Written by Rekha K, Article credits: Lifezing

Most people love to eat deep fried food but many of them choose not to eat it as deep fried food generally have a bad reputation of being unhealthy. As a nutritionist, I am also not a great fan of this particular method of cooking, but do you know if you deep fry right way, even deep fried food is not unhealthy.

Yes! You heard me right, it may not be unhealthy, while I say it is not unhealthy, at the same time I do not mean that it’s low in calories too. Low calorie and unhealthy are two different things.

Is there any thing such as healthy deep frying?

First of all let’s understand the process of deep frying, all foods contain water and moisture when you drop food in hot oil, this moisture is converted into steam. Steam and oil do not get mixed so this steam is released out of food forms a kind of envelop around it and prevents more oil from penetrating inside the food.

When all this is happening, at the same time food quickly browns and creates a crisp interior and now this crust work as protective barrier and keeps oil out of food and seals the heat inside food that helps to cook it from inside.

There is one secret component that makes it happen, that is specific temperature. Like baking frying is also dependent on particular temperature (about 177-190 C). Lower than this food tends to absorb lot more oil than required for it and higher than this, you get food that is crisp/done from outside and uncooked from inside.

If you follow this basic process, you can deep fry your food on occasions and still do not feel guilty about it as it did not absorb much oil.

While I do not promote or overtly enthusiastic about deep frying, but occasional deep frying which is done right may not be as horrible as it sounds.

Four Steps for Better Deep Frying

- Always heat your oil to right temperature before immersing your food in it, as at low temperature food absorbs more oil. At right temperature (375F) outer layer of food becomes crisp and prevents penetration of oil. If you do not have cooking thermometer right time is just before smoke starts coming out of oil.

- Use healthy oil that has higher smoke point for deep frying
- Do not overload your deep frying pan or deep fryer , too much food in the pan causes the temperature of cooking oil drop drastically, when this happens the crisp layer is not formed and absorbs more oil. If you want to fry more food, deep fry it in batches.
- Last but very important step is draining your food, as you take out fried food from cooking medium, drain it with slotted spoon and place it on paper napkin to absorb extra oil. Do not just wrap it around food as that covering the food you are sealing the steam that’s coming out of food. This steam when it penetrates the food from outside causes the crust to soften with water vapours and your fried food is not crisp any more.

While I still maintain that deep frying is not best of the way to cook your food , but truth is if you deep fry right way and measure your oil before and after frying you will notice that you only used one or two tablespoon of oil ( snacks for 4 people). So done right way deep frying is not really unhealthy as it is thought to be, there is always a right way or wrong way that makes it good or bad.

Click here to learn about which oils to choose and use

Tweet