![]() The heat dries and browns the surface, causing the Maillard reaction, in which amino acids and sugars are rearranged to create new caramelised flavours. Convection currents in oil cook meat “intimately”, McGee explains, at a temperature of between 150C and 175C (300F-350F). I looked this up in my favourite reference book, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking. “…oil is a very efficient medium for transferring heat into food. “Marcella Says: Italian Cooking Wisdom from the Legendary Teacher’s Master Classes With 120 of Her Irresistible New Recipes.” New York: Harper Collins. When, after I was married, I began to cook, the first thing I learned to do and do well was frying.” - Marcella Hazan. Frying strips away only the rawness, and by its quick, deep heat encapsulates the ingredient with all its intrinsic qualities - the juiciness, the taste, the texture - intact. “…every other cooking method transmutes food, delivering it to us in an altered state. Deep and crisp and eaten: Scotland’s deep-fried Mars bar. Deep-frying also kills bacteria and viruses, making it a relatively safe food.” Morrison, David S. Some researchers have tried to understand why deep-fried food became so popular in Britain as the Industrial Revolution took hold: “Heavy industry and labor demands eating a lot of calories, and fatty food is a good and cheap source. So you’d never actually want to see oil boil in your kitchen. Its boiling point, roughly, is 300 C ( 572 F). ![]() For instance, the smoke point for soybean oil is 257 C ( 495 F). But the boiling point for many oils happens to be past its smoke point, and past its flash fire point. Oil can boil, though, if you get it hot enough. Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science (chemistry). These small pockets of oil in the surface help to form a barrier to keep the rest of the moisture inside the food. ![]() The amount of oil that a food absorbs is directly proportional to the amount of water that exits in the form of steam. It is water in the food that has turned to steam and is escaping from the food and breaking through the surface of the oil.Īs the steam escapes from food in oil, small pockets in the food, particularly the surface, are left behind, which then fill with oil. When food is placed in hot oil, you see bubbles breaking the surface of the oil. Many people debate whether oil can boil or not - or whether the bubbles you see are just air escaping from the food being cooked. ![]() Many state fairs in the United States, such as the Minnesota State Fair (held annually in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, next to Saint Paul) are renowned for the cornucopia of deep-fried food on offer, usually on a stick.įor re-using and storing oil for deep-frying, see the entry on “ frying oil.” Does oil boil? When the heating element goes in electric deep-fryers, it is sadly often cheaper to buy a new fryer than to replace the element. It can be time consuming to clean out an electric deep-fryer after use, so some electric ones now have pan inserts that you can lift right out and put in the dishwasher (for the question of whether to rinse the insert first, see the entry on dishwashers.) Most now have lids that also have a filter built in, to filter the oil smell and keep it in the fryer. Electric fryers have lids to keep the splattering contained within the pot. They have an indicator light telling you when the oil has reached the desired temperature, though the thermostats in them are not always accurate. If the temperature lowers, the cooking time will take longer, and the food will absorb more oil and get greasy.Įlectric fryers (aka thermostatic fryers) can be more efficient than stove-top deep frying, because they heat the oil back up faster after one cooking batch is done, so that you can start the next batch sooner. The key to good deep-frying is often to fry up small batches at once, so as not to lower the temperature of the oil. The minimum temperature is usually around 180 C (350 F), though that’s a bit low for good chips. To deep-fry, the fat being used must get quite hot. In England, a pot that goes on the stove top that you use to deep fry in referred to as the “ chip pan“. Oil/fat is a very efficient carrier of heat from the source of the heat to the food, better than water or air. Some refer to regular frying as “shallow frying” to contrast it with “deep-frying.”įood that is deep-fried should end up soft inside, and crisp and golden-brown outside. It is like boiling in a way, except instead of using a large quantity of water, you are using a large quantity of fat. There needs to be enough fat so that the food can “swim” around in it. To deep-fry is to cook foods in a large quantity of hot oil or melted fat.
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