OT: More DEEP FAT frying questions

Loren, I'm sorry I can't make it to your place for dinner....EVER!!!

" ..The world has gone crazy. Guess I'm showing my age... I think it dates from when we started looking at virtues as funny. It's embarrassing to speak of honor, integrity, bravery, patriotism, 'doing the right thing', charity, fairness. You have Seinfeld making cowardice an acceptable choice; our politicians changing positions of honor with every poll; we laugh at servicemen and patriotic fervor; we accept corruption in our police and bias in our judges; we kill our children, and wonder why they have no respect for Life. We deny children their childhood and innocence- and then we denigrate being a Man, as opposed to a 'person'. We *assume* that anyone with a weapon will use it against his fellowman- if only he has the chance. Nah; in our agitation to keep the State out of the church business, we've destroyed our value system and replaced it with *nothing*. Turns my stomach- " Chas , rec.knives

It depends. Sometimes it just gets up and walks out on its own after a couple of weeks.

If it speaks, don't use it. And don't use it if it won't melt without using a blowtorch.

Seriously, it becomes rancid (oxidized) pretty quickly. If you like the taste of rancid fat (hey, I don't know what kind of diners you frequent), then you may not notice.

'Ain't healthy after it's oxidized. That's fully saturated fat. Running a deep fryer clean is not cheap.

Ed Huntress

Serious french fries are made with lard. I worked at one time with a guy whose family made a good living frying potatoes and selling paper cones of them at Niagara Falls. Must have been in the '40s through the '60s.Went through a 40' box car of Maine potatoes per week and I don't know just how much lard - but it was a lot. The lard gave the french fries their unique taste. Modern fast food fries are terrible. They use some form of vegetable oil. Nasty - very nasty

Nathan's Hot Dogs (Coney Island) used oil (unspecified) in their cooking stations. Legend has it they did not change the oil since 1916 - but I seriously doubt that. The quality of cooking oil has deteriorated since W.W.II, and I assume Nathan's changed the oil at least once since 1946 but I would not bet on it..

And while we are on the subject of (all beef) hot dogs, the Hebrew National brand of hot dogs is now owned by ConAgra. End of an era.

Regards,

Marv

Loren Coe wrote:

I had a roommate back in 1980 that said he was going to cook dinner for us. I came home and looked in this huge boiling pot of shell pasta , but something was wrong with the picture it sure looked like the shells were moving a bit slower than usual. I asked him why it seemed to be boiling in slow motion and he said the was cooking them in lard!

I'm not eating , no way. I just kept getting a visual of what a plate of this would look like after a night in the frig. A guess would be like wax art or the candle my wife has with blue chunks suspended in white wax. Yuk

How much would keeping an inert gas (nitrogen?) over the oil help to avoid oxidation?

Not so. It's worse! Heating unsaturated fatty acids above about 150C will convert cis-type (the good ones) to trans-type (the bad ones). trans-fats are considerably worese for your health than saturated fats.

If you would like a reference on this, see "Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill", Udo Erasmas. Can't give you the number since our copy is presently on loan.

Ted

Why leave it in? If you filter it and store it in tightly sealed bottles, like maybe the ones it came in, it will remain fresh for a long time. Just keep it away from oxygen. Same goes for storing a gallon of olive oil, something I grew up with.

Susan has been filtering her fryer oil for years with outstanding success. You can use coffee filters, although I had given her a pack of filter papers and a filter funnel from the lab years ago and she uses them instead. It helps to use a fluted funnel so the oil has channels to follow instead of having to drip from the bottom of the filter. Chemical supply houses sell them very reasonably. I used the ones made from plastic, not the glass ones. The oil filters slowly, but what's the hurry? She gets it done in about 24 hours.

