take notes : smell, appearance , viscosity

before and after refrigeratiion


try other oils

but commercially prepared fried foods always taste "off" to me, especially at the end of a meal when the food has cooled.

Even though canola oil is advertised as having the acid removed, a lot of people still can't tolerate it and that's why restaurants generally don't use it. Mixed, generic vegetable oil is cheaper, anyway. It also has little flavor, which is why I mentioned oil conditioners.

Oil on the edge of rancidity tastes hot, not bad. Fully rancid oil stinks.

cook too much food.

It is arguably the best known and most highly praised place to get fried clams. Every afternoon, for half an hour (I think 2 to 2:30, but not sure), they stop serving fried food so they can change the oil.

about 10 miles from here. We used to joke that one should only order their fries early in the year - after the annual oil change! Not that anyone went there for the food anyway - it was a place to sit and drink a beer after biking in the hills.

When I started cooking, we got these huge blocks of beef tallow. Throw then in the fryers, melt them and then go to full heat. IU believe that the tallow was mixed with a little shortening, but not by much. Enough to extend the heat range.

Once the industry moved to shortening- and pure vegetable oils- the fried food always tasted off, me.

But for those who've never tasted food cooked in that... I think the biggest problem now is that oil is expensive enough to be recycled a few too many times. Drain the dryer, Strain the burned bits out of the oil, throw it back in. You can filter the hell out of it, make it look practically new. Still adds an off taste.

twice-fried in beef tallow: once at the beginning of the day, and then again when a customer orders them. I don't know how often the tallow is reused, but those countries take their fries very seriously.

or a BLT that you are frying with oil.

Some years ago McDonald's changed their oil for their fries, and I simply stopped going there because the fries no longer tasted good. I believe they originally used a beef tallow, but apparently some people didn't like the beef part, and so McDonald's made the change. Honestly, those people should have started their own fast food chain, rather than ruining it for the rest of us.

I have been known to make my very own fries using real potatoes and Crisco. Haven't done that in several years now, but oh, my, they are good.