When prepared and cooked properly, fried chicken can be one of the world’s most delicious foods. Whether it’s Korean fried chicken, which has a light and crunchy batter, Nashville hot chicken tossed in a spicy, oil-based sauce, or the classic Southern fried chicken that many of us are used to.
Fried chicken and other battered deep-fried foods require a temperature of 350 – 375 °F (176 °C – 190 °C) to maintain a crispy outside without absorbing the oil and becoming greasy. For these foods, you’ll want to select a frying oil with a high smoke point to maintain consistent quality and flavor. Vegetable oil is always a good choice because of its neutral flavor and affordability, particularly if you are a large volume foodservice operation and need to continuously prepare a large amount. When chicken is fried, fat is rendered from the chicken into the frying oil, so over time what was once a liquid oil at room temperature, will become a hard fat due to the rendering process.
It’s also important to establish educational components in your frying operation. Operators must learn the proper frying and cleaning techniques in order to produce the most consistent food quality.
These guidelines should include:
- Proper maintenance of the fryer
- Proper cleaning of the fryer
- Proper fryer operation
- Management of frying temperatures
- Avoiding contact with metals such as copper and bronze
- Proper food handling
- Filtering or treating oil
Properly managing oil may also help keep the fryers cleaner. Some operators have reported that one benefit of treating oil has been a reduction of polymer formation, which allows restaurants to not only reduce chemical usage, but allows a “greener” cleaning chemical.
With FILTROX’s SuperSorb® Filter technology, making fried chicken is cleaner and easier than ever. The uniquely patented design of SuperSorb® works to filter oil to a nano, invisible 0.5 micron, trapping pollutants and contaminants that would normally stay in the oil leading to faster breakdown.
Ramp up your frying operation and produce better tasting, more consistent deep-fried chicken with the help of SuperSorb® CarbonPads. Contact FILTROX today to learn more!