Harold

Ya got me. You probably know that hydrogen is added to many fats to stiffen them up, but it has another function: it attaches itself chemically to the fat in the locations where oxygen otherwise would go, which delays the rancidity. That's why stiff, ordinary peanut butter can lay out on the counter for weeks, while "natural" (non-hydrogenated) peanut butter goes rancid in a few days, if the jar is left open.

You'd better consult a food chemist if you want a serious answer to this question.

Ed Huntress

ROTFLOL! Tom, laughter is the _best_ medicine and i thank you for the generous dose. just not reading and posting this _before_ seeing the follows. ie, working up the nerve, hope they leave me some diginity. --Loren

Lard is inexpensive. It keeps for a very long time. We killed hogs once a year, rendered the lard, and kept it in 5 gallon lard cans all year long, no refrigeration.

When using it for cooking, we never threw any out, unless there was some sort of cooking accident which contaminated it that straining wouldn't fix. We just added more from time to time (some of it is absorbed into the food you cook so it is sort of like a total loss lubricating system, never change the oil, just add more).

Gary

Restaurant supply firms sell commercial filters just for this purpose. When I was a fast food manager, we filtered the fryer oil twice a day. It was replaced once a week. The oil was not rancid, but did tend to polymerise, due to being hot for 12-15 hours a day.

Steve R.

back problems and pure sloth make most normal kitchen chores non- starters for me. my idea of a clean counter is a new sheet of newsprint, just rip off the top sheet and into the trash. this will lead off my new book, "tips for bachelors".

perhaps some decent platic wrap over the well would redard oxidation(?).

this oil i mentioned was _way_ old. it came out of our last motor home, some years ago, after being onboard for 2 or more years. i used it for about a year before buying another jug, it was never refrigerated. i did not throw it out 'cause i was wondering if it ever would really go bad, planned to eventually "test" it, not actually use it.

the past few years my "default oil" has been olive, vs vegatable, better taste w/most food, and huge shelf life. i can buy 2liter bottles and use all of it. makes it affordable, as least as the smaller bottles of veg. oil, which still get rancid before finished. as always, ymmv, --Loren

my interest came last Sept when i ordered fries at MacDonald's, lousy, just as expected after they announced their new "low" fat process. gak!

no joke? interesting even if taken in a joking sense. our pioneers all manufactured lard, used it for many, many things.... --Loren

sounds like the ranch where my Dad worked in the 30s. same as my uncle's farm in Alberta. it's nice to at someone here may be a soulmate. i do remember cheese cloth being a standard kitchen supply. that was concidered a "strainer". now i just need to find a local source (read urban) for lard. thanks! --Loren

There are those who would say that dripping (beef fat) is better than lard because of the higher temperature. Of course, it depends on whether you live in Yorkshire or Lancashire ;-). In either case, the only use for rape-seed (canola) oil is to run diesel engines.

Mark Rand (in Warwickshire) RTFM

i have been doing some web searches and find that "night" covers are optional on commercial cookers.

lot's of folks like peanut oil for many things, but lard (beef?) is really the only choice for good fries. there is a "MacDonald's" receipe on the the web that calls for sugar blanching and about

15% beef lard. i dunno if that is the current receipe or the old one, and it's probably a fairly common prep before freezing.

the one most common/practical advice is the "two-stage" process, which can be simple or complicated. the basic advice is to cook initially, drain, then finish. the method/s used depends upon your situation, but the deep fryer seems to cut thru all of the detail: just raise the basket after the first stage, let oil come back to temp, finish. ymmv, --Loren

Any market in an area that has a Latino population will have lard. Its a staple in their cooking.

Every grocery store in California has lard.

Gunner

"As my father told me long ago, the objective is not to convince someone with your arguments but to provide the arguments with which he later convinces himself." David Friedman

Not the way I understand it. Lard is made from pork, and I hear that if one pig was in estrus when killed, it taints the lard of 10,000 others. I hear that the best way to make fries is with beef fat. Buy suet and render your own beef fat, according to one of my cookbooks. YMMV. - GWE