Buying Fryers - not for small fry

Buying professional frying equipment for your kitchen needn't be complicated. Danny Blyth asked some of the industry's leading suppliers for their advice.

Fryers are quite the workhorse of many a pub kitchen, but to listen to the increasingly technical specs issued on lots of models you'd think they were used for laser surgery rather than for the quick cooking of the likes of chips and scampi.

There's so much to choose from: do you want gas or electric? Should you go for freestanding or tabletop? Do you need single or double well? And then there are various tank capacities.

However, according to Peter Elgin at suppliers Parry, the basic choices are simple. "The choice of whether to buy light duty or heavy duty is the same for fryers as it is for all other pieces of prime cooking equipment and it hinges around the type of operation, its size and the budget available," he says.

Malcolm Morris at Valentine Equipment also thinks the choice is simple. "There's nothing that's complicated - or fascinating - about frying in pubs," he says. "All companies

like us ought to be doing is making things simple for the operator, while showing how kit can work and last better."

Morris points out that the pub chef's first decision is between a single and twin pan. "A twin means having two wells, allowing you to keep one dedicated to chips and another to spicy products, so you don't get any cross contamination of flavours. At the same time, your oil will

last longer, meaning savings."

He advises that you make sure you get the correct size of oil bucket with your fryer, saying that many kitchens have

suffered from trying to filter a seven-litre pan into a five-litre bucket or saucepan. "If there's a spillage, you'll get a long-lasting ice rink in the kitchen!"

He also advises you look for a model that can offer automatic oil filtration. "All you need do here is turn a knob - it's easy, and the easier things are, the more likely it is that staff will do it. Plus, automatic filtration eliminates all the health and safety risks from staff handling oil."

But automation doesn't come cheap, adding around £700 to the cost of each pan. Morris, though, insists the payback from oil savings (about 20% of costs) and improved quality of the end product is considerable. To take the guesswork out of the oil quality in the fryer, Valentine has just introduced a new German product, the Testo 265, which is dipped into oil a bit like a large thermometer to measure the "total polar compound" of your oil accurately.

Morris says one of his first customers for the Testo was in the habit of changing 120 litres of oil every Monday, whether it needed it or not. Now she has started measuring and cutting out unnecessary changes, she is on course to save £2,500 on oil costs in the coming year thanks to the £300 testing device.

As for choice of models, Morris recommends that for a busy pub kitchen the chef chooses a sturdy machine capable of high performance, such as his own twin-pan Valentine V2200, possibly backed up by a single pan like his Valentine V250.

"This extra capacity also means that you can dedicate a fryer solely to vegetarian food, which is becoming so important in many pub kitchens," says Morris. "Food can't truly be 100% vegetarian if it's fried in oil that is also used to prepare meat products."

Meanwhile, if you only have occasional use for a fryer, say for the odd batch of chips, then one of the lighter models would do, such as the Ital range of Italian fryers from Apuro.

Ranging from the "starter" FR4 singlepan four-litre capacity model to the double pan eight-litre FR8/2, these compact,

table-top machines start from £169 ex- VAT for a four-litre capacity model.

Apuro's Michelle Lawson points to another cost benefit: "They do come with both lids and baskets so there's no added costs, on top of a one-year parts and labour warranty. It's a complete little package."

Falcon Foodservice Equipment has developed the Infinity fryer, which has a flat-bottom tank that needs up to 36% less oil than conventional gas fryers to cook the same amount of food. For a pub with a busy frying operation, this represents big annual savings, according to Falcon.

Whitbread has made the Infinity the first-choice fryer for its pubs, with a plan to install the device across the whole of the estate.

As well as models that reduce the amount of oil you use, it's now also possible to cut oil out altogether with the new Quik 'n' Crispy fat free fryer from Valera.

This "fryer" is, in fact, a compact electric oven that blows very hot air, sufficient to prepare oven-ready products like chips or scampi. Apart from saving on oil and the hassle of filtering and disposal, it doesn't need an extraction system or the associated fire safety certificate. The two and fourpan models can even prepare chips, onion rings and breaded garlic mushrooms simultaneously - without any discernible taste transfer. There are also programmable presets, making it a cinch for bar staff to operate, great for those times when either the pub chef or kitchen staff aren't working.

Filtration of spent particles from your oils is an important issue and here there are a number of new developments to consider.

Specialist fryer manufacturer Anets has a solution for both integral and standalone filtration. For integral filtering, Anets offers two systems, a Filter Mate unit, which sits directly under two double-basket fryers, or a larger Filtronic II, situated in its own cabinet, usually under a chip dump section. Anets also offers a Portable Filter System.

The Elite range from Imperial Catering Equipment offers both Side Car and Space Saver filter systems offering a solution to every outlet's frying needs. Both feature a five-gallon per minute pump, filter kit, and internally plumbed oil drain and return lines - all adding up to a minimum of fuss

for the operator.

Meanwhile, oil supplier Aarhus offers a combination of long life oil and unique filtration system to improve efficiency. This comes in Prep ZT Long Life Vegetable Oil, the latest in its Prep range of oils, and the Prep Filtration System, consisting of a filter holder and filter papers. And to help caterers decide when to dispose of their oil, Prep has a discard system, which uses a dip wand to test for quality.