Has the deep fat fryer had its chips?
IT has become a sizzling war of words – the queen of The Great British Bake Off, Mary Berry, versus MasterChef giant Gregg Wallace.
Mary, right, believes wholeheartedly that the deep fat fryer should be banished from Brit- ain’s kitchens while Gregg says it should be a traditional part of our cooking lives. So is deep frying food so unhealthy we should now try to avoid it at all costs? Or does our increasingly broad palate mean we need our fryers like never before? Check out our experts’ views...
First things first – deep fat frying is unquestionably the most unhealthy way of cooking. But there are certain foods, like chips, which only work perfectly when they’ve been cooked in a deep fat fryer.
I remember as a kid, I’d often come home from school to find the chip pan bubbling away.
It might have been one of the old-school ones with a basket that you lowered into the lard, but when that chip pan was on the go it was always the happiest day of my life.
So I don’t agree with Mary Berry when she says that “No home should have a deep fryer,” because if you want to cook particular foods at home they’re a necessity.
The fact is, lots of people still love chips – I serve them in my restaurants so they all have fryers. But it’s not just about maintaining the tradition of “British food” either.
When I was growing up the idea of having Thai cuisine was so unknown we might as well have been talking about Martian food.
But these days so many households have moved towards eating internationally.
Now lots of us enjoy all sorts of dishes from other countries which have to be cooked in a certain way, from spring rolls to that Deep South-style, deep fried chicken.
If something needs to be cooked at a certain heat for a specific length of time you can be sure a modern deep fat fryer will do that.
It’s certainly a lot more efficient than shallow frying in a pan.
Plus, deep fat frying is less unhealthy than it used to be. Now we use different oils and we know that if you make chips, for example, just shaking them for two minutes after they’ve been cooked can reduce the amount of oil which remains on them by about 20%.
Should EVERY home have a deep fat fryer? Not necessarily.
If you eat lots of salads, vegetables and lean meat then you’re not going to need one.
But if you love to make Thai or Chinese dishes, for example, then you are certainly going to want to have one.
Of course, nothing which is deep fried can be described as actively healthy, whatever food you cook.
If you’re constantly using deep frying then that’s not a good place to be, but if you want to get your mates around every now again for burger and chips, then it’s ideal.
It’s all about that golden rule: everything in moderation.