How to economize on cooking oil use

By Mangku Sitepoe

JAKARTA (JP): As virtually all aspects of life are affected by the agonies of the monetary crisis which has fast swept across the entire country, cooking oil is also necessarily very much affected. A host of problems have cropped up in relation to cooking oil, among others, price increases, disruption in distribution, and thinning supplies of the raw materials because of very competitive prices abroad.

The government has made and is making efforts to solve these problems by, among other things, conducting market operations, providing subsidies for cooking oil supplies and improving the system of cooking oil distribution. Unfortunately, the price of cooking oil continues to soar or, at best, remains at a high level while cooking oil scarcity has hit the markets several times.

Now that the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar against the rupiah has gone down, however, the price of cooking oil has not only dropped but also shown signs of stabilizing. This tendency is in line with the turmoil that cooking oil always undergoes towards the Moslem post-fasting Idul Fitri festivity: an unusually high demand has led to temporary price increases and scarcity. When the festivity is over, prices will go down and supplies will be available again. This means that the market mechanism has its own way of solving the cooking oil problems.

Both the government and the community have made efforts to stabilize the prices of cooking oil. Unfortunately all these efforts are invariably intended to lower the prices of cooking oil and have never been geared towards economy in its use. In fact, if community members know how to economize on the use of cooking oil they will actively participate in dealing with the challenges posed by the monetary crisis. At this juncture there are four ways towards economy in the use of cooking oil.

Frying is one of the ways in which food is prepared and made ready to serve. There are two ways of frying, namely pan-frying and deep-frying. When you pan-fry something, not all of its surface will be under the cooking oil, while when something is deep-fried, its entire surface will be under the oil. In Indonesia pan-frying is much more popular than deep-frying, which is usually practiced in international restaurants.

When you fry something you must take account of the cooking oil to be used, the food stuff to be fried, the frying pan (a wok or pot) and the source of heat.

If these four factors, which may do you good individually or jointly, are well taken into account when frying your food, you may economize on your cooking oil.

In using cooking oil to fry your food you must distinguish between the use of cooking oil and cooking oil consumption. The use of cooking oil refers to the amount of fresh cooking oil to be used for a particular time, i.e. when you do the frying, while cooking oil consumption is related to the amount of cooking oil consumed along with the food being fried during that particular time. Normally the use of cooking oil is greater in quantity than cooking oil consumption. This is attributable, among other things, to the presence of jelantah (re-used cooking oil).

Four steps to economize on the use of cooking oil:

* Use jelantah within certain limits. Every time you finish frying something, you will always have cooking oil residue called jelantah. My 1995's research on the use of cooking oil for 28 days shows that if jelantah is used in frying, the use of fresh cooking oil can be cut down by 56.6 percent. Of course, jelantah can be used only within certain limits. Don't use it if the color changes to black and the smell becomes rancid.

In brief, make sure that you put a small amount of jelantah into the fresh cooking oil.

* Fry food with a minimum water content. In the case of frying fish, make sure that after you clean and wash the fish with water, you drain the fish of as much water as possible before you fry it. Then see to it that the surface area of the food to be fried will be the narrowest possible. Small pieces of the same amount will use more cooking oil than larger pieces. Moreover, fry food which can absorb only a minimum of frying oil.

* Make sure that your frying utensils are clean. Every time you finish frying something, use a filter to run off the residual cooking oil into a container. In this way, only a minimum of frying residue will stay in the used cooking oil. Do not use an iron or steel wok and do not use caustic soda to clean your wok.

* Use a heat source with an optimum temperature and do not use too much heat. Frying over a longer period of time will be more efficient in terms of the cooking oil used rather than doing it at a higher temperature.

Try the above steps and you will find that you will conserve your cooking oil.

The writer is a physician and a vet.