Canola, peanut, and vegetable oils are your best oil for deep frying. Their neutral flavors and high smoke points make them perfect for deep-frying food. The best oil for fried French fries, however, is a neutral-tasting, low smoke oil like peanut, vegetable, or canola oil. These oils can prevent oil splatters from cooking the food in and reduce your health risk of developing cancer
- When you cook with these types of oils, they oxidize and burn off before they have time to do any real damage. When you buy today’s “high heat” vegetable oils, you may be in for a surprise when you open the bottle and find that it has oxidized. Oxidization of any type causes free radicals to form which in turn increase your risk of cancer, heart disease, etc. The best deep frying oil is a low smoke; no more than 150 degrees F.
- Anytime you deep fry food, there is food debris that will definitely get into your fryer oil. Your goal is to keep as much of this food debris out of your food as possible by using a can or two of stainless steel food storage containers. You’ll want to use these can holders to keep paper towels, cotton balls, aluminum foil, etc. from setting on the oil.
- There are many commercial deep fryer recipes that use vinegar or apple cider vinegar. Vinegar and apple cider vinegar has been used for hundreds of years to naturally eliminate oil taste. However, recent studies have shown that these types of natural oils do not improve taste or retain much of their flavor when used during deep frying. They actually cause a taste deterrent and can actually make food taste worse. This is a very important factor when considering which type of oil you are going to use.
- Some of the best deep fried food on the market is made using olive oil. This is an excellent choice for deep frying because it maintains its texture and flavor much better than the other types of oils. This type of oil is easily stored and used throughout the season. The only negative about olive oil is that it does take longer to heat up and does not produce the highest heat either. If you want to make sure that your food is cooked in the most flavorful way, use olive oil.
Some people claim that fish such as shrimp and lobster taste best when cooked on the bottom of the pot. This is due to the temperature at which these species of fish are usually caught. When deep fried, they tend to take on a higher temperature and cook more thoroughly. If you are looking for a good type of cooking oil for deep frying, then use grapeseed oil for this task.