Indians love fried foods. When you make any food in fry pan or fry something, the oil becomes very dirty. Have you noticed those small leftover batter particles in the oil. We keep on using the same oil again and again and do not worry about the bad effects of this.
It increases trans-fat in the oil & when consumed the trans-fat increases LDL (bad) cholesterol. It also lowers the HDL (good) cholesterol. High LDL and low HDL can cause cholesterol to store in your blood vessels which further increases your risk for heart disease and stroke.
So how to clean the frying oil and reduce trans-fats from this oil?
Corn-starch method:
- Keep the oil in the fry pan at medium flame
- Take a half cup of corn starch and mix some water so as to make it a batter.
- Then put gently the batter of corn-strach in the oil
- Keep moving it for some time
- Finally the left over particles will attch to the batter and the batter will become hard.
- You get clean oil in the fry pan.
Strain Method:
- Cool down the oil
- Take a tea strainer or cheese cloth or mesh sieve
- Strain the oil through
As per FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) guidelines, the same cooking oil can be reused for cooking food, maximum of three times to avoid formation of trans-fat.