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Five Factors for FitFrying
Factor 1: Choosing the Right Fryer
The first step in The Five Factors for FitFrying program is to find the right fryer for the foods you serve. This not only helps produce higher-quality and more healthful foods, but also extends oil life. To find the perfect fryer for your operation, evaluate your menu to determine which fryer is best suited for your needs.
The right fryer is the one that is designed to cook the foods you offer on your menu. In the broadest sense there are two categories of fryers—those with sediment zones and those without. Sediment zones optimize the fry cycle by allowing particles from the food to precipitate away from the cooking area into a location at the bottom of the fryer called “the cold zone.” Different types of fryers offer different “cold zone” collection options.
Open-pot fryers have the heat transfer system outside the frypot and deep internal sediment collection zones. They perform well in many frying applications, but are ideal for light to medium sediment foods such as French fries and freezer to fryer foods. They can also handle heavier sediment foods with regular filtration. This type of fryer allows every inch of the frypot to be easily accessed and safely cleaned. Open-pot fryers are available in both gas and electric models.
Tube-type fryers have the heat exchange system inside the frypot and wide sediment collections zones below the heat exchange tubes, making them the best choice for foods that are fresh battered or heavily breaded such as homemade onion rings or dry dredge fish. Tube-type fryers are available in large capacity models making them the perfect choice for foods that require a large surface area or operations that have high capacity production needs. Tube–type fryers are only available in gas models.
Flat-bottom fryers have large frying areas and no sediment collection zones making this type of fryer best suited for food items that float on top of the oil during the fry cycle. Good applications for this fryer are tempora and wet battered fish.