6 Ways to Extend the Life of Your Cooking Oil

This is how you:

• Extend the life of your cooking oil
• Serve great fried food
• Save money

Fryer oil and frying techniques are two of the most important components in serving great food and achieving cost savings in your restaurant kitchen. Ever had a limp french fry that looked brown and cooked but wasn’t? People have walked out of restaurants for less. That fry was cooked in compromised oil. But changing your oil every time you cook a french fry would be outrageously expensive. How can you make sure you get the most use out of your fryer oil without risking the quality of your food? This will tell you how to extend the life of your cooking oil.

Here are 6 tips for serving great food and extending the life of your fryer oil.

1. Choose the right oil. The cheapest oil isn’t always the cheapest. If it has a short life and can compromise the quality of your food, you’ll end up paying more later on. Choose a sturdy oil, such as cottonseed, a cottonseed blend or palm oil. Sturdy oils can last 35-40% longer than cheaper oils, have a neutral flavor and resist flavor reversion which means your french fries don’t taste like fish.
2. Keep water and salt away from it. Thaw your food before frying it to keep water out. Water is the enemy of your fryer oil. Rather than sprinkling salt on food over the fryer add salt in a separate step, away from the fryer. Salt in your fryer creates a chemical reaction similar to making soap. Nobody likes the taste of soap.
3. Don’t overheat your oil. Keep your fryer at an optimal 360-370 F. Bring your fryer slowly to 370 F. Don’t crank it up in a hurry. If your oil is smoking, the oil has broken down or has lots of contaminants.
4. Filter your oil regularly. Filtering allows you to reuse your oil. During service, skim your fryer oil every 15 minutes. Filter your oil using a Vito-filter. Vito-filter allows you to easily filter your oil in the fryer while it is still hot. Filter between seatings or in a pause in the rush. Vito-filter users report up to a 50% increase in oil life with filtering.
5. Rest the oil. Schedule vats to be turned off so you don’t continuously heat oil unnecessarily and cover vats when not in use to prevent contamination.
6. Polish your oil. Active filtering uses a chemical filter powder to remove protein, blood and other impurities that mechanical filtering can miss. This is referred to as “polishing” the oil, a step you need to take if you’re frying products like meat, seafood and poultry.

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