I am curious as to what causes this issue where sometimes my oil seems to explode upwards and splash all over my kitchen.
It never seems to happen when the Oil is fresh.
It stops happening once the Oil gets hot enough.
But why ?!
In: Chemistry
Water in hot oil causes oil bubbles filled with steam. The less water on the food you put in your hot oil, or on your pan before you add oil and heat up, the less popping and splashing will occur. It can be very dangerous if there’s enough water and oil. For instance, just a cup of water in an inch of heated oil could fill a small kitchen with airborne boiling oil bubbles filled with expanding steam, causing severe burns to anyone in the room. If the oil is on fire, it will fill your kitchen with fire. That’s why you can’t put out a grease fire with water.
Pro tip from someone who went to culinary school: Pre-heat the pan to evaporate any unseen moisture on the surface before adding oil.
All these responses is why you do NOT use water to put out a grease fire. Imagine the popping you are seeing with a little surface water, and multiply that by a cup of water. Hot flaming oil goes everywhere.
You need to dry your pan better before adding oil. What you’re seeing is small bits of water flash-boiling beneath the oil (remember, oil floats on water), causing small explosions that are spattering oil around your kitchen. This is a great way to make your kitchen an oily mess and to end up with some real unpleasant burns.
Wipe your pan with a towel, then leave it over the heat for a bit to let any remaining dampness boil off before adding oil.
It’s bubbles of boiling water forcing its way out of the oil. The oil in the bottle/can accumulates some moisture from the air after it has been opened. Also the pan might have had some water on it when you started cooking. It stops happening once all the water has boiled away.
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It’s water. There’s a test for the presence of water in lubricating oil called the crackle test
“The crackle test is a standard laboratory test to detect the presence of water in lubricating oil. A drop of oil is placed on a hotplate that has been heated to approximately 400° F. The sample then bubbles, spits, crackles or pops when moisture is present.”
Most often, it’s caused by little droplets of water in the pan. Sometimes it’s little droplets of water in the oil, because opened bottles of oil can draw a bit of moisture from the air.
Anyway, oil is lighter than water, so when you put oil into the pan, the water is trapped under a layer of oil. Then, when you heat the pan, the water boils. Steam isn’t lighter than oil, so the steam pops up through the oil and makes a little splash as it comes out. That’s also why you have the sizzling that happens when you drop food into the oil. It’s the water in the food boiling when it hits the hot oil.
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