Today on Sugar Spun Run, I'm showing you how to make homemade mozzarella sticks.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here. And today,
I am so excited to be sharing another carefully tested, well-researched, and perfected recipe.
And hopefully, you guys can’t hear the construction that's currently going on
on my front porch. This is one of my favorite snack foods.
I have been making it non-stop, and I'm so excited to be finally sharing the recipe with you.
Let's go ahead and get started by preparing the breading
for our mozzarella sticks, which is the most important part in
what really makes my recipe stand out.
Now, you'll notice I have my panko in a bag here.
This is 1 and 1/2 cups of panko. That's how much you're going to need.
And I just want you to take a look at it, if you come through the bag.
The crumbles are pretty big
and if you put these on your mozzarella sticks, it's not necessarily going
to give them the even coating that we're looking for.
So, one of my favorite things to do is just kind of squeeze
all the air out of the bag,
and then grab a rolling pin, and we are just going to crush those panko crumbs as fine as we can.
And some recipes also use bread crumbs; panko is just going to give
you a more crispy coating, which is just better,
obviously. So that's why I prefer using panko, even though it's not quite as fine as the breadcrumbs.
But by doing this technique right here,
we are going to have the perfect even, crispy—appropriately
crispy—coating. Okay this looks pretty good.
I think you can see the consistency is a lot finer. Though,
it's not completely pulverized, so we are just going to pour this into a mixing bowl.
And, as you can probably tell, this is not a seasoned panko.
We are going to be adding our own seasoning, starting with 1/4 teaspoon of table
salt, 1/2 teaspoon of ground, black pepper, 1/2 teaspoon each of Italian seasoning
and dried parsley, and just 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder.
Then we'll just stir these ingredients together so they're really nicely combined.
In addition to the breading, you are going to need 2 large eggs.
And you just want to break these into a shallow dish and just whisk them together really well
so they’re really nicely broken up. You're also going to need 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour
for this recipe.
For now though, we are going to set all of these ingredients aside and prep our mozzarella.
Now for your mozzarella cheese, you have two options.
One of them is better, but I'm going to give you both of them.
You will need a whole milk mozzarella cheese.
Now, I prefer to use the brick, or block, style of mozzarella cheese.
String cheese is an option. You'll get a couple fewer sticks.
This recipe makes about 15 to 16 mozzarella sticks.
You may get a few fewer with the string cheese just because it's a little bit shorter,
but you can use string cheese. It will work.
It should be whole milk mozzarella. But, string
cheese just doesn't have as nice of a flavor as the block mozzarella does,
so I just recommend the block of mozzarella. Now to use block mozzarella,
obviously we have to get this in stick shape, so just unwrap it.
And then just use your knife to cut it into 15 pieces.
We are going to prep a string cheese as well, just for reference. And I just wanted to show you:
it is a little bit longer, you may not get as many if you use the string cheese.
If you're making both of them, it's just a good idea to cut off the
end so they are all the same length, but that's optional.
Okay, now it's time to assemble everything. So I have set up a little station right here.
I have my mozzarella cheese. I put a piece of wax paper down beneath everything—
just makes cleanup a little easier because you're probably going to drip some of the egg.
I have my eggs, my flour, and I have my panko mixture all ready.
I also have, right here—
this is just a baking sheet. Underneath,
I have a piece of wax paper, again, for easy cleanup. On top.
I have a baking rack, and this is where I'm going to place my mozzarella sticks.
Now take your mozzarella stick, and we are first going to just dip that in the flour
all over. And just shake or tap off any excess flour. And then we will dip it, or dredge it,
in the egg, until it's completely
covered. And then just move it over to your panko and turn it through that.
And we will just place this on our cooling rack.
You might want to keep some paper towels handy
as well because your fingers are going to get pretty messy doing this.
Okay, so we have all of our mozzarella sticks here on this baking sheet.
The baking sheet, or I mean the cooling rack is ideal
because if you were to put it straight on a baking sheet, it's
going to end up sticking to the surface
and you could lose some of your panko.
It's much easier to remove these from the cooling rack after they've been frozen,
which is what we're about to do. When you're making homemade mozzarella sticks,
you want to freeze them for at least an hour.
What this does is it lets the coating have some time to freeze.
If you don't chill your mozzarella sticks,
if you don't freeze them like this, what’s going to happen is the out—
the exterior could end up disintegrating, it could fall right off the mozzarella,
the mozzarella could explode out of the coating,
so you want to make sure you freeze these for an hour before proceeding.
All right, once almost an hour has passed,
you can go ahead and start to prepare your oil.
We are going to be deep-frying today's mozzarella sticks
because that is the best way to enjoy them, and
just about anything on the planet. But, if you want to air fry them,
or bake them, check out my printable recipe where I have detailed instructions on how to do that.
For today's recipe though, we are going to need a medium-sized saucepan.
And we are going to fill this about two to three inches deep with some vegetable oil.
Now oil does take some time to come to temperature,
which is why I say you can begin this before that
hour your mozzarella sticks have spent in the freezer is up.
You want to heat the oil to 360 degrees Fahrenheit. If it's hotter than that,
the mozzarella may not cook completely on the inside,
while the coating will become burnt, you could be biting into a cold mozzarella stick
still. If it’s colder than that, the mozzarella sticks can get a little bit greasy.
I found that 360 is the perfect sweet spot. And with oil,
you really do need a thermometer, which is why I have this candy thermometer fitted to the side.
All right, once your oil is heated and your mozzarella sticks
have been frozen for an hour, we are ready to do some frying.
Now, once again, I've set up a little bit of a station here.
It makes things so much easier when you're working.
I have my oil. I have my mozzarella sticks ready to go.
And I also have just a plate that I have lined with paper towels to absorb
any excess oil. You could use tongs to dip and remove your mozzarella sticks.
I am just using a spider, which just works really
well, and sometimes the tongs can scrape some of the panko coating off,
so I just prefer to use the spider. I'll make sure to link to this in the recipe notes.
Now typically, if I'm using a saucepan this size,
I will work with two mozzarella sticks at a time. You don't want to put too many
in at once or you'll drop your oil temperature too fast.
Then we'll just gently lower these into our oil,
and we’ll fry them until they're golden brown and cooked through, which
for me, usually just takes about a minute using this amount of oil,
this pan, and these—and just two mozzarella sticks.
After a minute, we will carefully remove them.
And if you’re mozzarella sticks are bursting out of the sides,
either you cooked them too long, your oil might have been too hot, or you didn't coat them
well enough with the panko. So once you remove them,
we will just carefully place them on our paper-towel-lined plate.
And you don't want to start cooking your next mozzarella sticks right away.
You want to watch that thermometer and make sure you get back to the 360 degrees
Fahrenheit. It's definitely—it probably has dropped while you were cooking the first two,
so just let it come back to temperature before cooking your next two.
All right, so I'm pretty happy with how these are looking.
You will probably want to serve them with some marinara sauce.
I have a recipe I'll link to if you want to do a homemade marinara,
which is best way to do it, but let's go ahead and break into one of these,
so you can see that stretchy cheese pull, which is the best part.
And that is how you make homemade mozzarella sticks.
I hope you guys enjoy this recipe, as much as I do.
I cannot wait for you to try it out and when you do,
please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
These are so good.