Here are 3 examples:
Fried egg, fried rice, fried chicken

All these “fry” are different. If you were to use the “fry” in fried rice to fry an egg, you’d get scrambled egg. Fried chicken is done by submerging it in oil, which you won’t do with fried egg or fried rice.

This post is made from the perspective of a Cantonese/Chinese speaker. We have different words for these different types of “fry” (煎, 炒, 炸 respectively)

(Turns out I did post it in the wrong sub and I didn’t realize, and now I feel very stupid. Photon UI has once again screwed me over. Got mad for no reason.)

  • MentalEdge
    1·
    5 months ago

    This is why you sometimes have to make it specific by saying “deep fried” or “pan fried”.

    • Samsy@lemmy.ml
      2·
      5 months ago

      Deep fried? Can I get deeper fried ones? How about the deepest fried ones?

      Or isn’t this like the cooked stages of steak?

      Non-native speaker, too.

      • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        2·
        5 months ago

        A “deep fry” is distinguished by totally submerging the food in oil, as opposed to a shallow fry (less often said, but still used) where something is fried in hot oil, but not enough to totally cover it. I thiiiiink Mandarin makes a similar distinction with the use of “broad oil” versus “bottom oil”, but I don’t speak Mandarin and I’m taking that from the rough translations from Chinese cooking videos I watch.

      • odium@programming.dev
        1·
        5 months ago

        Deep frying is when there’s like a bowl of oil that you completely submerge the food in.

        Pan frying is when it’s just a light layer of oil.

        Stir fry is like pan fry, but you stir while frying.

        Check out variations section of the Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frying