Re-using cooking oil

[PedanticPanda]

DP wants to start pouring used cooking oil into a bottle to use again. I think that's disgusting, he thinks it's fine - who is being unreasonable?

hmmm

When I was growing up my mum had a chip pan, only time oil was changed was when the chips came out dirty

When I worked in a small takeaway/cafe the oil never got changed

I only deep fry fried chicken so I pour oil back in bottle and chuck in the bin after, I don't find it wastefull because I don't cook it very often and the oil is dirty after.

My mum used to sieve it through some kitchen roll and I'm still here I think it is extremely irresponsible to tip it down the drain and I try to soak it up in kitchen roll before I tip any away.

I bin mine.

On disposal, the Environment Agency says 'Householders can dispose of their waste cooking oil in their general household waste. Waste cooking oils can be soaked into normal household rubbish or placed into rigid plastic containers. Small amounts of waste cooking oil could be soaked into bread as food for birds.' I like the birds idea.

The problem is that oil is viscous and sticky, coats pipes and solidifies at lower temperatures, in your drains or beyond, mixing with other muck too, to create unpleasant sludgy stuff. Like anything disposed of down a drain, it gets into streams and rivers.

www.southernwater.co.uk/Environment/ProtectingtheEnvironment/painInTheDrain/

shows you what happens if you put fats down your sink......umm nice

I reuse oil if i am deep frying which is probably only a couple of times a year.
When i have fat left over in the bottom of a roasting pan i put some bread in to soak it up then put the bread out for the birds.

www.southernwater.co.uk/Environment/ProtectingtheEnvironment/painInTheDrain/

An XDP's mum used to keep her fat ladden frying pan in the drawer. She used to pull it out to fry whatever, let the fat set and then pop it away again...

My grandmother still does that watersign. While I wouldn't dream of doing it myself, her fried eggs are the best in the world, and no one's dead yet...

Come to think of it, as a child, we had a pot next to the cooker labelled 'dripping'. Fat from shallow frying went back in, solidified and next time, you scooped some out to fry your bacon. Must have been common practice, as were the chip pans, though we lacked a 'proper' one of those.

Takeaways have indeed been killing people prematurely for decades with this practice.

I don't use that much oil, but DP uses loads, especially when making roast potatoes.

We still couldn't decide who was BU, (but at least we now both agree with sticking oil in the bin,he poured it down the sink before!), so came to an agreement where he keeps the used oil and puts chilli's in it to use as chilli oil for when he's cooking food for himself.

Studies show links to increased blood pressure, huntingdon's disease and Alzheimer's (amount others). But not sure how big a risk that is. We can afford to throw it away rather than reuse it, so we do. But that doesn't stop us sometimes buying food from the chip shop which I'm sure reheats their oil often.

Does he put an actual chilli in the oil in the bottle?

That's really worrying namegame!

He puts chilli flakes in it.

I wouldn't get too concerned OP, and you should look these things up for yourself and decide how bad it seems, I don't have any links to studies to hand. Many people have been reusing oil for centuries without it being a clear killer, so the increased risk is probably quite small. And much of the increased risk might be avoidable by following good practice.

I do love chilli oil.

Trans fats increase the risk of heart disease, so do cause many premature deaths, as well as being linked to the other diseases namegames mentions, as many of us have pointed out. The evidence was good enough for them to be banned from all food outlets in New York. You can easily look up some info and summaries on this.

Yes people have been reheating fats for years, they have also being dying young from heart disease for years!

I take my used cooking oil to the council recycling yard once a year where it is later turned into bio diesel for cars

Well I certainly wouldn't re-use oil that contained bits of food. But then I wouldn't have a chip pan in the house either and I can't think of anything else that would produce enough oil to warrant re-use.

Wikipedia has a pretty full entry on trans fats, so a useful starting point. Scroll down to 'health effects' and read on to coronary heart disease.

As a headline statistic, I think the estimate of 30,000 to 100,000 deaths per year in the US tells us something is going on.

Interesting facts include that trans fats are an unnatural product of food processing, have only been part of our diet for about 100 years and 'confer a substantially increased risk (of coronary heart disease) at low levels of consumption'.

So yes, your DP could reuse fat for the rest of his life and live to 90, just as he could if he now takes up smoking. My point is 'risk of heart didease and premature death' may sound vague or scaremongering but it isn't and he really should do a tiny bit of reading about this before arriving at a decision.

I've worked in a few Restaruants and they never changed the oil everyday.

Some oils are better at being heated/reheated than others and are more stable at higher temperatures - rapeseed might be one of them.
I tend not to re-use oil and will sometimes replace oil during cooking if I've let it get too hot.
However, I also remember my Nan having a congealed fat pan that got repeatedly re-used, she's now in her 90's and still smokes too - there's always some that defy the odds!

Our recycling centre (used to be the tip) has a big container to pour used cooking oil into, just save it in an empty bottle at home until you need to go and get rid of stuff.

I have never owned a chip pan, but I remember the one in our house as kids, full of white solid lard. We used to get told off for trying to pull the fry basket through the lard by my mum. That was reused a lot.

Just the thought of it now makes me queasy.

I'm really surprised that people still use chip pans and deep fat fryers.

We rarely use enough oil to save anymore, I use Frylight for most things, and now after a year of using it, I cannot stomach oily food.

Couldn't even finish my fish n chips the last time I visited the UK!

zukie does it have some sort of filter on it? Especially regarding the whole trans fat question.

What do you cook in it?

I'm assuming they've moved on since my mum's 1970's boiling danger cauldron of a Deep fat fryer.

I was looking at one of those Tefal fryers which use a spoon of oil, but I don't think I'd get that much use out of it.

You can buy an oil spray bottle in Lakeland, and fill it with olive oil so that you use less.