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Welcome back to the schoolwork channel. We are on lesson two of deep frying. What better way to learn about deep frying than uh sort of having a bit of an experiment with the oils and fats that um are used today versus maybe what would have been used more in the past. Lard, for example, is used still quite a lot in different uh parts of Chinese cooking, whether it's in dim sum pastries, also to fry. I wanted to do this experiment for a while. Uh, and now I've got the time to do it with you guys. What I've got here is a nice breadth of different fats that I'm going to test out. Starting with the animal fats here, where at the lowest end of the scale in terms of smoking point, let's talk smoking point here. the
smoking point of those fats is really important. And um to be honest, as much as I know and I cook a lot, I've never really done this experiment before. It's very easy to look up these days on, you know, Google and go, okay, what's the smoking po point of X, Y, or Z oil? But it's also quite interesting, I think, to understand the different textures of different fats and how they might impart that texture onto the ingredients that you're cooking. So, if we start here with animal fats, uh, and on the lowest smoking point, end of the scale, you have, you know, your butter. Um, butter, as you know, if you put it into a hot pan, will burn, uh, very, uh, easily. I'm not going to even uh sort of measure the temperature of this butter because I
know what it's going to do. Butter really has a smoking point of about 150° C. It will also have the milk solid proteins in there. And you can see that the oil or the fat and those solids are already like separating out in this butter. When it hits that 150 mark and it starts to smoke, it's those solids that are starting to burn really. um and create that smoke. Um and we'll see that once we get to temperature. This foaming or sizzling sound of butter is when I guess scientifically that the those solids are starting to cook and the liquid then is interacting with those and you can hear that sizzling away. Now once it gets to a stage where it's about to hit its smoking point, um that's steam there, not smoke. But once it finishes the
fizzing, then it'll get to a point where it's going to start to burn. And there's an in between where it's just about to burn and cook, which is kind of like where we talk about the nuttiness of butter. That brown butter is that in between. And that's right there. You can see that in the color, the browning of those uh milk solids. If I push it slightly further, now it's starting to smoke. Smoking point much lower than any of the rest of these fats. I will push this to a burnt point so I can show you why you can't deep fry in butter. It's very smoky. And now that brown particles um of milk solids have turned more black in color. And I'll pour this out for you to show you that is definitely burnt.
Do not deep fry in butter. Let's move on to animal fats. I've got two types of animal fat here, lard and um duck fat. And both really have a relatively lower smoking point than your oils. Even olive oil or sesame oil, which I quite often say you shouldn't cook with. You know, they're there for more for flavor than anything. But lard and duck fat, they have like a very intense meaty flavor, of course. Um, and at 190 uh degrees smoking point, really you can deep fry with them. Um, and in the old days, lard or animal fat would have been the goto um uh ingredient to uh deep fry or fry with as controlled an experiment as possible in this home kitchen environment. I'm going to uh test the temperature of the lard um and especially when I can physically
or when I can see physical smoke coming off that fat. We will then do that same test with every single one of these like batches of oils or fats as we go. Right. I'm going to test this like uh first off with the chopsticks. It's bubbling. I'd say my guess is around 160. Um, let's let's see. It's bubbling, but not like super fizzy. Still not smoking yet. 173. I'm going to bring the heat up a little. We're coming up to 190 now. And I can see that lard just starting to smoke. So, hey, Google's right. We have got smoking hot lard and it's now gone up to 200° C. And so when it hit 192
degrees, that lard started smoking. Animal fat is definitely capable of deep frying because we know that at 180 you're going to get a nice instant seal around whatever you're cooking or frying. But once it hits over that, what you get is this like aroma and quite pungent overcooked skin smell. And you know, when you're cooking with animal fats, you know, you do want the flavor that comes from the fats themselves, but you don't want that um almost like petroleum style um aroma um surrounding all of your ingredients, right? So, I'm going to use this bit of bread once the fat has cooled back down under that 190 uh° C. Um, to deep fry this bread and see what uh it does and see how it works. When you're using
