Restaurants and Fried Food
Given our daughter’s allergy, we generally avoid fried food when eating out. A casual comment from a friend the other day reminded me how much we have learned, and how little most know, about restaurant kitchens.
Here’s a quick overview of fryers and restaurants:
In any restaurant that uses fryers, even if the food is cooked in separate fryers, it’s all cross-contaminated in the nightly clean-up process. Restaurants usually only have one filter unit (expensive) and it’s standard practice is to filter each fryer unit nightly. That means all the oil in the restaurant goes through the same filter unit (designed to filter out large particles of food) and poured back into the fryers. If the restaurant fries anything with shellfish, gluten (or anything with an allergen you avoid) it’s generally not ’safe’ to eat their fried food.
The other thing about oils, is that with the move away from trans-fats, many restaurants are experimenting the oils they use in fryers and in cooking. The most common oil blend is 10 percent olive oil (for flavor) with the rest a mix of peanut oil, soya, canola and/or margarine oil. The second most popular ‘oil’ is a liquid shortening called Magic Fry. One of our local ‘better chains’ uses whatever is on sale and has no clue what’s in their oil on a day to day basis. I was stunned when the executive chef explained that he didn’t have a clue and the home office confirmed it. . .
So, even if it’s a restaurant you frequent, please remember to always ask for a manager and always ask about allergens in the ingredients as well as those your food may encounter in the cooking process.
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