A LOOK AT OIL FILTRATION |

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Whether you’re opening up a new fish and chip shop, or you’ve been in business for decades and are just looking to enhance your frying technique, improving your oil filtration system can go a long way toward efficiency and savings.

One easy way to make things easier on yourself is to improve your oil filtration process. You’ll need to purchase oil/fat less often, your food will come out tasting and looking better, and your customers will keep coming back. Plenty of improvements in business promise to make you more profitable, but the numbers are clear when it comes to oil filtration. Increasing the efficiency of your oil filtration isn’t just an improvement on the back end; it’s a great way to lead to improvements throughout your business.

Oil & fat is not a cheap commodity, but an effective filtration system can help you make the most of it. When your business uses a high-quality oil filtration system, you can make your oil last longer by filtering out contaminants. Once you’ve got an efficient system in place to keep your oil fresh and clean longer, you will see a reduction in oil usage, and you’ll see the difference in your bottom line.

You can meet health and safety requirements with low-quality oil, as long as you change it regularly. But when you’re frying with cheap or unfiltered oil, you are not cooking the best food you can. A filtration system will filter out carbon and impurities that will negatively impact future cook cycles. When you don’t have to worry about the quality of your oil, you can focus on attracting more customers, secure in the knowledge that they’ll be willing to pay for the high-quality food you’re serving. Quality oil filtration doesn’t just make your food better-tasting; it makes it safer.

Efficient oil filtration will ensure that the fat used to cook your customers’ fish and chips is high-quality, fresh, and free of contaminants from previous batches. Serving fresh, clean fish and chips is the easiest way to score points with customers. In addition to it being a good idea, high-quality food is what bring customers back for more. On the other hand, serving low-quality food is the easiest way to drive customers away. No matter what you serve, keeping customers coming back for it is the simplest way to increase profits.

Tips:

➡️ Sieve the oils throughout the shift, never leave scraps in the pan for longer than they need.

➡️ Removing scraps fast is also prudent because it removes the water out the pan and allows your pan temperature to recover faster.

➡️ Filter your oils at the end of each frying shift.

➡️ Never filter at the temperature you were frying at, always let the oil come down in temperature. It will put less stress on the pan but also allow you to work in a safer environment.

➡️ In the morning set your pan to 100c, switch off and empty, wipe the bottom of the pan with blue roll to mop up any fine carbon sediment (more noticeable in liquid oils or broken-down oils). Refill, switch on and fry away.

➡️ Instead of cascading oils, keep each pan independent. Then you are not spreading the issue if there is one building up.

➡️ When filtering leave to recirculate for 5 minutes or so, this will also reduce the temperature of the oil.

➡️ After filtering do not switch off your range fan straight away, leave for half an hour. If you have a modern range, it may have a day/night feature.

Conclusion

Oil filtration is an often-neglected area of fish and chip shop ownership. Upgrading your oil filtration system isn’t a cure-all for the fish and chip shop, but it’s an important box ticked off which allows you to focus on other aspects of your business.

In our view filtering your oil twice a day will not only preserve the oil quality but will massively increase the quality of your fried foods.

Fortunately, new frying ranges today all come with some sort of filtration, anything from double filtration through a miroil filter bag all the way to triple filtration were the oil passes a miroil filter bag and a filter pad.

If you are not in the market for a new frying range then consider buying a standalone filtration unit.