Estimating for deep frying.

fififox

Is there any way of estimating the added damage for deep frying a recipe. I am sure that surface area and the kind of food that is being fried would have an influence on how much oil is absorbed, but is there any ball-park way of estimating? We made onion bhajiis at the weekend and in the database everything said '1 piece' or something like that but that really isn't a great measure as sizes would vary. I just wondered that if you input a low cal list of ingredients for a recipe like the bhaji mix into the recipe calculator here, is there any way of estimating the calories (probably would greatly inflate the count!) you would add by deep frying? Thanks if there is any info out there that would help....or if you have a bhaji recipe that includes bona fide calories for the batch I would gladly try it next time. Thanks!

fififox

Anyone any sort of a guess? I cook a lot so I record a lot of recipes here and this just has me stumped. If I just added the recipe without this estimation it will be way out calorie wise.

lin7604

i would like to know too. i make a lemon chicken at home and i deep fry it also. what i was doing was over estimating it by logging it as fried chicken like kfc, or something similar.

paj315

On allrecipes.com they figure the nutrition facts for all their recipes and when they have a fried recipe they add a little note under the nutrition facts that says they add in 10% of the oil used for frying. So if the recipe called for 2 cups of oil for frying they would add 0.2 cups of oil to the nutrition facts.

Does that make sense?

bio_fit

You could weigh the item before frying, then weigh the item afterwards - difference in mass = amount of oil absorbed?

It's a crude method, but could at least give an estimate.

jennalink807

You could also measure the oil going in, and then measure the oil left over at the end in the deep fryer and subtract. If you fry with 2 cups of oil, but at the end only a cup and a half are left, half a cup of oil would have soaked into the food.

fififox

Ladies, thank you! You make a lot of sense : ) I will try those and try to get a general system that would work in future as an estimation, like adding a certain %. I know you wouldn't want to be obsessively working it out every time and that foods vary, but I suppose I am conscious of just how high calorie oil is (can be scary how it makes a recipe calorie count rise!) so I wanted to feel I wasn't grossly underestimating. I try not to deep fry too much, but have to confess that sometimes it is a real taste treat : ) Wishing you all well on your weightloss quest : ) Thanks again!

lin7604

yes thank you for all those great answers... i myself only deep fry 1 thing, lemon chicken, and we only eat that maybe 1 a month. so i know it's not that bad just didn't want to underestimate my calories for the day with that meal and then eat more,lol

i will try the 10% thing but it's kinda hard when you use a deep fryer and the oil is already in it, being used for multiple frying sessions... the chicken pieces are cut thin and small so they are not in the oil long at all, so i know they don't absorb a ton.but still....

kimlindsey

I think weighing the oil before and after frying is a better method because cooking forces water from the food. Fried food gains mass from absorbed oil, while it's losing mass from water loss as steam. So... the difference in the weight of the food would consistently underestimate the amount of oil absorbed.