Cooking Article

For a time I worked in a convenience store as a clerk and cook and I used a deep fryer quite a bit for cooking battered chicken and French fried potatoes.

Of course the chicken doesn't start out battered. It comes delivered frozen in big cardboard boxes. Before the chicken is ready for the cooking part it must be prepared and time to thaw out. Each piece of chicken is rinsed in cold water
then put in a vat of tenderising
salty water to soak for several hours in a refrigerated area. It is again rinsed and kept cold
until needed for cooking.

When needed for cooking the chicken is breaded in a special spicy flour mix
dipped in spice water
and breaded with mix again. Each piece is than carefully placed in the boiling oil in the deep fryer; starting with the large
meaty pieces
and finishing with the thin bony pieces. This gives the thick meaty pieces more time to cook. They get the hottest oil in the pot to start off the cooking process. The deep fryer is on a timer and part way through the cooking process the timer sets off an alarm which notifies you that it's time to stir the chicken
so it gets all sides cooked evenly
even the sides touching when first put in the fryer. After stirring the chicken it cooks until the end of cooking cycle alarm goes off. Then the pot elevator will automatically lift the cooking basket out of the hot oil
allowing the chicken to drip off the excess oil.

The deep fryer also cooks French fried potatoes. After cutting the potatoes into the elongated cube shape in a cutter
the fries are battered
dipped and battered again. They then can be gently lowered in hands full
into the boiling oil. The cooking is again controlled by a timer
which sounds when the cooking cycle has completed. After 4 cooks the oil in the fryer needs to be filtered to clean it for future cooking cycles. Another alarm indicates when oil filtering needs to occur.

The heat on the oil is turned off
so the oil can cool down enough to work with. The cooking basket is raised and removed from the fryer. A valve is turned to allow the oil to drain down into the filtering drawer. When the oil has drained the empty oil reservoir is brushed
including the heating coil element
to remove anything sticking to their surfaces. A pump is turned on which circulates the oil repeatedly through the filter. The filtering can take place for 10 or 15 minutes
depending how dark the oil appears in color. When the oil has become lighter in color it is pumped back up to the oil reservoir
after the valve at the bottom of the pot has been closed. The heating element is turned on and the oil is brought back up to cooking temperature. The unpleasant part is scooping out the sludge at the bottom of the filter drawer. Then the cleaned filter is dusted with a special powder
put back in its place under the fryer pot
and all is ready to go again.

Yes the fryer does most of the cooking for you but watch out for the hot oil when loading the food into the cooking basket. Even wearing rubber gloves won't stop the oil from burning you
should it splash on your hands as the food drops into the hot oil. The secret is to be brave and gutsy. Get the food close to the oil before you drop it in. That way the splash is really small
and doesn't jump up to fry your wrist.

Happy cooking. Cook
but don't be cooked.