To go along with the Thai-Style Beef with Basil and Fish Sauce recipe I made last week, I also made J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Fried Shallots recipe from The Wok.

The recipe is straightforward, but slicing a pound of shallots with a mandoline safely is tedious. My general approach was getting a few bulbs in the mandoline holder-thingy at a time. Usually threading a bulp on each of the three spikes on my mandoline holder-thingy worked pretty well. The other issue I personally have with shallots is that they hurt my eyes like no other allium does.

The frying is easy, but you do need to keep an eye on them as they go from not done to too dark quickly. Mine were cooked a bit too much, but fortunately didn't have a strong burnt flavor. I took a picture of them frying early in the process.

The prep may not be fun, but it’s hard to argue with results. They were delicious.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.