One of the biggest concerns when using deep fryers in your restaurant or commercial kitchen is the quality of the oil. If you want your fried foods to taste fresh and appetizing, you need to make sure that your oil is always as clean and as close to new as possible. But constantly replacing the oil in your fryers is costly, and it can often be a huge, messy hassle for you and your kitchen staff.
Luckily, there is another option. Filtering your oil is the best way to increase the longevity and improve the flavor of your shortening while reducing the costs from frequent oil replacement. With proper care, fryer oil can be reused multiple times before the need for replacement, saving your restaurant valuable time and money that can be allocated elsewhere. But why go through the pains of filtering your oil? Why not just reuse the oil until it needs to be changed?
First of all, oil that has been used too many times and contains food particles from previous uses will experience significant flavor degradation over time. Food particles left over from previous uses can introduce fatty acids into the oil, causing your shortening to break down and absorb flavors and odors from previous foods. Overused oil can impart undesired flavors to new batches of food, and the oil breakdown caused by extended use can cause soggy, greasy fried foods.
Secondly, old oil can be a nightmare when it comes time to clean your deep fryer. Oils contaminated with food particles will tend to leave a layer of “cooked on” debris around fryer’s fry pot. Anyone who has ever had to clean old, greasy residue off of an overused pan can attest to how frustrating and time-consuming this can be, and it is fairly obvious why avoiding this task by frequent oil filtering would be a desirable course of action.
And thirdly, old or overused oil can be a safety hazard in the kitchen. Each use of an oil decreases its smoke point—the temperature at which the oil begins to break down to its chemical components. Oils that are used above the smoke point temperature are at a much higher risk of igniting when exposed to an open heat source, and can be dangerous when surrounded by the hectic environment of busy commercial kitchens. Excess food particles left in your shortening can expedite the break down of the oil and bring it into the “unsafe zone” much faster than a well-filtered oil.
There are a variety of oil filtering solutions available on the market to help keep your food flavorful, your kitchen safe, and your costs down. Some restaurants prefer to do it the old fashioned way: hand-pouring the oil through wire mesh or paper filters and discarding the solids. But this can be time-consuming, cumbersome, and dangerous, especially for large restaurants that need to filter large amounts of oil—often while it is still hot enough to cause severe burns in the case of a spill. For kitchens that need to quickly filter large amounts of hot oil, portable oil-filtering machines are an ideal solution. These handy machines roll right up to the drain on your fryer, where oil is deposited into the base, pumped through the internal filter, and then deposited back into the fryer via a long, flexible hose. These machines allow quick filtering of virtually any frying unit whenever the need may arise, and they are a great way to keep your oil filtered without the need for hazardous hand-pouring.
RF Hunter currently offers some of the industry’s most comprehensive oil filtration systems. In addition to standard physical filters, RF Hunter systems also use food-safe chemical cleaning agents to “scrub” the oil during filtering, removing contaminants and impurities that physical filters can’t catch. RF hunter systems are capable of filtering out up to 99% of particles and imperfections, leaving your oil practically as good as new after the first filtering. If your menu relies heavily on the quality and performance of your deep fryers, a set of dependable filtration systems from RF Hunter is the ideal solution for keeping your oil clean, safe, and long-lasting.
