Deep Fat Fryer Help Needed

Magpie27

Whilst in ASDA's yesterday I saw they had deep fat fryers for £10, I decided to get one becuase it seemed such a good deal but now I'm not sure what to cook in it I suppose buying it before figuring that out wasn't very MSE of me :rotfl:

Can anyone give me any ideas of the kind of things I can cook in it other than the obvious chips.

I_luv_cats

(a) Fried Chicken!! (I once lived in a bedsit and only had a fryer and lived on Chicken!)
(b) Donuts
(c) Potato Waffles
(d) Scampi
(e) Fritters
(f) Fish Fingers
(h) Battered fish
(i) Onion Rings
You oil can go cloudy quickly if you cook stuff other than chips, esp with breadcrumbs.
Crisp n Dry lasted more for me in the past.

carolinosourus

Battered mars bars?
Battered ice cream (this is really amazing, as long as the oil is hot enough to cook the batter quickly and not melt the ice cream)
Pineapple, banana and apple fritters
Fish
Onion rings

Lots and lots of things. Anything fried really!

If you want to do sweet things then it might be an idea to get 2 lots of oil and make sure you know which is which otherwise you'll end up with fishy ice cream _pale_

Magpie27

Oh I'm loving the suggestions, on the subject of oil that was my next question what type and how often do you change it??

I_luv_cats

As I said "Crisp n Dry" was my fav.

I would filter the debris out after each fry-up. Depends if you cook more than just chips how long the oil lasts.

Does your fryer have a temp switch on it as that can help the oil and the food using the right temp.

Magpie27

Thanks I luv cats I'll get some Crisp N Dry it does have temperature control on it, I haven't unpacked it yet to see if it comes with any kind of manual still trying to figure where I'm going to keep it

Pink.

Hi magpie

I haven't owned one for years as we don't really eat a lot of deep fried food these days so I'm not the best person to advise but from memory I used sunflower oil. These threads may help you to get the best from yours:

Deep Fat Fryer

Oil in the deep fat fryer

cleaning deep fat fryer

Deep Fat Fryer - Oil Disposal

Pink

triticale

Hello Os'ers,

I have been wondering for sometime what has happened to the household deep-fat fryer.

As a child in the 80's teatime was centred around either the pressure cooker or the deep-fat fryer.

Nowadays, it doesn't seem like many people own one. Frozen foods that used to make the leap from freezer to fryer now only come with instructions to oven cook or grill. Finding them to buy is a lot harder with GF Grills and smoothie makers dominating kitchen electronics shelves.

Proper chips (at home) seem to be the exception rather than the rule, yet people still enjoy deep-fried foods in takeaways and restaurants, trusting the vendors to use fresh oil, the correct temperature and draining the cooked food adequately.

I wouldn't be without mine. It lives happily in a little cupboard until I fancy the treat of 'proper chips', even though I still like HM oven baked wedges etc you cannot beat a well made proper chip.

So why has the fryer been forsaken? Theories undoubtably point to modern 'healthy eating' attitudes, which demonise foods immersed in oil.

Chips aside, many wonderful (and homemade, not just freezer junk) foods just aren't the same not deep-fried - think wonderful crisp HM onion rings, battered fish, spring rolls, onion bhajis and so on.

Oven cooked shop-bought versions of these are usually pre-fried anyway, so it's not like you are even getting much fat savings for the sacrifice in crispy quality.

So is it the perceived smell/mess of fryers that turn people off? I know full well how the stench of old fat can permeate hair and clothing, having worked in a fast food hole as a teenager.

At home there are no such issues. When I get my fryer out I ventilate the kitchen and close doors to other rooms, extractor fan on and there is no problem.

Disposing of old oil is no big hassle, I just pour into a wide jug, wipe any sludgy bits out with kitchen roll and after filling with fresh oil can transfer the old oil from jug to empty bottle for disposal.

So are deep fryers really as little used as it seems to me? Anybody else a fryer fan? All thoughts and opinions welcomed.

rachbc

I got one just this year and loove it - hm chips, real slowly risen hm doughnuts, freid chicken, samosas and bahjis. Would give up my bm sooner than my deep fat fryer - and so much safer than trying to fry without one - I used to use my wok but it always felt so dangerous!

floyd

Its the smell that stops me using even shallow frying methods. I have a very old-hat kitchen that doesn't have an extractor and there always seems to be a fine mist of oil up the wall behind the cooker on the rare occasion I have done anything like that.

The only things I do like fried are falafel as they are crisp yet moist inside so if I do make them, I do an enormous batch and freeze them after frying then re-heat in the oven when needed. Beyond that we don't fry much at all, never have, when I was a child(70's/80's) we didn't have a chip pan or a deep fat fryer so I don't miss it

blitz

Ive always had one,but do tend to just use it for hm chips now, sometimes onion rings, everything else is now done in the oven or grill, its down to being more health conscious these days