I have mentioned how much I love cheese and with that, I love fried cheese…. How could you not?! Finding good mozzarella sticks that are gluten free has not been an easy task. One of my college roommates was also gluten free and she bought frozen gf moz sticks from Meijer one time and all of the breading fell off before we got them into the oven. We ended up having to break out the eggs and smash up some gluten free croutons to reattach the breading to even be able to cook them. It would have been easier to make them from scratch like I did below.
I looked up a few different recipes for making your own fried cheese and then adapted them all into one of my liking. This was a lot easier than I originally thought it would be. I think frying my own food was the most intimidating part… I pictured my whole home engulfed in flames just because I wanted some fried cheese. I have also adapted the recipe to make fried calamari and hope to make some popcorn shrimp in the near future! Enjoy!
What you’ll need: Mozzarella string cheese (I used 5 sticks cut in half), all-purpose flour (Namaste brand), 2 eggs, panko bread crumbs (Ian’s original), and some herbs/spices (Italian seasoning, garlic salt, ground pepper).
First, I cut my cheese sticks in half then coated them in the all-purpose flour.
Next, I coated my cheese in the egg wash.
Then, I coated with my bread crumb/herb/spice mixture. I repeated the egg wash and bread crumb coating step one more time to make the bread crumb coating thicker and more even. Once you are done coating your cheese, place your double coated cheese sticks in the freezer.*
*Several different recipes suggested different time amounts to put the coated cheese sticks in the freezer from 15 minutes to 2 hours. I ended up putting them in the freezer for about a half an hour while I was waiting for it to be dinner time. However, I have made them again since without freezing them at all. I would suggest to freeze them for at least 15 minutes if you have the time but it does work fine without the freezing step.
After I pulled them out of the freezer I dropped them into my fryer for about 3-5 minutes each. I had no set amount of time that I left them in the fryer. I watched them and when they started either turning golden brown or the cheese started to melt out the sides I would remove them.
The final product was absolutely everything I had hoped for. Beautifully melted inside with a golden brown outside. I heated up some Prego traditional pasta sauce for dipping and they were ready to eat. 