Do you know how to tell if your vegetable or cooking oil’s gone bad?
Been really pondering the vast mysteries of how to store and keep your restaurant’s oil, or even if it is advisable to do so?

Perhaps you have wondered just which oil is the most healthy for you to be cooking your food in. Well, wonder no more. Even if you never thought about these things, there are some interesting facts about just what that liquid gold in your fryer does, and how that impacts your business’ bottom line.

If you have worked in food service for quite some time, you are probably well aware of what happens to your cooking oil as it deteriorates. It starts to smell a little off, there are all these little bits of food in it, and it begins to sort of taint the foods you fry in it. Fries begin to smell and taste a little fishy, chicken starts to have a frylike taste, and so on and so forth. Everyone’s gotten the french fries with the odd bit of “something” in them. Have you ever thought about what’s really going on with the oil as it deteriorates and what you can do to slow that process?

Filtering out those little bits of particulate on a regular basis is a very good start, but there is more to it than that. The whole process begins with that first batch of food fried in new oil. It starts to darken from the very first few batches, and by around the tenth or so, it becomes more noticeable. This is due to both the food particles and the oil burning for a prolonged amount of time. The more it gets used, the slower it seems to pour, and cooking oil, much like the oil you use in your car will undergo changes in viscosity. This happens both due to the changes in its molecular structure and because as you use it, food particles begin to accumulate. When it does start making foods taste like one another, or it begins to smoke before it reaches full heat- it is just past time to throw it out.

The best methods for storage of cooking oils, if you are running routine maintenance on your fryer and the oil has not gone bad is to keep them anywhere that is cool and dark. One of the best methods of prolonging the life of cooking oil is actually to remove it from the fryer, place in the refrigeration unit when you close up the restaurant. This is not actually the most practical method, but if you’re looking to cut costs when it comes to storing your oil, it’s one way of doing that. This is because oils are actually pretty sensitive to heat and light and the longer they remain exposed to either, they deteriorate that much faster.

As to which oil is the most healthy, the honest answer is, there really isn’t one. You can, of course, go into all of the ramifications of which oils carry what fat composition, but when it all boils down- healthy is no more than 25 to 30 percent of calories of fat in everyone’s daily dietary intake. Period. Of course, there are “healthier” fats, but the bottom line is, in food service it is usually best to choose the oil that best suits your budget.