You might remember the meaning of the character 炸 with this easy mnemonic:
In order to fry something perfectly, you have to have an open fire (火), slash (丿) the meat through the middle, and after frying it, hang it for one (一) whole night on that totem (卜) over there.
Using mnemonics to remember the meaning of Chinese characters like has a huge impact on how long to learn Mandarin it takes.