How much oil stays in the food?

[suziquzie]

When you are frying something?
I have software I use to track my eating and exercise, I put all my recipes and food in it, and it tells me where I am on calories, fat, vitamins, etc.
My dumb question of the day is.....
How much do you account for staying in the food if you are frying something? If I use 1/4 cup of oil in a recipe just to fry, I'm not going to add all of that as an ingredient, because it didn't all go into the food. Short of measuring the oil before and after frying, how would you enter it? half? 3/4?
Do I make any sense at all?

[Andy M.]

If properly fried, you should not pick up more than a teaspoon or two.

Measuring the oil before and after will give you a good estimate but it's difficult to account for the juices coming out of the food and going into the oil.

[Andy M.]

If you go to this USDA site, you can select the type of food (chicken breast) and get nutritional facts for that food raw, fried, baked...

You can also download a copy to your computer so it will be there whenever you need it. That's what I have done.

[suziquzie]

thanks Andy I'll give that a look. Deep fried throwas me off too.... but I suppose if I were that worried about it I shouldn't be deep frying anyway!!! :)

[pdswife]

ahhh but deep fried tastes so nice!

[bowlingshirt]

Making sure you bring the oil to the proper temperature before adding food will minimize oil getting into the food. If you add food when the oil isn't hot enough, more oil will be absorbed.

[milkdemcows]

I've seen at allrecipes.com, when giving nutritional information for fried foods, many have this message:

We have determined the nutritional value of oil for frying based on a retention value of 10% after cooking. The exact amount may vary depending on cook time and temperature, ingredient density, and the specific type of oil used.

But writing this, I'm not exactly sure what that means. It's not, or shouldn't be, 10% of the oil, b/c you could use one gallon or ten and still retain the same amount.

[Uncle Bob]

Originally Posted by bowlingshirt

Making sure you bring the oil to the proper temperature before adding food will minimize oil getting into the food. If you add food when the oil isn't hot enough, more oil will be absorbed.

.....And make sure the oil temperature stays up!! don't let it drop to low or the breading/batter/coating will be sucking up the oil.

[attie]

Originally Posted by milkdemcows

I've seen at allrecipes.com, when giving nutritional information for fried foods, many have this message:

But writing this, I'm not exactly sure what that means. It's not, or shouldn't be, 10% of the oil, b/c you could use one gallon or ten and still retain the same amount.

I think it would be almost impossible to work out accurately how much oil stays with the product other than measuring it but, as Andy states, how much liquid comes out of the product. With fish there will be none, or very little, but with steak there would be much more. Yes, temperature is important, the hotter the oil the less the product will retain. The product coating is also a major factor of course.

I'm not surprised at the 10% milkdemcows, panko would easily consume that, panko consumes much more oil than the normal breadcrumb and surprisingly breadcrumbs can consume more oil than a batter, depending on how the batter is made. A crispy batter consumes more oil than a soft ??? [pancake??] batter, the bubbles in a working batter such as beer batter take up oil and although it is the aeration of a batter that makes it light and crispy it is those little bubbles that take up the oil.