Fried food lifts passions. Fried food is a pleasure for some people, because its taste and texture. For other people, frying is an unhealthy way to cook that only accumulates fat and provokes the intake of unhealthy substances.
The right answer should be an intermediate point. It consists in eating fried food in moderation. But the food should be well fried, because many of us do not know how to fry. These are the most common mistakes we make:
1. Pour the oil after turning the heat.
First, you should add the oil in cold and heat the pan quickly. If you do it backwards and the temperature of the pan is very high, the oil will be burnt. If you add the oil with the pan in cold, the oil will warm up progressively and you could control its temperature. Before you add the food, you should wait until the oil is well warm (but less than 200ºC), 180ºC is a good temperature because it favors the formation of an exterior cover in the food that prevents it from impregnating of oil, with a crunchy and less fat result.
2. Let smoke the oil.
This means that the oil is burnt. You should throw it away and start again because it is corrupted.
3. Rotate the food in order to be fried.
A golden rule is that the food should be submerged in the oil. For example, when you fry breaded fillets, if the oil does not cover from the beginning the entire food, the oil will be absorbed by the breadcrumb, the flour and the egg, and the food will be in contact with the pan, and it will not be well fried. In addition to this, the breadcrumb will become detached because of the humidity of the meat up.
4. How many times can the oil be reused?
Some studies have showed that the olive oil can support 25 uses and the sunflower oil can support 15 uses. Anyways, oil should be discarded when it gets a reddish color and get too soon to the smoke point.
5. Put the remaining in a container directly.
When the fry is over, a good storage is guaranteed filtering the oil through a strainer or a net. This way, you avoid to have particles of breadcrumb or flour in the oil. Then you should save in an opaque container with hermetic seal. It can be saved for a week.
6. How to know the temperature of the oil?
You can use a wooden stick, immerse it taking for a corner. If the stick starts to bubble, then the oil is perfect (160ºC-180ºC).
7. Use the fry-oil as a sauce.
This is completely wrong because it is only an overheated oil that could acquire some tastes in the moment of frying.
8. Do not wait until the food is unfrozen.
Breading foods can be fried without defrosting, obtaining a crunchy cover and the products do not dehydrate. But, if the product is a piece of meat or fish, not defrosting is a mistake.
9. Fry different foods in the same oil.
The remaining oil of frying fish should be used again only to fry fish a few times because it leaves so many particles. Nothing prevents you from frying fries there, but they will have a taste to squid. However, the remaining oil of frying fries could be used in order to fry an egg and vice versa, because these foods do not smell and they do not drop residues.
10. I get rid of the oil through the kitchen sink.
When the useful life of the oil ends, the farewell should never be the sink or the drain, due to its environmental impact as a powerful pollutant. These oils should be stored in containers, which can be made of plastic, and disposed of through the containers of used oils that some collection organizations make available to citizens or in the clean points that all municipalities have.
11. Blow out the flame placing the pan under the tap.
If you have gas cooker, for sure you have seen a flame appearing sometime. It is important to keep calm and never use water to extinguish the fire, if you use water, a thermal shock is produced and it could derive into a little explosion. The best option is to turn off the heat and put apart the pan. Then, put a well-drained pad or put a tapa larger than the pan to prevent the entry of oxygen.