WHAT

POLICY OBJECTIVE

The quality of your fried foods depends on the quality of the frying oil. Cooking oil will break down after prolonged use affecting the flavour, colour and texture of fried foods. Bad oil means bad fried food and that hurts your business.

When frying foods, cooking oil is heated to a temperature of 170-220°C. Upon heating, cooking oil may undergo chemical reactions, hydrolysis, oxidation and polymerisation. Degradation products such as free fatty acids, hydro peroxides and polymerised triglycerides may be formed. Besides the viscosity of the cooking oil that increases over time, its colour also turns darker and rancidity will also develop, giving rise to unpleasant flavour as a result of oxidation.

The amount of degradation products increases with the duration of heating of cooking oil at high temperatures. Some of these may be used to indicate the degree of degradation of cooking oil. The toxicity of these degradation products is of health concern.  It is therefore very important to ensure that the quality of cooking oil used is monitored to ensure that it has not degraded to the point of presenting a hazard to the food being prepared.​​​​​​​

POLICY

Ensure that the accepted good practices to ensure the quality of cooking oil are implemented in store.