Everything Tastes Better Fried: Why Your Restaurant Needs a Commercial Pressure Fryer

There is something about fried food that is appealing to almost everyone. At restaurants across the country — and even around the globe — fried foods have long been a staple. Fried chicken, churros, tempura, calamari, mozzarella sticks: The list goes on forever. Some people contend you can fry almost anything and make it taste good. Commercial pressure fryers offer the unique advantage of frying food quickly while also cooking it all the way through. Here, we cover some of the basics of commercial fryers and how your restaurant might benefit from one.

What is a Commercial Pressure Fryer?

A commercial pressure fryer uses a pressurized environment to cook food. Just like other fryers, pressure fryers use oil to cook the food and induce the Maillard reaction that gives fried foods their distinctive flavor. However, in pressure fryers, a lid is lowered over the fry pot and sealed, creating a pressurized cooking environment for your food.

How is a Commercial Pressure Fryer Different from an Open Fryer?

The main difference between how a pressure fryer works and how an open (or deep) fryer works is the pressurizing of the cooking environment. As a consequence of these different environments, these fryers cook at different temperatures and yield unique results. At a basic level, frying is related to water — that is, the moisture contained in a particular piece of meat being cooked. A standard open fryer can only make the water within meat reach 212 degrees, which is water’s boiling point. By contrast, the pressurized environment of a commercial pressure fryer allows it to heat moisture to a higher temperature, about 240 degrees. This higher temperature speeds up cooking times and raises the moisture’s boiling point, meaning less of that moisture escapes from the food during the cooking process. This results in cooked food that is more tender and moist than what a deep fryer can produce. The higher-temperature, high-pressure environment also allows heat to penetrate deeper into the food, producing more even cooking results.

Benefits of a Pressure Fryer

Aside from producing food additional tenderness and moisture, pressure fryers provide other benefits as well. Pressure-fried food can be healthier. Pressure fryers shut in moisture while simultaneously sealing out excess oil that can make your food unhealthy. As an added benefit of sealing out excess fat, less oil is expended with every cooking cycle, meaning you’ll save money using this product. The pressure fryer ensures your food gets more evenly cooked through. This is especially true for machines that use a rectangular fry pot design. This design distributes heat with greater uniformity by causing the oil to become more turbulent, delivering food batches that display homogeneity throughout. Likewise, if you’re looking to make your kitchen more efficient, the pressure fryer may be the product you’re looking for. By boiling food at a higher temperature, the pressure fryer cuts cooking times and enables you to dish out fare to your diners faster. Often, when trying to make a business more successful, people look to other companies that have been prosperous before them. If you’re trying to decide how to equip your restaurant’s kitchen, you might find it useful to know that leading fried-food companies seem to have noticed the benefits of the pressure fryer. Large fast-food chains such as KFC and Chick-fil-A both use pressure fryers to produce the flavor and texture that customers seek.

Get the Best Pressure Fryer: Henny Penny

Buying a pressure fryer is an important investment for your restaurant. You should only trust brands that can truly deliver the best machines for your business. Henny Penny is one of the most popular fryer brands, and this is not without reason. A Henny Penny fryer is capable of cooking high volumes of food while also generating significant savings. These fryers use 25 percent less oil per piece of meat than other fryers, and trials in the U.S. have seen the need to dispose of oil reduced by 80 percent compared to other leading pressure fryers. When combined with these fryers’ ability to carry out automatic filtration after every cooking cycle, the benefits certainly make Henny Penny stand out. As a further benefit, Henny Penny fryers can have a very long working life if properly cared for. Quality Henny Penny parts are available from respected suppliers. These parts can keep your fryer working for longer, making sure that you reap the greatest benefit possible from your equipment before it needs replacement. If you don’t yet have a pressure fryer in your commercial kitchen and you produce a lot of fried foods, buying and maintaining one might be worth the investment.