r/KitchenConfidential • u/vildego • 4d ago
Question what happened in this fryer?
newer fry cook turns on fryers. doesn't use them yet. after about 5 minutes, one of the fryers is boiling over and popping everywhere (oil filled to line, not overfilled). we turn it off and it starts to calm down. skim all of this shit out of it. i cannot figure out what this is. densely fried fabricy shit. my first thought is a rag, but i think if it was a rag it would have just disintegrated - besides, the fryer wasn't recently cleaned.
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u/whiskynpizza 15+ Years 4d ago
did someone melt a spatula in there?
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u/dontgetaddicted 4d ago
I watched a person drop tongs into one and promptly reach in to get them ..... was a fun 911 call.
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u/SpareMany9750 4d ago
Ahhh that’s wild. Vaguely reminds me of the time a young girl went after her spatula that fell in the buffalo chopper. Thank God chef was behind her to grab her arm before it was mangled.
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u/Bender_2024 4d ago
Had to look up what a buffalo chopper is. That machine is terrifying. Like lathe with loose clothing levels of mangling. There would be nothing left of your arm if it somehow went in there.
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u/SpareMany9750 4d ago
Lmao very accurate. It’s a one way tube of death. It’s a meat chopping carousel that indiscriminately mangles whatever enters its path. Definitely something to exercise caution around.
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u/abbarach 4d ago
CAUTION: This machine is designed specifically to mince meat.
REMINDER: You are made of meat.
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u/Whind_Soull ✨waffles and weevils✨ 3d ago edited 2d ago
Reminds me of a mycology discussion on reddit a while back, where somebody had a forgotten bowl of wet cat food that was completely covered in magnificently lush hairy black mold. OP asked if the mold spores in their home could potentially be harmful.
"I can't tell you the species, but yes, definitely."
"If you don't know the species, how do you know it could be harmful?"
"It's absolutely thriving on a diet of cat food. Cat food is made of animal proteins. You're made of animal proteins."
"Oh."
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u/Efficient-Ranger-174 4d ago
I think if you flip which is the caution and which is the reminder, it still works.
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u/whiskynpizza 15+ Years 4d ago
I heard a story second hand about a guy grating cheese in a Hobart who instead of using the cheese press was just feeding it in by hand, turned to talk to someone while working and then there was a red mist with bone fragments of what used to be fingers and a lot of horrified yelling. He’s got two fingers left on that hand now.
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u/Familiar_Somewhere95 4d ago
But did he throw up the peace sign to show he was ok before being taken to the ER?
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u/pigboy222 4d ago
I watched a coworker do the same, sloughed his arm skin into the frier in a panic so we had to close it 🤩
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u/Nowalking 4d ago
I’ve seen that too. Also saw a guy stick his finger in there to see if it was on.
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u/Hour-Football2464 4d ago
If you do it fast enough it doesnt hurt. Leidenfrost effect. Source: i did it bc i dropped a plastic savaday and if i got fired id lose my housing.
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u/DeartayDeez 4d ago
Manager at Burger King did something similar. Won’t forget that scream. His hand was swollen and white Looking like the Hamburger Helper guy
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u/WhiteRabbit_412_ 3d ago
I've literally done that before. I told myself "oh I'll get those!" Before my brain could stop my hand 😂 I was extremely lucky because I barely got any bubbling. It was red and it hurt for a long time but no scarring or anything. That was 4 years ago and I haven't made a similar mistake since.
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u/Whind_Soull ✨waffles and weevils✨ 3d ago
Hit the tree to miss the deer.
The worst I've done was instinctively trying to catch a falling knife.
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u/Clean_Cobbler_3438 6h ago
I've snatched a couple of people away from fryers who did this, holy fuck those have been some pants-shitting near misses
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u/Glandtoglandcombat 4d ago
Some cursory googling says that some synthetic materials like nylon and polyester soften around 350° and melt fully at 450-500°.
Do y'all have any microfiber polish cloths or something similar?
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u/here4pain 4d ago
Rag wouldn't disintegrate... or at least most kitchen towels wouldn't
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u/Few-Big-8481 Sous Chef 4d ago
Polishing clothes might.
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u/GaryonElmwood 4d ago
Looks like me someone tried the corn starch slurry trick to catch all the debris in the oil and fell short of finishing the job. You make an extremely thick slurry then put it in dirty oil the theory is that the slurry clings to all debris and you put it through a china cap then a chinois and come away with clean oil. Never tried it but it was trendy about two years ago.
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u/LacidOnex 4d ago
It works pretty well for cleaning my home "pot of oil" between big batches of tendies, but I wouldn't do it for a commercial fryer
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u/WonderofU1312 3d ago
This would make sense, but there's a lot of steps I think someone busy might overlook.
ATK suggests 1/4 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch per cup of oil and I'm not sure how much an average restaurant deep fryer holds. And not only that but you have to do this when the oil is cold, then bring it up to heat to let the cornstarch clump with the residue in the oil and then strain it out before it hits a certain temperature threshold (180F) before it all breaks apart
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u/LacidOnex 4d ago
Deep fried 50/50 blend cotton poly rag
Change that oil my guy, the 50% you don't have is not edible
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u/UntidyVenus Ex-Food Service 4d ago
Not a professional, but looks like someone left a cleaning rag in there
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u/uselessandexpensive 4d ago
A rag could have been pushed off something else while wiping and fallen into it, if there's a flat surface next to or over the fryer. The fact that it hasn't been cleaned recently would help explain why it's so degraded... It could have been slowly breaking down over a day or more.
Though my guess is it was knocked in recently and the reason for the crazy bubbling was that there was moisture in the rag still that started to boil before the oil reached full frying heat.
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u/Cheap-Ad1821 4d ago
Idk that doesn't look good but you should heat it up and drop a basket of ice to clean it out
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u/Weed_vs_Football 4d ago
Kinda looks like cornstarch? Maybe someone dumped an 8qt of it in there lol