A lot of frozen, convenience foods are foods that are traditionally fried can be prepared by baking.
I'm thinking of, fish sticks, french fries, tator tots, jalapeño poppers, etc.
I'm lousy at deep frying. I don't want to buy a fryer because I don't do it enough to make an expensive bulky appliance worthwhile. When frying in a pan I don't like monitoring the temperature of my oil. My food, therefore, comes out much more oily than it should. I also don't like cleaning and storing a gallon of frying oil.
I know that these foods are different when baked rather than fried. However, my homemade french fries are much worse baked than commercial versions.
How can I make jalapeño poppers at home that can be baked like commercial frozen products?
Best Answer
I would recommend borrowing from the principles found in this post, which details how to "fry" chicken in a kettle grill: Kettle Fried Chicken.
Two key takeaways here: 1) high heat, and 2) all (or nearly all) your food's surface area is exposed to heated air. You'll just replace "kettle" with "oven," and put something under the rack on which you're cooking your food to catch the stuff that drips away from it, and you should be good to go. It may require some experimentation to find the right mix of time and temperature for the food item you wish to cook, but it shouldn't take more than a few attempts to get it right, if not the first one.