After talking to Brown, I continued to fry things: salt and pepper shrimp, smoked pork ribs, even fish and chips. Slowly, I came up with a better plan for how to get rid of cooking oil in Seattle, and when I incorporated FryAway. For bulk (up to 2 gallons) I would continue to try to put it in labeled containers so it can be converted to biodiesel — no FryAway is used, unless I don’t have containers. For typical pan-frying quantities, I simply wipe the pan with a paper towel and put it in the city compost without FryAway. For shallow frying, too many tissues, and too little to put in the container, I would use FryAway and put the solidified oil in the city compost. Your solution will depend on where you live and what your local disposal options are. If I lived somewhere where the only option was to throw it in the trash, I would probably use FryAway (or something like that) for anything but an amount that I could wipe down. clean with a paper towel.
The other thing I try to do is cook with oil over and over again, or as Brown might say, more fully capture what it’s worth. After all, she says, “if you use it twice, you need half as much.”
This reminds me of the years I lived in Barcelona, where, if I could generalize, they didn’t do as many takeout fried foods (like french fries) like we do in the United States, but tend to do. tend to eat more. to cook a pound or two of potatoes and sliced onions in a few cups of oil over medium heat for a Spanish tortilla. What amazes me is how people would have dinner, then pour the used cooking oil into a container near the kitchen to use over and over again. If that sounds odd, think about the Fryalators at your favorite burger joint; it’s not like they change the oil after every batch of onions.
“We can use the oil four or five times,” says my old friend and native of Barcelona Carme Gasulla food writer and screenwriter on a new cooking show called Menu (dos) Torres. “We’ll make french fries, croquettes, tortillas…”
“How do you know how long it will last?” I asked during a video call, and she pointed at her eyes and nose.
“With potatoes, the oil is still pretty clean, but with toast it’s quicker,” she says, referring to ingredients like breadcrumbs, flour and cheese that can flake off, falling to the bottom of the pan. , and slowly rub the oil up. “If you use it too long, you can tell.”
Cooking oil reuse is so ingrained in life in Barcelona that the city offers cooking oil recycling bins, which can be refilled and exchanged for empty ones at recycling centres.
“Every Wednesday, a truck comes to our neighborhood for a few hours and we can bring things like cooking oil, used clothes and electronics there for recycling,” she says. regime.
While I’m glad Seattle has so many different options for handling cooking oils, I really enjoy having FryAway around, especially for mid-sized jobs wiping down too many tissues and not enough storage. in a gallon container. However, its usefulness will depend on what you cook and the disposal options where you live. Maybe not all of us have minivans popping up in our neighborhoods and hauling oil away, but at least, FryAway gives us one more reason not to dump oil down the drain. It can even help keep banana peels off our roofs.
