Here’s one way that coastal Italian cooks welcome guests into their homes: They batter bite-size pieces of whatever the local fishermen have hauled in that day, fry them in hot oil, pile the crispy morsels on a platter, and invite the crowd to dive in headfirst.
As everyone stands shoulder to shoulder, spritzing lemon wedges and crunching through the coating, the festive mood blossoms even before the glasses of prosecco have been poured.
This is the great tradition of fritto misto, Italy’s iconic “mixed fry” of proteins, herbs, and vegetables.
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The antipasto is popular throughout the peninsula, with different ingredients in the mix depending on what’s local. But this signature coastal version, in which fried vegetables and fish, shrimp, squid, soft-shell crab, or other seafood are piled atop each other like a trove of gold nuggets, feels extra special and celebratory.
To make it, you whip up a flour-and-water batter, dunk the chosen ingredients, and fry in batches, refreshing your serving platter as you go. It’s dynamic and fun, especially with friends and family hovering and grabbing the crispiest morsels as they’re plucked from the oil.
But I had a few strategic tweaks in mind to make the process more failproof and streamlined and the batter lacier, crispier, and more richly golden.
I also had ideas for a couple of flavorful accoutrements (think: Calabrian chile aioli) to further amp up the celebratory vibe.
Fritto Misto Strategies
1. Choose Vegetables Carefully
When we fried test batches of various vegetables, we found that some varieties release their moisture more readily than others. Squash, mushrooms, and bell peppers, for example, all fried up pale—and, worse, they leached water as they sat, sogging out their coatings. The winners were broccoli rabe and planks of fennel bulb: They fried up golden brown and retained their crispiness so well that we could hold them in a warm oven while frying the seafood. The frilly leaves of broccoli rabe and the nooks and crannies of fennel bulbs also do an excellent job at grabbing the batter.
2. Spike the Batter with Olive Oil
Olive oil in the batter? It may seem strange to add 1/2 cup of olive oil to a batter that will be submerged in oil to cook, but this technique (adapted from Chef Thomas Keller) is a revelation: The oil allows the batter to cook up finer, lighter, and lacier. How? Because oil can’t mix with the batter’s water or be absorbed into the flour, it becomes interspersed in the batter in droplets. As the batter cooks, some of those discrete droplets drain out, leaving tiny gaps that make the coating more delicate and shatteringly crispy.
3. Fry Hardier Ingredients First
Frying enough ingredients to feed a crowd takes time, so it pays to start with the ingredients that best retain their crunch and end with the more ephemeral ones. Our preferred order of operations: broccoli rabe, fennel, shrimp, fish, and finally calamari. After finishing each batch, stash the food on a paper towel–lined wire rack set in a baking sheet inside a 200-degree oven to keep the fritto misto warm and crispy while you finish frying.
- Broccoli Rabe
- Fennel
- Shrimp
- Cod Fillets
- Calamari
Fritto Misto
Get the party started with a pile of seafood and vegetables fried to a golden, lacy crisp.
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