Fryers

It's often the simplest-looking catering equipment that causes the most buying mistakes, and nowhere is this more true than with deep-fat fryers. There will be scores of seemingly similar units on view at Hotelympia, yet their performance will vary greatly.

As with most kitchen equipment, the output needs of the kitchen must be known before setting foot on any stand. This allows the salesman to advise on the size and power of deep-fat fryer you need.

Since chips are at the heart of most deep-fat frying, it's worth knowing two facts about the kitchen's chip consumption. How many pounds, on average, does the kitchen get through in a week, and how many are cooked in an hour at peak demand times?

The weekly chip consumption gives the salesman a broad indication of the size or number of fryers needed, and the peak demand load can be converted even more accurately into the fryer capacity needed to meet the kitchen demand.

Tank capacity

When looking at the performance of individual fryers, there are some key numbers to crunch. Most fryers will have literature describing their performance in terms of chip production per hour. Comparing this with the weekly and peak-time demand gives a broad indication of the tank capacity you should be looking at.

Of equal importance, however, are oil temperature recovery times. This is the area where the performance between different fryers shows up most. When baskets of frozen chips are continually being dunked into the tank, the oil temperature will struggle to reach optimum frying temperature quickly if the heating elements are not very powerful. This will lead to delays in frying and a higher take-up of oil by the chips. Collect sales literature from every stand to compare performance as well as price.

It is not just sales hype to be told to have overcapacity of fryers by between one-quarter and one-third of what chip throughput calculations say is needed. It is also wise to have more than one fryer. There is not much to go wrong on a deep-fat fryer, but it can happen, and having extra capacity and more than one fryer means that while the kitchen will struggle to meet demand, at least chips will stay on the menu in the event of a sudden breakdown. This also allows for growth in business and unexpected surges in demand.

While fryers are durable, the oil that goes into them isn't, and the life of the oil has an important bearing on fryer running costs. Ask about the cool zone in the fryer. This is an area at the bottom of the tank into which particles of food fall. With a lower temperature these particles will burn less easily, causing less oil damage before draining and filtration.

Draining the tank is a daily task and needs to be done easily and hygienically, so look carefully at the oil drainage system.