used cooking oil - how long can it be reused/saved?

[joko]

I know lots of people reuse cooking oil over and over, some only for a few days, some for months.

anyone know how long is safe? I know oil goes rancid and develops a weird smell.

i wouldn't bother saving it from frying an egg or something, but frying one lot of chips or breaded shrooms then binning it seems wasteful and expensive.

if it is safe to save it, how should it be stored?

thanks

[Buenchico]

I've just tried a Google search using this line:
"change the oil" "deep fat fryer"

This brought up quite a few sites. One was a review of a Kenwood fryer which said that the manual stated that the fat should be changed after 8-10 uses but the reviewer thought 6-8 more appropriate.

Another provided the instruction manual for a fryer which stated "Change the oil when it becomes brown after cooking (roughly after 20 frying sessions)".

Putting those two sources together, I'd suggest that cooking oil can be used at least half a dozen times (and probably more) unless it starts to go brown or it's been used for something which has left a flavour in the fat.

Obviously, if you've got a deep fat fryer, you'll simply leave the oil in the fryer. People who use liquid cooking oil in a chip pan usually wait until it's cooled and then transfer it, via a funnel, into an empty cooking oil bottle.

My own preferred solution, when I had a chip pan, was to use the solid block type of vegetable oil which could be left in the pan. (When it cooled it re-solidified, so there was no worry about spillages if the pan got knocked over between uses. Changing the oil was really easy. All that was necessary was to heat the pan slightly until the oil around the edges liquified. The basket could then be lifted out complete with the solid oil. All that was then required was to to invert the basket over some newspaper and bring the basket down sharply, depositing the block of oil onto the newspaper).

Hoping this helps,

Chris

[PhilBy]

Use a clean linen tea towel to act as a filter joko, pour into another large pan through the filter, then using a kitchen funnel pour it back into the bottle/container. Also works very well with heated lard etc to get all the nasty black bits out :-)

[aurelia]

If it's a question of safety - then there's no problem. I cartainly wouldn't replace oil in a deep-fat fryer. If it's a question of health - then as soon as you fry something in the oil - if it's a ployunsaturated oil - it becomes saturated and unhealthy. I have a big funnel for chip oil which I bought for about �3 from Betterware. I filter it with kitchen roll inside funnel, and drain into a large empty oil bottle - probably the one used to fill it in the first place. One thing I found was that if you put in 3 litres of oil - when it has been used and drain - there will be more than 3 litres coming off.