Why does double frying result in less greasy food?
In: Chemistry
Deep-fried food gets greasy when the cooking oil is able to penetrate into the food. Once that happens, there’s no way to get it back out again, so it stays there until you eat it and everything turns into a greasy mess.
The thing that prevents this is water in the food. Food bubbles like crazy when it first hits the hot oil because the water is going from room temp to boiling more or less instantly, and boiling water turns from a liquid into a gas. The now-gaseous water is much, much lighter than the oil, so it busts out and heads to the surface to escape – that’s the bubbling that you see. As long as there’s water rocketing itself *out* of the food, the oil can’t get *in*. There’s only so much water in the food, though, and once enough of the water has burst out, the bubbling drops off and the oil can start creeping its way in.
Double frying lets you do one pass to heat the food most of the way through so that the center starts getting up to your desired temp, then taking it out for a rest before the oil starts seeping in. Then you give the food a rest, allowing the remaining water to condense back into liquid again. A second fry at high temp brings the outside of the food up to a nice crisp, as the remaining water inside bubbles out and keeps the oil out, then you evacuate it from the fryer. And there you go: cooked through to the inside, without burning the outside, and with only minimal greasiness.
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