The fry’s the limit! 17 delicious ways with batter, from tempura squid to churros

Name an ingredient and someone has deep-fried it. Here are some of the best sweet and savoury recipes, including the notorious deep-fried Mars bar

It is often alleged that there is no foodstuff that cannot be improved by dipping it in batter and deep-frying it. This is not true. As Alexi Duggins previously discovered, there are at least four foods that do not take well to deep-frying: Nutella, Cornettos, Toblerones and lettuce.

But that is a pretty short list and everything else is fair game. Battering and frying happens across many culinary cultures, although the idea seems to have strong roots on the Iberian peninsula. Even the Japanese picked it up from Portuguese fishers - the word tempura comes from the Latin Quatuor Tempora, designating the four annual fasting periods in the liturgical calendar.