How to Save Money on Cooking Oil

This is how to:

• Save money on cooking oil
• Serve great fried food

Every restaurant owner knows cooking oil has skyrocketed in price in the past year. The war in Ukraine limited the production and distribution of Europe’s favorite cooking oil: sunflower oil. The broken supply chains have choked the distribution of cooking oil and cause some nations to hoard cooking oil. Earlier in the year, fish and chip shops in the UK were facing existential losses if they couldn’t get oil. While supply constraints have eased a bit, cooking oil remains a major expense for restaurants.

Serve great fried food and save money on cooking oil:

1. Choose the right oil

The cheapest oil isn’t always the least expensive. If it has a short life and can compromise the quality of your food, you’ll end up paying much more. Choose a sturdy oil, such as cottonseed, a cottonseed blend or palm oil. Sturdy oils can last 35-40% longer than cheaper oils, have a neutral flavor and resist flavor reversion which means your french fries don’t taste like fish.

Chains that fry a lot of food often use blends of oils to obtain the characteristics they want at the best price.

2. Avoid contaminants

Seasoning or salting your food over the fryer is a sure way to shorten the life of your oil and raise the cost of oil. Spices burn in the oil, contaminating it and causing unpleasant flavors and reduced longevity. Salt in the fryer can cause chemical reactions with unpleasant results for the flavor of your food. Salt and spice away from the fryers.

3. Don’t overheat your oil

Fry at 360 to 375 degrees and bring the temp gradually to your frying temp. High heat breaks down oil more rapidly reducing the useful life and raising your costs.

4. Filtering the oil to increase lifespan

One of the most important steps is to filter your oil to remove burned bits of food and spices. Contaminated oil breaks down rapidly, affects the taste of your foodcosts you money and damages a restaurant’s reputation. Ever taste a browned frenchFry that wasn’t cooked, that fell limp when you picked it up? Yes, bad oil. Nothing like bad fries to spoil that burger or fried fish platter.

There are numerous filtering machines available. They are a good investment given how much a restaurant spends on cooking oil. Some restaurants report up to 50% longer oil life when regularly filtering oil. Vito-filter is a great option.

5. Polish the oil

Polish your oil. Active filtering uses a chemical filter powder to remove protein, blood and      other impurities that mechanical filtering can miss. This is referred to as “polishing” the oil,  a step you need to take if you’re frying products like meat, seafood and poultry. These food bits, if left to burn repeatedly, can quickly destroy your oil.

In short, by implementing a few standard operating procedures, investing in filtering and polishing your oil, you can easily save 50% or more on the cost of your cooking oil. And your customers will thank you.