Step 4 - Monitoring Oil Quality
As summarised by Murray Carlyon, Managing Director at Klipspringer, there are three overarching reasons to monitor oil quality.
Firstly, to reduce costs and wastage. An effective oil monitoring system results in significant savings, both economically (costs) and environmentally (wastage). Instead of discarding perfectly usable oil – a costly and unsustainable outcome – businesses are now using Food Oil Monitors for maximum accuracy. For a minimal upfront cost, these monitors offer a comfortable ROI, usually within just six months. Click here to read about how Whitbread’s use of a Food Oil Monitor reduced their oil consumption by up to 52% across their 1,200 different venues.
Secondly, to maintain product consistency. Most kitchens change their oil either based on colour (when it goes dark/black, using single-use test strips and a simplistic colour chart) or schedule (twice a week – because it has always been done that way). Led by the likes of Wasabi, McDonalds, and Five Guys, hospitality businesses seeking to distinguish themselves from the crowd are standardising the use of Food Oil Monitors to guarantee such consistent menu quality.
Thirdly, to ensure product safety. Paramount to any hospitality business is consumer welfare. As shown by the figure below, the frying process can release a variety of polar compounds (e.g. free fatty acids), which are in turn associated with acrylamide build-up. This customer-harming, cancer-causing chemical can reach dangerous levels when relying on subjective oil quality monitoring methods.
A percentage reading of Total Polar Compounds or Total Polar Matter (TPC% / TPM%) is reliably used in the food industry as a measure of oil degradation. High levels of TPC can negatively impact product taste, texture, and appearance, as well as causing various health disorders, both short-term (e.g. gastrointestinal disorders) and long-term (e.g. risk of heart disease).
A growing number of countries across Europe are legislating TPC percentages, typically around the 24-27% mark. While there is no existing legislation in the UK, leading companies are setting their own standards around a similar benchmark, using digital solutions to take the subjective guesswork out of monitoring oil quality.
