How to choose your deep fryer
Discover our tutorial video on how to choose your deep fryer
Let’s see together on how to select your deep fryer and look at all the selection criteria.
Deep Fryer: selection criteria
To select the best deep fryer, you have to know the 3 essential criteria :
- THE ENERGY : depending on what is available at your place
- THE PRODUCTION CAPACITY : depending on your appliance but without confusing it with the performance
- THE SIZE OF YOUR BASKET
The energy:
In terms of energy, gas or electric, today there is almost no importance of choice. First, is what you have at home in your restaurant. Nowadays, an electric-fryer is about 60-70% of the market and 30% for gas. if you are equipped with gas, you have now the same overall characteristics, a good regulation, an effective safety system, there is no particular constraint to using a gas fryer. The only difference will be in the performance and consumption. The kilowatt consumption cost is more attractive for gas in terms of energy costs. Nevertheless, the efficiency, meaning the quantity of electricity that you will consume, is more interesting with an electric one.
The production capacity:
The production capacity simply depends on how many pounds of fries per hour your fryer can handle. To measure this, you may simply refer to your supplier’s commercial documentation. At CAPIC, we have a specific documentation you may find in the link in the video’s bio. Thanks to this document, you’ll be able to estimate the entire range and read about the litres and kilowatts and the number of kilos per hour of fries that our fryers may cook at once, of every fryer we offer. In terms of regulations, we have the exact same regulation whether on our electric fryers or gas fryers.
The regulation is of two different types : mechanical or electronic. Systematically, favour electronic controls ! As soon as you immerse your basket, it automatically detects the power and links it to the volume of oil, and you quickly raise your oil temperature to have the best crispy fries, without having saturated your potatoes in oil to have a very good result of cooking.
The size of the Basket:
Between the smaller models, for example a 6 litre 6 kilowatts, you will have 1.5 kg of fries in a 6 litre ; 2.5 kg of fries in a 15-20 litre fryer ; and you can have up to 5 to 10 kg in a basket for fryers that are used for a large amount of people such as school cafeterias for example. You may always adapt the size of the fryer according to the type of products you make and according to your type of restaurant. Of course, if you have a gastronomic or gourmet restaurant, you are not going to need a quantity workforce, but you will need to have access to a certain cooking quality and reactivity. The quality of your fryer will be the decisive factor of your choice. The size of the basket will also depends on the typology of product you are making : if it is donuts, samosas or falafels. If so, we are not going to talk about hourly amount of fries. Nevertheless, the table catering, 50 table settings or up to a 100, will require a fryer that can handle such capacities, during a service peak. For one hour of service, you may start with only 4 to 5 kg to cook, and in 30mn you may have to cook 15 kg in a small amount of time. This means that your fryer needs to be able to cook up to 30 kg per hour, which means you may want to choose a fryer that has a little more capacities in terms of litres that you may need daily.
The best fries you can make are simply the fries you cook in a good oil at the right temperature. Between 180° and 175°, you may find the best temperatures to have the crispiness and ideal texture for your fries: between firm and soft. This technique works even better if you respect the height of the basket inside the fryer and the amount of fries you put inside your basket. Using all these techniques, you will be able to cook fries that will remain crispy and tasty for your take-out orders !