Who has a deep fryer?

[Ns1]

hm waddya know, even AB has a recipe

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/leek-rings-recipe.html

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

I've owned a few deep fryers over the years, and I have one recommendation to make.
This or this.

They are the same model, but the Emeril version is smaller at 1.8 liters of oil and the larger one is 3.3 liters of oil. I've owned both and they have both been awesome.

Not only are they good at frying, but they're the only fryers I've seen designed with cleaning/re-use in mind. After you fry, you switch it to drain mode. Once the oil has cooled sufficiently, it drains the oil through a mesh filter into the bottom reservoir. The whole thing comes apart into pieces and can be placed into a dishwasher (or handwashed, as I do) after each frying session.

The oil stays much cleaner as most debris that isn't as fine as flour is removed after each use, and mine looks brand new after almost two years of use.

 

[MongGrel]

Have a 5 Qt dutch oven in the new set haven't even tried out that way yet.

Brain fart.

Have to give that a go still yet.

Still too many things and haven't tried enough atm

 

[JulesMaximus]

:biggrin:

haters gonna hate, I love my Zojirushi stuff.

Gotcha! :biggrin:

 

[MongGrel]

If you want a dutch oven, then go with the Tramontina from Walmart.


That is better than just about anything that is 2-3x the price. These are made in Brazil, I guess, but they make a lot of their stuff in the US. Compare to the $160 version from Le Crueset which uses Chinese lead--er, I mean iron....

bookmarking that one at any rate, looks pretty nice.

 

[aircooled]

That's the one my last roommate had. Great unit. We loved it! Fried every damn thing. The trick to fries is to remove them before their done the fry them again. I wasn't the cook so I don't know the exact temps or procedure, but it's something like that.

 

[alkemyst]

If you get a deep fryer, keep video running just in case:

 

[rommelrommel]

I have one. Makes some kickass chicken wings and fries, pretty good for wontons. Also makes really good chicken karage. Still struggling with getting tempura right.

I agree that it uses a shitload of oil... It's expensive cooking and time consuming but nice for a treat.

 

[Matthiasa]

I have a pan that I have deep fried stuff in before, as well as a thermometer for it.

Na, we usually use a wok.

I can't get over the amount of oil used in a commercial style deep fryer. Restaurants probably reuse the oil more than a few times, but me being paranoid about the cancer, would probably use it and lose it -- expensive.

If one were worried about cancer, eating fried food probably shouldn't be on their list of things to do.

 

[MongGrel]

Hadn't even used this one much yet either, but had it come in a few days ago and seems very accurate.

Comark Instrument PDQ400 Digital Pocket Thermometer with Max Hold, -4 to 400 degrees F/-20 to 200 degrees C Range, ±1F/0.5C Accuracy

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Enough of that for the moment.

 

[atheistpally]

You can reuse the same oil several times, so the "clean up" part is actually non existent in most cases. Worth it.

 

[Paratus]

If you get a deep fryer, keep video running just in case:

Deep fryer horror story:

When I was a freshman in college I spent one summer working at an Italian restraunt. The store had two fryers which were supposed to be cleaned every couple of days.

One cleaning day the manager told one of the new cooks to clean it out before we opened. Instead the guy heated the old oil up. When the boss saw that he told him to shut it down and clean it. The cook was pissed because now he was behind getting ready to open

So he got a big vat and drained the now really hot oil into it. He then went and filled a large bucket of water to clean the fryer.

Einstein never closed the drain on the fryer so when he dumped the water into the fryer it flowed right out the valve and into the vat of 400F oil.

Since water is heavier than oil it sank to the bottom of the oil. Now as most of you are probably aware 400F oil has more than enough heat to boil quite a bit of water. Also when water boils it expands into steam. Being trapped under oil means the steam has no place to go until the pressure builds enough to push the oil out of the way.

This ended up looking like a damn volcano went off in the kitchen. Hot oil and steam exploded out of the vat followed by boiling water and more hot oil spilling out across the floor like lava.

The rest of us in the kitchen ran. Needless to say the fryers were not ready when we opened later in the morning. Nor was the genius working there the following week. Amazingly no one was hurt.

Safety tip of the day.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I've got a hamilton beach fryer that I pull out for Southwestern Eggrolls and wings from time to time. My wife makes me fry outside because the smoke from the fryer is pretty bad inside. That's actually probably the biggest advantage to having a fryer is you can fry with an extension cord in your driveway and keep the smell out of your kitchen.

As stated, a porcelain enameled dutch oven is the best fryer. You can get the Lodge or Tramontina brand (Walmart...rated best by America's Test Kitchen because of flat bottom and most surface area on bottom for the money) Cast iron underneath holds heat well and does the best at maintaining a solid oil temp...especially if you have a good thermometer and a gas range.

My biggest gripe with electric fryers (NONcommercial) are that they don't have the heating element size to compensate for heat loss when frying moderate batches of wings or fries. If you put more than 6-7 chicken wings (thawed) in the fryer, the heating element takes a few good minutes to get the oil back up to the proper frying temp....which prolongs the cooking. Same for fries...they take longer than you'd think because the volume of oil and strength of the element can't handle the temp drop...especially from frozen fries.

 

[smackababy]

I won't use an electric fryer. They simply aren't powerful enough to hold the oil temp.

I stick with my dutch oven, but I wouldn't mind a propane powered fryer.