It’s 8:30 a.m. in the kitchen at Casamento’s when a longtime employee unlocks a window with a long-handled metal oil skimmer and shoves it wide open. The morning breeze sneaks in tufts through the back screen door, and she begins to crack eggs into white bowls. Nearby, C.J. Casamento straddles the floor tiles and starts his day with the beginnings of a gumbo on the stove and a pan of coffee-colored roux in his hand. Behind the gumbo pot there’s a smaller, 40-year-old cast-iron pot half filled with still, cool grease. Blue and white cardboard boxes are stacked on a white tile ledge beside the gas stove. They contain lard — the secret to one of the city’s bastions for fried seafood.

  While much of America seems to have succumbed to an intense fear of deep-fried foods, keeping Olestra on supermarket shelves despite its proven gut-wrenching side effects, the people of New Orleans and other parts of the Deep South have clung to their frying roots. Why is it that New Orleanians collectively are so willing to laisez les bon temps rouler when other populations are working much harder to outrun high cholesterol and heart disease with marathons and margarine?

  It’s true that this city is known for cooking at its own pace, not falling for whatever trend in foie gras mousse or squid ink gelatin is making magazine covers on other coasts. Are we equally resistant to widespread culinary phobias? Are we simply foolish? Maybe New Orleanians had a gut instinct all along that the oxymoronic "dry" style of frying perfected in the multitudinous houses of fried foods down here might not be so bad for us after all. Certain experts in food, frying and science would agree.

  "Sometimes, honestly, I feel like it’s not greasy enough, it’s so greaseless," says Poppy Tooker, founder and leader of the local Slow Food convivium and passionate domestic fry cook. She’s referring to the technique that creates that catfish with golden-brown coating that fissures at the touch of a fork to reveal a pristine, white flesh inside. There’s no grease on your plate, not a spot on your chin, and if it weren’t for that outer crisp you would swear it had been steamed. In a way, it was. In his book, The Fearless Frying Cookbook, Hoppin’ John Taylor calls deep-frying and shallow-pan-frying "a ‘dry’ technique of browning the outside of the food while heating (or reheating) the inside."

  "When you deep-fry, you keep oil at around 365 degrees, which is a lot hotter than boiling water," Taylor says from his home in Charleston, S.C. "When you put something down into oil that hot, you hear lots of sizzling, which is water instantaneously vaporizing." With the steam coming out, Taylor says, the oil can’t get in; just remove the food before the sizzling stops.

  That sizzling is actually the blast of moisture leaving the food; it evaporates as it hits the oil and forms the crunchy outer crust. Thus, the term "dry" frying. Casamento, whose grandfather opened the Uptown institution in 1919, is familiar with that sound. "I’ve been cooking here for 20 years," he says. "I can put something in the pot and then step outside and know when it’s done by how it sounds." Many of the top restaurant fry chefs – from whole fried fish at Genghis Kahn to fried parsley at Christian’s – apply similar techniques. Austin Leslie uses it for his renowned fried chicken at Jacques-Imo’s, Bozo Vodanovich tells a similar story regarding wild catfish at Bozo’s, and Anthony Uglesich likes it for fried oysters in Uglesich’s po-boys.

  These well-known frying icons and Hoppin’ John Taylor also concur on three other fundamental rules of frying: Never over-crowd your pot, which wouldn’t allow the oil to affect all surfaces; filter and change your oil at least partially every few batches; and constantly monitor the oil’s temperature. This last tip is essential because, if the temperature drops too low, the food begins to poach instead of fry. Once that evaporation process stops, oil starts to creep in.

  As Leslie puts it, "Don’t rush yourself. When the chicken [or any food] goes in, the oil is going to lose its temperature from 350 to maybe 300 degrees, so you have to turn it up a notch … and make sure you have a thermometer."

  Simple as it sounds, there are myriad finicky details, in addition to the basic rules, that also contribute to a perfectly fried oyster, or drumstick or softshell crab. And there is one particular fork in the road at which each of the four chefs follows a different prong: the fat. While Casamento says lard produces the lightest coating, Uglesich uses vegetable oil to "stay away from fat," Bozo prefers cottonseed oil because it "lasts longer" and "doesn’t smell," and Leslie chooses peanut oil.

  There are plenty of New Orleanians like Slow Food proponent Poppy Tooker. She names Casamento’s and Uglesich’s in her top picks for expertly "dry" fried food in the city. So if all these chefs use a similar frying technique, and if their fans rate them in the same category of high-quality frying, do their oil differences make a difference — in quality or in nutrition?

  Taylor, who recommends peanut oil in his book for its high flashpoint (it burns at a higher temperature than others) and consequent durability, says, "If you’re talking about deep-frying and you’ve fried it right, the food is not going to have absorbed any of the oil anyway. I think it’s a moot point."

  Dr. Karen Schaich, a professor in the Department of Food Science at Cook College in New Jersey, spends much of her life researching and lecturing on the science of deep-frying. She can explain why proteins fry better in unsaturated fats (like canola or vegetable oils), why a batter fried in lard remains crispier at room temperature, and all about the scientific controversies involving oil toxicity. But when it comes down to the advantage of one fat over another, she says that it’s all about trial and error — about experimenting with different combinations of heat, oil and batter or breading.

  "It’s an art," Schaich says. "I think you’d even find different results if you used cornmeal versus finely ground corn flour … some things have to be determined empirically." The four chefs, with a combined two centuries of frying experience, have plenty of empirical evidence.

  With that art, some believe, comes a technique that isn’t as bad on the heart as many believe. "Under perfect conditions, you won’t have that much oil uptake," Schaich says. "More than if you grilled or baked, but it’s not massive. If you have a varied diet, it’s not an issue."

  Could it be true that the two heart surgeons who enter Casamento’s twice a week for lard-fried vittles know what they’re doing? That the man who dines at Bozo’s every day on two-dozen fried oysters and fried catfish in the interim doesn’t have a death wish? That the tourists who have turned Uglesich’s into a mostly sauteed and broiled seafood house are just neurotic?

  "I think Americans are so neurotic about food it’s ridiculous," says Taylor. "I’ve always been a great believer in eating whatever you want to. Obviously you can’t eat a 19th century farmer’s breakfast and sit behind a desk and expect anything other than a broadened ass," he says. "Everything in moderation."