What To Do With Leftover Cooking Oil
The idea of this post came to me as Spouse and I were talking about his meals and frying his lumpia while I’m away.
In the Philippines, we like to fry our foods quite a lot. There’s fried fish, fried fish balls, fried chicken, fried pork rinds, fried lumpia….all of that frying leaves you with a lot of leftover cooking oil. You can be sure of that.
We stored the used cooking oils in different jars, according to the foods you fried them in. After you fry the chicken, you can then use the oil for frying fish. Store that oil and the next thing you can use it for is stinky (and yummy!) dried fish or squid.
That way, you don’t need to keep buying gallons and jugs of the stuff. But after two or three uses, the oil does acquire an unpleasant odor and taste. It isn’t rancid, just unpleasant.
If you are ever faced with this dilemna, remember three things: paper towels or coffee filters and potato slices.
Straining your used oil through a paper towel folded twice over or through a coffee filter will rid you of the little particles in the oil. You may need to filter more than once, but you can immediately see the difference in the oil’s color.
For those nasty smells, fry a few slices of potato in the used oil. The potato will absorb all those odors and leave a better-smelling oil you can use all over again. It really works, try it!
May 1st, 2006 at 11:51 am
Just for information… reusing cooking oil till three times is fine..
but more than that..the cooking oil becomes toxic.
May 2nd, 2006 at 6:08 am
Hi Relly. this is Mr. Mita … she’s still in the Philippines, but home tonight … yea!!!.
I know not that much about cooking but a little bit about oil. I was wondering if there was a reference or source document for your “three times” warning. Seems to me the oil has no way of knowing how many times it’s been used, but, as I said, I don’t know for sure.
May 9th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Hi Relly, thanks for dropping in.? I’m kinda scared of reusing oil too often myself though I don’t have any scientific data to support?my fear. My mom did have a system of reusing oil - using it first for veggies, meats or fish then the stinky stuff like tuyo and daing…somewhere in the process the oil will pick up an unpleasant odor and you can then use these methods I’ve experimented with. Sometimes even oil used once for frying eggs will pick up an unpleasant odor that you don’t want to introduce to?some other dish…
May 10th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
hello again mita, i remember left you a message… but i forgot to bookmark your blog…just gone by chance to one expat blog…
i’ll be back when i can get the information about the toxicity of overused cooking oil…
May 10th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Relly,
I’ll look forward to that. But you know, I caught a story on the local news here - it was about recycling cooking oil from restaurants in Denver….they’re resurfacing as biodiesel! Now that’s a better way of getting more “miles” from your cooking oil….