If you have the best deep fat fryer at your home, you can't use it if you don't have the oil to accompany it.
And if you already have different kinds of oils, say granola oil, castor oil, or olive oil, you may be confused which one is suitable for your fryer.
This happens and you shouldn't fret. In this article, you will learn what deep fryer oil is and which one is the right one for frying your food.
Buy All or Go With One?
Any experienced chef will tell you that not all oil can be used for cooking especially some foods that can change taste if you use the wrong oil. Also, you may want to look at different types of oils because of health reasons.
Some temperature levels have to be maintained (called the smoke point) for some oils and if you go above that level, they start to break down and cause smoke, which can mar the taste and nutritional value of your food.
For this reason, you could stock up different oil types for use with different food items if you want to get the best taste and texture on everything you cook.
But if this doesn't sound fascinating to you, you will most likely want to select the best oil that can be used to cook just about anything. If this is where you stand, then the best option is to get refined oil with a smoke point above 400 degrees F since you will be deep frying at a temperature range of 350 degrees F to 400 degrees F.
So Which Oil is Suitable?
There has been much debate as to which oil is the best for deep frying. Scouring the internet forums and cooking blogs, you will often find varied recommendations. However, the oil that has received more endorsement is the peanut oil.
It has a neutral taste (which means your food won't taste like peanut after cooking) and its smoke point is up to 450 degrees F. This means it can withstand lots of heat and not break down when you deep fry with it. Another thing about this is that you can get a refined peanut, which is just right if you fry a lot.
Does this mean you can't use any other oil? No. There are other oils with equally high smoke points that are suitable for deep frying. You can try grape-seed oil, avocado oil, or sunflower oil.
Since these are also able to withstand the heat caused by deep frying, you could easy get one of them and use them too. It all depends on your preferences, how flexible you want to be and whether you are primarily concerned about taste or not.
Overall, you can get just one oil for your use (in this case, peanut oil) if you are just any average cooker. But if you are a chef or you cook for large number of people who have different tastes, you may want to look into stocking different oil types to match different occasions.
