Sata Andagi (Okinawan Fried Sugar Dough Balls)

Name: Sata Andagi (Okinawan Fried Sugar Dough Balls)
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Japanese
Ingredients: 2 eggs; 100 g sugar; 200 g plain (soft) flour; 1 tsp baking powder; 1 L neutral oil

An Okinawan sweet: a stiff dough of flour, sugar and egg, pulled into balls and fried slowly in oil at only 140-150°C. The outside sets first, then the centre swells and splits it open — a split read as a smile, which is why these are fried for happy occasions. Elsewhere a fried thing that bursts has failed; here the burst is the aim, and what drives it is neither water nor air but baking powder.

Ingredients

6servings

Dough (about twelve 4cm balls)
eggs · about 110g, at room temperature2
sugar · for the dark ones in the photograph, 100g kokuto or dark brown sugar, ground fine100 g
plain (soft) flour200 g
baking powder · about 4g1 tsp
For frying
neutral oil · at least 5cm deep1 L

Steps

Whisk the eggs and sugar for 2 minutes, until most of the sugar has dissolved.
⏲ 2 min
Sift in the flour and baking powder and fold with a spatula only until no dry flour shows. Add no water. It should be like a slightly soft cookie dough.
Cover and chill for 30 minutes. Cold, it sticks to your hands less and holds a ball.
⏲ 30 min
Put at least 5cm of oil in a pan and bring it to 140°C. Oil your hands and roll the dough into 35g balls.
Lower the balls gently into the oil, four or five at a time. They sink at first and soon float up.
Keep the heat low so the oil climbs slowly to 150°C, and fry 8-10 minutes. The balls usually turn over by themselves, and a few minutes in the tops begin to split. Roll any that do not turn with chopsticks.
⏲ 9 min
When a bamboo skewer pushed into the centre comes out clean, lift them onto a rack to cool.

Tips & Variations

Variations

Shiro and kuro: Okinawan shops call the ones fried with white sugar shiro (white) and the ones with brown sugar kuro (black). The photograph shows kuro. Brown sugar comes in lumps, so grind it fine first.
Coloured doughs: steamed pumpkin, purple sweet potato or turmeric worked into the basic dough.
Long sticks: according to ko.wikipedia, for funerals and memorial rites they are made as long thin sticks rather than balls, and for celebrations they are sometimes fried as large as 12-15cm across.
Kaikou xiao (开口笑): the Chinese sweet thought to be the ancestor, about 5cm and rolled in white sesame. Its name means "open-mouthed laugh", so it reads the same split the same way.
Malasada and oliebol: often compared, but both fry a yeast-raised dough, which has already risen before it reaches the oil.

Tips

The split is the goal. ko.wikipedia describes it: fried slowly in oil at a low temperature, the round surface hardens first, and then the inside swells and splits it. In other fried food that is a failure. Menchi katsu sorts its bursting into "air inside the patty, water in the mix, and oil temperature", and says to get all three right and it will not burst.
Sata andagi sets two of those the same way menchi katsu does, and still splits. There is no water in the dough — ko.wikipedia is firm that water must not go in, although plenty of egg may — and the oil sits lower than 170°C, at 140-150°C. What splits it is none of the three: it is baking powder. While the temperature rises slowly the powder keeps giving off gas, so the centre still has rising left to do after the outside has set.
Here a crust that sets first is not a failure. Stinky tofu warns: "Too hot and the crust sets before the interior can puff" In sata andagi the centre does not give up; it breaks the crust to make room. A ball that swelled before its outside set would simply get bigger without splitting.
The cake doughnut on doughnuts records the same result. A baking-powder batter fried straight away: "The result is dense and crumbly with a cracked surface." A yeast doughnut rises while it proves and goes into the oil already risen; a baking-powder dough rises in the oil. This sweet uses that difference as its shape.
The low temperature is about size and sugar. A quarter of the dough's weight is sugar, so the outside browns quickly (what sugar does), while the middle of a 4cm ball cooks slowly. At 170°C the outside burns before the centre is done. The temperature control deep frying talks about is, here, a matter of matching the outside's clock to the inside's.
Frying right through is how they keep. ko.wikipedia notes that fried slowly to the centre they keep for days at room temperature, which is why they are made in large batches. The skewer test is checking that as well as doneness.