrup and bourbon, which is then deep fried so that you can feel that every moment in your life has led up to that one specific moment.  You take a bottle of Coke and some sugar, boil and then simmer that down to a reduction, to which you add crushed vanilla wafers, pecans, some powdered sugar and some powdered coca.  Then, when you start to ask yourself why you’ve spent ten minutes cooking without even a hint of booze being involved and, oh never mind that hasn’t been a concern for you, you’ve been swigging from a bottle of Bulleit since you started, good, but anyway, at that point, you add some corn syrup and Jack Daniels, which you roll into 1-inch balls (heh), coat in flour, dip in egg, and coat with crushed vanilla wafers before frying those fuckers.

Some of you might say, “Woah, hey, I came here to listen to dick jokes and whiskey jokes and, if you really cared about your fucking readership, whiskey dick jokes, I didn’t sign up for all this Pinterest shit!  The most complicated thing I know how to cook is an Easy Mac, and I’m too drunk to remember to put water in those half the time!” to which we’d say, woah, we’ve really hit a weird string of sampled representative statements from our readership.  But, to address the gist of your question, yes, it is much easier to put a frozen pizza in the oven and drink jack and cokes until you start feeling like you want to go to a bar that’ll let you throw stuff at people.  But, but, if you’re going to take the time to craft something that’s pretty cool and can get you a bit buzzed?  Well, Fried Jack and Coke is a fun place to start.

Besides, you can just take straight pulls from the bottle while you’re doing your prep work.  That’s the best kind of multi-tasking.

Deep-Fried Wine with a Champagne Batter

Here we have another DIY recipe, only this one from the blog manthatcooks, and it’s ten years old, and we’ve clearly been unfulfilled in the last ten years of our lives to only discover this now.  If you had difficulty wrapping your head around the “add stuff to a pot for a bit, roll it up, and fry it” aspect of Deep-Fried Jack and Coke, Deep-Fried Wine will cause your head to literally explode.  First, the author mixed two cups of red wine with six tablespoons of Agar-Agar, which sounds like the name of a fucking Ent, but apparently is a seaweed that can be used to make jellies and gelatin.  Anyway, this creates a wine jelly, which is wrapped in a batter made of flour, egg, and half a bottle of champagne, and the whole concoction is deep fried, which honestly, if you’re surprised by that last step at this point in the article, you, we mean, come on, man, we’re worried about you.  Come on, man.

The end result of this was described as “disappointing, but promising” which was probably meant to mean “with adjustments in wine styles and ingredients, this could be tasty” but what we interpret to mean as, “Like you really fucking care, who the fuck knows where to buy Agar-Agar, you’re never going to even come close to making this, you’re just glad that it exists, especially if you’re writing an article where you have to find seven different deep-fried booze treats.

Deep-Fried Tequila

This is actually easy as hell to make outside of a State Fair, and also, if you’re the person at the party who has shot glasses filled with Deep-Fried Tequila, that’s just a really easy and convenient way to announce to the party that of everyone there, you’re the one who is by far most worth a damn.  All you have to do is take some Angel Food Cake or Sponge Cake, soak them in tequila (the article we link to says “the more you dip the stronger they will be” which is code for “don’t be a fucking pansy, leave that in until it’s fully saturated with delicious tequila”).  Then, you fry the cake.  That’s it.  Sprinkle it with sugar if you want to enhance the taste, dip it in frosting or some lime zest if you want to pretend your fancy, or sit in your boxers binge-watching Sons of Anarchy on Netflix while you devour dozens at a time from a mixing bowl like it’s goddamn popcorn, there’s really no wrong answer to how to enjoy a dish that is literally “fried booze cake.”

And guess what?  That’s not even the best way to go about this.  Because you can also use this method to make…

Deep-Fried Bourbon

Second verse, same as the first, with a more American booze so you can drink till you feel worse!  Yes that’s right, the Baltimore Post-Examiner recently decided to get in on the fried-shots-of-booze game, and they chose a helluva way to do it.  This particular recipe used Bulleit bourbon, because why use Jim Beam when you can spend three times as much to soak your cake in a superior product, knowing that it’ll taste basically the same as the cheap bourbon version of the product once you stick it in boiling hot oil.

But seriously, use Jim Beam.  You can pour yourself a tall glass of the Bulleit to wash these fried booze cubes down if you must.  Which you should.  Because that sounds like a delicious combination.

Which brings us to our final product…

Assorted Fried Alcohols Made To Order

The final entry of our list isn’t particularly novel, as it also adheres to the “sponge cake soaked in booze” (man, once the first person figured out that trick he found himself with more Copycats than Jack the Ripper) but it does have the distinction of being available for sale (yay!) in England (eww!).  John and Corrine Clarkson own a fish and chips shop in the city of Preston and they thought to themselves, “Well, if we’re stuck serving British food, we might as well allow people to get smashed.”  Now, they don’t have a liquor license, so naturally they decided to urge Brits to bring a booze of their choosing to be dipped in sponge cake and fried in…

Wait.

In their fryers.

Their fish fryers.

Oh no.  Now we’re terrified.

“But, AFFotD, you can get any kind of booze fried there!  Gin, vodka, brandy, you name it!”

Fried in fishy frying oil.

“But…”

Fishy frying oil.

“…Good point.”

The lesson, as always—don’t leave it to an Englishman to do an American’s job.