animal fats to sort of roast your potatoes, the sort of variation of temperatures uh is really important. Deep frying isn't um just getting your oil to or your fat to 180° C and then dunking your ingredients in. It completely depends on what fats you're using, why you're using them, what flavor you want to get in from the fat, and then how you then um sort of maneuver that heat over a period of time. 190° C. And it's not smoking. So, I feel confident to put this sort of fluffy side down into the oil. And you can see it's got a lovely sizzle to it. Going to turn that over once. And you can see how quickly that's browned in that oil. So I flipped that
with my tongs. Yeah. And we're at aboutund just under 180° C now. Going to check it with my wooden implement. Oh, look. My wooden chopsticks are fizzing. 180 does work. Right, I'm going to take that out. And you can see within that minute how quickly that bread is deep fried in that lard. Experiment one out of this lesson. Done. Animal fat lard on the edge here. I mean, that's pretty good. That would go nice with some baked beans. Let's move on to olive oil. And I'll do the sesame oil as well in a second. But like cuz the two olive oil and sesame oil really are the sort of next level of um heat threshold, let's say, with the smoking points. And I quite often you'll hear me saying
don't stir fry with olive oil or sesame oil. to be honest like yes they have a lower smoking point than vegetable oil or sunflower oil or rape seed oil or these over here but more importantly much like the lard uh they have very unique distinct flavors you know olive oil tastes like olives sesame oil tastes like sesame seeds um and so if you're deep frying something and you especially like things like your you know your fish and chips or your deep fried um crispy meats for your salt and pepper chicken or sweet and sour, you don't want those extra flavors. Um but uh what's interesting is that they actually have a relatively high smoking point. Uh especially in comparison to your animal fats, around supposedly 210 to 220° C. So, um
[snorts] I'm going to measure out uh half a liter of olive oil and we'll bring that to heat and do the same test. We're getting to 180 here. I'm getting fizz from the chopsticks, which is great news. Well, there's a little bit of smoke forming actually on this olive oil. It's not like overly smoky yet. I think it's just around the edges. It's relatively low. And I would say that is the smoking point that the lard was at now 195 to 200° C. And we are definitely smoking. So, this extra virgin olive oil, it starts off when it's cooler um much more viscous than um let's say your vegetable oils or your sunflower oils. It started smoking at 195 to 200° C, which when you're deep frying, it's actually not terrible.
You know, you can deep fry at, you know, 180 and lower. Um, so we'll do that in a second once that smoke has dissipated. The interesting thing for me is that it does impart that flavor much like the lard would have done on that piece of bread over there. We'll test it out. Right, we're around 180 185. I'm going to pop that in and that will fizz straight away. Much like the other, we're deep frying this piece of bread in extra virgin olive oil. Very quick crisp again. Now I only really got like a sort of a strongish sort of smell from this olive oil when it was smoking hot. Unlike the lard, it hasn't really like it's not that overpowering. Nice and quick and easy fry this. And you can see
how quickly again that's browned. Certainly a lighter finish on the inside of that bread than the lard. Now, sesame oil, very distinct flavor. You know, you smell it straight away and you know it's sesame oil. Um, and as I always say, it's not the goto oil to fry or stir fry with because it's got a lower smoking point, which it absolutely does. It has a lower smoking point to vegetable oil or sunflower oil. Um, but the real thing to think about is it's very strong, pungent flavor, even when cold. when you heat up any oil, it the viscosity changes. It starts to become thinner. Um and uh and that's when you see you can actually see oil heating up because it has these little sort of wisps of like thinner um bits of oil. So the next turning point
is obviously when it starts to smoke and it when it goes from like hot sesame oil to smoking point. Then you get that overcooked oil flavor that you would get when you burn when I first burnt that butter at the beginning of this uh video. Now, interestingly, if you look this up online, the sesame oil supposedly has the same smoking point as olive oil, but this started smoking very low at around 165 to 170° C. So our teaching and thinking uh is right in the sense that it's not great for deep frying at all or even stir frying because you don't want to bring such a like flavorful oil into your frying process where the smoking point happens at such a low temperature. So, I'm going to get the uh fried bread into there uh whilst the oil is still hot enough to sizzle.
