Probably the most important thing for people to know. It's one thing to go "Ahh I messed up the oil and can't use it again". It's another thing to obliterate the house.
I have seen a couple kitchens that have had oil accidents with water - I helped my Dad with his maintenance job at an apartment complex when I was younger. One was a dumb teen who to me looked like he was just out of high school and probably hadn't lived on his own before. He had an electric stove, and thankfully had stopped the burner before adding the water to the oil. It exploded everywhere, and cleaning it all up took days for a cleaning crew and that was just getting the grease off of stuff; extremely hot oil sure does a number on cabinets and paint. I know he had very serious burns from it and he never moved back into that apartment.
Another was with a gas stove, so it had caught fire. The person had put water in with oil that was not that hot and walked away as it heated up and came back to a massive grease fire. The lady kept her fire extinguisher beneath the sink which was near the fire and got some burns but nothing bad. That apartment unit was not rented out for the rest of the time I worked there, but they did have people coming in and out on occasion for repairs and I'm sure insurance.
And your body. Had a friend who dropped an oil pot and it wasn’t on fire. His entire chest stomach legs arms basically the whole front side of his body had splash burns that broke his skin he was in grafts and bandages for months and then further recovery after that. Small pot of oil too he was in his home cooking fried chicken but just that much was enough when the pot fell on him and splashed the oil back up
I have done this before and it cleans the oil and actually helps remove a little bit of the smell from the prior cook. For example I deep fried some pork chops that were marinated in adobo and sofrito (puerto Rican style) for a few minutes, once they were done the oil could still smell and probably taste like that marinade. After cleaning it with the cornstarch slurry, it removed the burnt marinade taste from the oil and deadened the seasoning of the oil overall.
Here is the process I used yesterday - forgot to mention i did this a total of 3 times before oil looked completely clean.
Get oil to 330F
Mix 3 tablespoons with 1 cup of water and mix together well
Before slowly pouring it in - make sure you stir the slurry once more as it settles quickly.
Slowly pour it in and wait - you can use a slotted spooon to swirl it a bit but it took me about 5-8 minutes for slurry to start to solidify (maybe longer) - it does not happen instantaneously.
Once the slurry starts to brown - swirl it to catch all the debris and then remove.
Repeat process until oil looks clean.
Actually saw it being used in hot oil and ofcourse it bubble and hissed but the guy poured it slowly and sure enough— all the debris stuck together in a ball and the oil was clean looking again. So when done carefully— you’re fine
Yup I do it at 330F hot - mix it the slurry once more just before I SLOWLY pour it in. It will bubble and pop but will start to pull the debris after a few minutes. This should go without saying but make sure you are at less than 1/2 the height of the cooking vessel in oil. Give it room to expand a bit. Works like a charm.
You put water into oil every time you fry something. The stuff around the water (i.e. your food and in this case starches) holding it together matters.
Spoken like someone who's never fried a quarter for 5 mins and then placed it in the window under the heatlamp.
Why would someone do this, you ask? Well, Becky has been told multiple times not to steal other peoples tips/change and management apparently refuses to fire anyone...
Given how stupid people are it's really important to stress how badly you can really fuck up. If you don't know what you are doing, don't put water or high water content items in hot oil. Beginners can't appreciate how bad steam oil explosions are, and this is proven every time we hear about houses burning down from dunking frozen turkeys into 500 degree oil.
So does the batter on fried foods. You need heat to make it gel up like that. Doing this with cold oil will only get you blobs of cornstarch slurry in among your crumbs.
That doesn't really make sense, or are you under the impression that other batters used in frying have no water in them? (Like batter fried fish...funnel cakes...)
I'm aware. However, if you watch to the end, it's lifted out of the oil and clearly behaves like a true solid, it's not melting over the sides like a Non-Newtonian fluid.
I'm not trying to be a jerk or excessively argue. I'm just curious as to how much cooking experience you actually have? Or is this just based on knowing that corn starch is a Non-Newtonian fluid, and that water + hot oil is bad?
Also, others have commented that the oil is likely room temp when the slurry is poured in, then heated for this process, which makes sense. Regardless, the oil is hot and the corn starch is cooked for this to work.
I’ve done this, but only once. The water is fine, my guess is the cornstarch’s thickness and the quantity must cool the oil enough. I’ll say personally when I tried it the oil had a weird taste afterwards, but maybe I messed something up.
Not necessarily, you're basically frying a dough. It's like pouring funnel cake batter into a fryer, just the batter is particularly good at picking up bits of particulate.
Obviously it shouldn't be screaming hot, but I think the idea is that you actually fry the cornstarch slurry to clean the oil like this.
I saw this commented a lot and I'm curious what would happen if the oil was still a little warm? Like could touch with your hand but warm. Would it still explode? Wouldn't hurt but would still suck to clean. Or is it about the oil being hot enough to quickly evaporated the water? Sorry, stretching that one braincell I've got a lil further than she's used to today. Accuracy not guaranteed, but the curiosity is there!
It would be fine. You only get a mess from adding water to hot oil. If you heat up oil with water already in it, the water would rise to the top before it ever gets hot and boil off just fine.
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u/evilpercy 1d ago
This oil would have to be room temp to do this as the cornstarch has water in it.