What are the best kitchen utensils for frying?
So what is the best cookware for frying?
Fried foods are staples in southern home cooking, but you’ll find the need for a good skillet in many other recipes. Think orange chicken, tempura, hush puppies, etc.
When frying food, you should use cookware that is evenly heated and the food is nice, crisp, and browned. What you don’t want are cookware that gets unevenly heated and ends up burning your food or a pan that will be more of a problem than it’s worth cleaning.
When frying food, it is necessary to use some type of oil. The oil coats the pan, making it almost impossible to stick food into the pan. If you can glue your skillet together, you must have done something really remarkable. For this reason, you don’t need to use nonstick cookware for frying, although it will work.
For frying, we prefer kitchen sets that are a bit heavier. Cast iron is by far the best kitchen utensil for the task of frying. Not only is it the strongest cookware you can get, it also heats up evenly and stays hot. When using cast iron cookware for frying, be sure to have a thermometer handy to keep the oil temperature even and prevent burning.
Cast iron cookware is great for deep frying, but maybe it only fries once in a while and really has no use for cast iron outside of a few key recipes. If that’s the case, you can fry in the kitchen utensils you use on a daily basis.
Hard anodized cookware is the new kid on the block and almost knocked everyone out of the water. Talk about the best kitchen utensils! Hard anodized cookware miraculously combines the strength and durability of stainless steel cookware with the weight and ease of use of aluminum. Add a little oil and your hard anodized cookware becomes the perfect frying cookware.
Stainless steel cookware is the longtime champion of even heating and withstanding tough jobs. Frying food is tough on your cookware, so it’s important that you use the best cookware available. You want cookware that will withstand the high temperatures and abrasive cleaning required for frying. So you can’t go wrong with reliable stainless steel cookware.
Stainless steel cooking sets are extremely durable, heat evenly and retain heat. Just make sure you have that thermometer close by so you know when to reduce the heat. If you’re looking for a good, versatile kitchen set, you really can’t go wrong with stainless steel. It is good for almost any task, but it will also stick year after year.
What it really comes down to is, how often do you fry food? If you fry a lot, it is not a bad idea to buy a kitchen utensil just for deep frying. This way you won’t have to worry about being too rough or even leaving a bit of fat behind.
If fried foods are not a regular on your menu, you may want to consider a more versatile kitchen set that is good for multiple tasks, including frying.
The choice is really based on how many cookware you want in your kitchen, and how much you’re willing to spend on your best cookware.
Whatever your choice, happy frying!