What you'll notice though with sesame oil is also the color of the fry uh which uh will come out a lot more almost like dusty dark a little bit grayish brown as opposed to like golden brown. Again, another key reason as to why you don't deep fry with sesame oil. I got to say, I'm really not looking forward to tasting these bits of bread, but I'll do it for you guys. Sesame oil, not good for deep frying. Next up, everyday vegetable oil or sunflower oil. And these are everyday because they are the most readily available, cheapest oils you can fry with or deep fry with that actually do get to
that higher smoking point, allowing the oil to come to that 180, 190° or even 200 and not really over smoke until a little bit after that. So the classic sort of range is probably around 220° C uh for these smoking points on the sunflower or vegetable oil. Another thing that we have learned from the other oils that we've already used is that uh sunflower oil or vegetable oil has no like real like pungent flavor or lingering flavor or doesn't leave any flavor around uh what you're frying. Um so and in general the oils that have those uh higher smoking points over here, you know, going into rape seed, peanut oils or rice brand oils, um don't have much flavor to them. Which is why when you're deep frying, it's great for that because you want to
deep fry to have that immediate crispy seal around your ingredients. Uh but the flavor is going to come from how you cook the rest of the ingredients. We're at 225. Can I see the smoke coming off that oil? So, yep, it's withstood a lot more heat than any of the uh initial uh fats or oils that we used. In fact, I should probably put the sesame oil there, shouldn't I? On heat. I'm going to take that off the heat now. Allow that to come back down to that uh 180 190 mark. Um and it will pretty much under 200 you know, 220, your smoke should start um sort of lowering, which is good. With Chinese style deep frying, you want to seal your ingredients first
at a high heat, and then if it needs longer to cook your meat through, then you bring the heat down and let it um almost um simmer along for 10 15 minutes with those thicker pieces of meat. Well, I'm going to add to this little experiment because it stopped smoking and it's at 215° C and I'm literally just frying some bread. So, I don't mind. I know that traditional sort of recipe guidance for deep frying would be at 180° C. That's what you deep fry at. But knowing that this is just a piece of bread and there's no smoke in that oil is going to be hot enough for me to fry very quickly. As you can see, quick sizzle through, a quick brown. Turn that over, brown the other side. And what I'm showing you here is that it's you're getting an
instant seal from that very hot uh vegetable or sunflower oil. Um but um with that instant seal, it means that it has less time if we know it's not smoking hot and it's not going to burn the food. It has less time to sit and soak in excessive amounts of that oil. If you're controlled, you know what you're doing, then you can deep fry at higher temperatures than that 180. But rice brand oil at the top of that graph um should have a smoking uh point of over 230, even closer to 240° C. Obviously, you think, well, why are we not always deep frying in rice brand oil? Well, because it's expensive.
Um, and when you deep fry, you do need plenty of oil to um, submerge your uh, ingredients into. We're at 225 where it was very smoky with the vegetable oil. To be fair to vegetable oil, I'd say that is now fully smoking at 230. So, the rice brand oil, although we if you read about it online, you know, it says it's got a um like a much higher smoking point. I wouldn't say it's much higher at all. It's very close to vegetable oil or sunflower oils. Hopefully, you would have learned as I've learned that the various smoking points do differ from anywhere from pretty much 190. Well, if you look at the butter, probably 150, 160 all the way up to 230° C, depending on the different fat that
you're using to cook your food. Deep frying needs high heat, and you do not want to denature that oil. You don't want it to get it to this smoking point. Otherwise, as I said, it can get dangerous and impart flavor that you do not want in your food. Once again, this oil is uh way too high for everyday deep frying, 205° C. But what's interesting is it's not smoking. So I can brown it uh the bread very quickly in that oil. Um without worrying about that smokiness um and so just one or two quick turns of that bread, it's fizzing away very easily. So rice brand oil, yes, still it is sort of a few degrees uh higher than your rape seed or vegetable oil, sunflower oil, but in essence, is it worth the extra money? Uh no.
So that is my learning uh on the different types of fat [snorts] uh that you can use uh for deep frying. My animal fat, sesame oil, olive oil, rape seed and rice brand oil. And this here gives you the sort of breadth of that graph of the different uh thresholds or smoking points of each one of those fats. All right, the guys have just taken a photo and they've broken up the broken into each piece of fried bread and we found something really interesting. So if you look at this the lard here, sesame oil, olive oil, uh vegetable oil and then finally the rice brand oil. This is the really interesting comparison. The lard versus sesame oil where the smoking points were um the lowest out of them all. Um but you can see the difference
in how the bread has held up um without soaking in u much grease of that lard as possible versus the sesame oil. If you guys know more about the science of that uh let us know. But what this is saying to me is that when you do have like your fried chips or crispy roast potatoes um cooked in animal fat, that something maybe to do with the viscosity, I don't know, um is making is almost protecting whatever we're cooking much better than the nonan animal fats, which is possibly why we get so much of a sort a crispy finish around those chips and the roast potatoes versus if you were to fry the same ingredients in something like your sesame oils. You can see a distinct difference from the bottom, the lowest
temperature um threshold, the lard, all the way up to the top in terms of how much more oil the bread with the rice brand oil has absorbed in comparison to the animal fat and lard. I'm going to try those two. Super crispy. Been sitting there for a long time. Tastes like pig that also crispy. But that bread has definitely absorbed more oil than this bread lard. Let us know in the comments below. So that is a seriously detailed experiment around all the different oils that and fats that you could use to deep fry or not. In tomorrow's class, lesson three, uh we will be going through all various different ways of how to really get the best out of deep frying. You know, from pastries through to um
different types of batters. If you want to really get the ins and outs of how to control your oil in the best possible way, tune in to the next lesson.
