Development and evaluation of a multi-heat source deep fat fryer

Abstract

Deep fat frying constitutes a reasonable percentage in cottage food preparation across the globe. The need to upgrade the local deep fat frying process to be more user friendly, efficient and versatile is the basis of the development of an appropriate portable, low-cost and affordable multi-heat source deep fryer. The machine was evaluated using wheat flour dough to produce chin-chin, a local fried wheat product. Performance of groundnut, corn and soya oils under different heat sources; gas, electricity and charcoal energy were considered. The average capacity of the machine was found to be 7.69 kg/h when using electric energy, 8.52 kg/h when using gas energy and 6.00 kg/h when using charcoal energy. Heat requirement of the machine was 1428 W. The fat uptake of the chin-chin fried with groundnut oil was 0.51, 0.49 and 0.67 g for gas, electric and charcoal energy respectively; for soya oil 0.47, 0.43 and 0.63 g respectively; and for corn oil 0.46, 0.41 and 0.57 g respectively. Vitamin A retention in soya, groundnut and corn oil was 13515, 18485 and 34242 IU/kg respectively when using gas energy; 14727, 22243 and 38182 IU/kg respectively when using charcoal energy; 20606, 27273 and 41030 IU/kg respectively when using electric energy. Thus, corn oil gave the least fat uptake when using electric energy; it also gave the highest vitamin A retention, given the mandatory vitamin A level of 30000 IU/kg in flour and 20000 IU/kg in vegetable oils under the National Food Fortification Programme in Nigeria.