Watch: Hit Producer Benny Blanco Just Deep-Fried a Rolex That Ed Sheeran Gave Him

You can get just about any food deep-fried. Deep-fried pickles? Yep. Deep-fried Oreos? Sure. At the Iowa State Fair, there’s deep-fried butter. Because America. Few people would think about deep-frying anything other than food, though.

That is, unless you’re Instagram’s @cookingwithlynja and you’ve just spied the star music producer Benny Blanco’s yellow-gold Rolex. Lynja decided to deep-fry Blanco’s timepiece—which cost $16,500 and was a gift from Ed Sheeran, he said—and serve it up with lemon juice and cocktail sauce. “Ed Sheeran will love this,” she says in the video posted to her Instagram on Monday.

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Of course, the Rolex didn’t quite taste like its carnival-food cousins (“This is disgusting,” Blanco says after taking a bite), but it did somehow continue to work even after taking a dip in egg, breadcrumbs and hot oil. “It’s a good watch; it can withstand frying,” Lynja says at the end of the video.

And it does appear to be a good watch, indeed. From the video, it looks like Sheeran gifted Blanco a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Datejust, one of the watchmaker’s most iconic timepieces. Created in 1945, the Datejust was the first self-winding waterproof chronometer wristwatch to feature the date in a window at 3 o’clock on the dial. Its classic look—including an 18-karat gold fluted bezel, Cyclops lens over the date and five-piece link Jubilee bracelet—have defined it for decades, although certain aspects can be customized.

Blanco’s watch seems to be a fully yellow-gold model, with the bezel, dial and bracelet all appearing in the same colorway. The dial appears to be set with diamonds at the hour marks, and the watch may have a three-link President bracelet instead of the standard Jubilee version. If Blanco’s timepiece is a 31mm, it would include a Calibre 2236 self-winding mechanical movement, while a 36mm or 41mm Datejust would have a Calibre 3235 movement.

Regardless of the specifics, Sheeran definitely gifted Blanco a watch that’s pretty incredible—and pretty indestructible, at least when it comes to deep-frying.

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