Exclusive: Batch Frying - Achieving That “Hard Bite”
As the name implies, batch fried potato chips, known variously as artisan style, hand cooked or kettle type chips, are fried in batches as compared to the continuous process generally used for mass volume “regular” chips. These artisan style chips, somewhat thicker than traditional ones, are cooked in batches at around 1520 C, while being constantly stirred, producing a hard bite.
By Dan Orehov
With batch frying, one batch of sliced potatoes is fed into the fryer, cooked and discharged. The next batch is then introduced and the cycle is repeated. With continuous frying, the slices are fed into the machine continuously and cooked as they are conveyed through the fryer and discharged.
“Fabcon’s highly efficient potato chip batch fryers have a high efficiency gas heating system and can operate with flue gas temperatures below 2400 C. They are low in energy use and therefore have lower running costs and are environmentally friendly and sustainable. We use the heat effectively rather than wasting it to atmosphere, while some older systems have flue gas temperatures of over 8000 C. Our batch fryers are also used to produce the increasingly popular vegetable chips using a unique drying system incorporating the heat from the flue gas stack pipework to remove excess moisture and oil after frying,” explains Trevor Howard, managing director of Fabcon Food Systems. He adds that Fabcon’s fryers are all supplied with a modem for remote access. This allows to monitor fryer operation, efficiency, settings and/or intervene for fault finding or solving by the company’s specialist engineers back at base, which in turn generates optimum line efficiency.
To read the complete article, please refer to our latest July-August 2019 print issue of Potato Processing International.
