The food lab better home cooking through science ( PDFDrive ) 1075

CornOil

450°F

13%

PalmOil

450°F

81%

Soybean
Oil

495°F

14%

Safflower
Oil

510°F

9%

Avocado
Oil

520°F

12%

THEMYTHOFTHEFRY:USING
HOTTEROILDOESNOTLEADTO
LESSOILINYOURFOOD
Crack open nearly any book about deep-frying and you’ll
find this advice: “Make sure that your oil is hot enough
before adding your food, or it will absorb fat and become
greasy.” The theory is that as long as your oil as hot
enough,assoonasyouloweryourfoodintoit,theoutward


pressure of water vapor bubbles escaping the food will
prevent oil from rushing into the food, and therefore your
foodwillremaingreasefree.Atfirstglance,itmakessense,
right?Imean,we’vealleatenbadfriedfoodthat’scomeout
of a too-cool fryer, and indeed itdoes taste heavy and
greasy.Butisitactuallybecauseitcontainsmoregrease?A
study reported in theJournal of Food Process Engineering
saysdifferently.
Turns out that the truth is quite the opposite: the hotter
you fry your food, themore oil it will absorb. See, most
foods that you throw in the fryer—whether batter-coated
food,potatoes,orahunkofchicken—arefilledwithwater.
They are literally saturated with the stuff. Imagine that
French fry, for example, as a hotel with no vacancies—
every single room is filled up with a water molecule. In
order for any oil at all to penetrate the potato and take up
residence, some of that water must first check out. If you
think about this, you already know it: drop a piece of cold

potatointoacoldpotofoil.Doesitabsorbanyofthatoil?
Nope.Wash the potato off, and it’s as if the oil was never
there. Now, here’s the thing: water is pretty happy with its
cellularaccommodations.Theonlywaytogetittoleaveis
throughforcefuleviction,namelybyaddingsomeenergyto
itintheformofheat.Whenyoudropapieceofpotatointo
hotoil,energyfromtheoilistransferredtothewaterinside
it,whichwilleventuallyabsorbsomuchenergythatitleaps
from within the potato’s cells and escapes in a bubble of
vapor—thusfreeinguparoomfortheoiltocheckinto.
The water in a piece of food being fried exists in two
forms:Freewaterwilleasilyescape,jumpingoutofthefood