In my life, I have single-highhandedly been responsible for the mass deep-frying of thousands of pounds of potatoes. In fact, if you counted everything I ever fried, well, it’s a lot. When you cook as much as I do, the deep-fryer is an asset. The down-side of having an oil- gobbling delicious machine, however, is just that: oil. Oil is expensive and cleaning and extending the life of your oil is a vital necessity and has some knowledge of how to clean deep fryer oil.
So, here are a few tricks for cleaning your used deep-fryer oil:
HOW TO CLEAN DEEP FRYER OIL?
Once your oil is cool (seriously, don’t handle hot oil)
- Make sure your oil is still re-usable. If it is foaming or very dark or black, it’s done; dispose of it properly. If it smells bad, you don’t want to reuse it. If it passes the sight and smell tests, move on to step.
- Filter Now, this one is a player’s choice, but it is the fundamental key for cleaning your oil. Commercial restaurants have a big filtering machine, but you can do it at home. You need:
- An empty container that can hold the amount of oil you want to filter, like a pot or cup.
- A screen, like a mesh strainer or a colander and/or…
- A coffee filter, paper towel, or cheesecloth.
- A ladle or pot to divvy out the oil.
- Maybe a funnel, depending on the shape of your container (i.e. a bottle).
So, gather these items, set up in a place where you can spill a little and do the following:
- First, take the clean container.
- If you are using a pot, place your strainer on top of the pot, and then line the strainer with a filter of some choice: paper towel, coffee filter, cheesecloth, or anything that will catch the fine particles.
- If you are using a small-mouthed container, like a cup or bottle, use the funnel and line the funnel with paper towels or a coffee filter.
- Now that you have got your container topped with a strainer lined with a porous paper product, ladle or slowly pour your ROOM TEMPERATURE oil into the filter-lined strainer. Slowly. If the filters are doing their jobs, it will take a minute.
- Once all of your oil has passed through, your filtering device should be full of burned tidbits and flavor-killing particles. Remove it and dispose. Not your colander though, keep that.
- Store your oil with a date and label in an air-tight container-preferable like the container it came in- or fire up the fryer.
You might find below video helpful to get the job done.
Congrats-you did it; you’re one step closer to crispy brown foods. For best results, avoid allowing water or seasonings into the oil, choose a high quality oil that will last longer, and clean as often as you use it. Like all good things, oil can’t last forever, so always start at step 1 and have a happy fry-day.