Video Transcript

Welcome to my kitchen, I'm Chef Rick Tarantino. Today, I'm going to make a cornmeal fried mozzarella sticks. They're very delicious and it's a unique twist using the cornmeal. Let's get started, shall we? I have some wonderful cheese mozzarella sticks that I found in the grocery store, just peeled them and opened them. Then, I've got my cornmeal and I added a little bit of corn flour that you can see right here, to give it a little more of a smooth texture. To that I'm going to add, about two teaspoons of cornstarch and about two teaspoons of sugar. It's going to season, just like that, then about a teaspoon of seasoned salt. That's going to make up the base of our cornmeal breading. Now, it's important that you season your cornmeal breading because cornmeal will be very bland it'll kind of absorb all that flavor away from the mozzarella stick. No gluten in this recipe at all. I'm going to mix up two eggs, my egg wash is going to make that cornmeal stick to my mozzarella sticks. We've got our mozzarella sticks that we'll dredge in our egg wash, then into our cornmeal. And we're going to do that twice, because we want to make sure we coat the mozzarella stick nice and heavy. So, when it's in the oil, it doesn't melt the cheese, it just browns the cornmeal. Let's drop these cornmeal battered mozzarella sticks into our oil, 350 degrees, they're going to cook up rather quick. Make sure they don't touch, it's going to take about 30 seconds to a minute, they'll float to the top and then, they'll continue to brown for about another minute. You don't want to overcook them, because the cheese will melt out of the inside. Keep your oil about 350 degrees, work in batches, the oil looks like it's cooling down, just let it heat back up, take it's temperature. Periodically I'll go in and take the temperature of my oil, see it dropped a little bit. When I put in the mozzarella sticks, it's going to come right back up. We've got a paper towel on our plate to absorb that extra oil. Those look perfect, they're nice and crispy, see how nice and crispy that cornmeal makes them, even more crispy than breadcrumbs. Look at these beautiful cornmeal breaded fried mozzarella sticks. They came just perfect, golden-brown and crisp, see how crisp those cornmeal coating does to it, they get nice and crispy, even stronger than breadcrumbs, that's what I like about it. Le'ts plate it up, make it look good. These can be made in advance, you can make them and freeze them. That way, when you're ready to have the party, just warm them up in the oven or the microwave, a little bit of tomato sauce on the side, a little cheese, parsley. Now, that's a cornmeal breaded fried mozzarella stick, gluten-free. I'm Chef Rick Tarantino, thanks for joining me in my kitchen, remember what I always say, love what you cook and eat what you love.