Cleaning tip for your deep fryer, pressure cooker, meat saw, etc,etc.

SGH

For any of you that do much deep frying in large stock pots or deep fryers, then you know what a pain using soap can be. It doesn't work that great and getting all the soap and suds out of the nooks and crannies is a real pain. One drop of liquid soap left in a 12 gallon deep fryer or pot will yield soap bubbles for hours. The same is true for your pressure cooker. Ever see one drop of soap cooked under 15 PSI of pressure? It will clog all but the largest pressure canners up. Two drops will clog up the 35+ gallon pressure cooker/canners. Nothing like soap scum building up on your primals either that was left on your band saw blade. Atlas, there is a solution my friends. Forgo the soap and use ammonia. Just be sure that it's soap free ammonia. Of all the degreasers that I have tried, ammonia works the best. And you don't have to worry about suds and soap scum afterwards. You can even boil the ammonia with water in a large fryer or pot for extra cleaning power. Just thought I would share this cleaning tip for all my deep frying, pressure cooking and meat processing friends out there. Hope that this helps my friends. 

Plain and Lemon soap free ammonia. 

Plain ammonia, works great but the smell is strong and potent. 

Lemon ammonia, works almost as well but the smell is much more tolerable. 

I use the lemon ammonia on knives, saws and grinders. The plain ammonia on pots, deep fryers and the pressure cooker/canners. The use of ammonia really takes a lot of work out of the clean up. 

Biggreenpharmacist

SGH

Bump, for those who haven't seen it because this is a useful cleaning tip. A real time saver. 

GregW

Yes, I use ammonia for a lot of cleaning.
It works wonders to clean latex paint out of paint brushes as well.

jonnymack

All in the Style of Dixie of course right? Good stuff, thanks for the tip.

Thatgrimguy

Great tip. Thank you.  I'm looking forward to playing with my RV Works deep fryer!

SGH

Thatgrimguy said:

Great tip. Thank you.  I'm looking forward to playing with my RV Works deep fryer!

When neck deep in grease cleaning that big fryer, remember the ammonia trick. It will save you a ton of headache my friend. Not to mention not having to deal with the suds. One drop of liquid soap will ruin roughly 25 gallons of oil. Trust me on that one my friend. I found out the hard way. Do you have your fryer yet? Haven't saw you post it is why I ask. 

Thatgrimguy

SGH said:

Thatgrimguy said:

Great tip. Thank you.  I'm looking forward to playing with my RV Works deep fryer!

When neck deep in grease cleaning that big fryer, remember the ammonia trick. It will save you a ton of headache my friend. Not to mention not having to deal with the suds. One drop of liquid soap will ruin roughly 25 gallons of oil. Trust me on that one my friend. I found out the hard way. Do you have your fryer yet? Haven't saw you post it is why I ask. 

I bought it well over a month ago. But I didn't want to dirty it up then drop it off to Tyler Shirley dirty. So I resisted the temptation and dropped it off to him unused a couple Sunday's ago...

When I get it back it will be mounted to my trailer, exhaust will raised up so I don't have to deal with the heat, the drain will be moved to the front of the fryer for easier access, I'll have a cool touch handle on the lid and a clasp to keep it closed driving down the road.  

fishlessman

this would be for stainless and aluminum pots right, would take the seasoning off my cast iron fryer and wok where i do most of my frying?

SGH

@Thatgrimguy
Awesome brother. What size did you go with? 

Thatgrimguy

6 gallon.. I'm kind of wishing I had done the 8.5g. But I'm sure the 6gal will be enough.  I got the large single basket, dual baskets, and a turkey frying thing.


The RV works will get up to 550 to flash fry shrimp won't it?

SGH

fishlessman said:

this would be for stainless and aluminum pots right, would take the seasoning off my cast iron fryer and wok where i do most of my frying?

Brother Fishless, I have never tried it in CI. As such, I have no idea what would happen my friend. 

SGH

Thatgrimguy said:

The RV works will get up to 550 to flash fry shrimp won't it?

The RV has no safety limiting bull$hit on it. It will go as high as you want. You are only limited by the oil that you are using. You will be amazed at what that 6 gallon cooker will do. It will hit 500 degrees in mere minutes with 4 gallons of oil in it. 

fishlessman

SGH said:

fishlessman said:

this would be for stainless and aluminum pots right, would take the seasoning off my cast iron fryer and wok where i do most of my frying?

Brother Fishless, I have never tried it in CI. As such, I have no idea what would happen my friend. 

just spent some time googling it, it will strip the cast iron pot, BUT it will clean the castiron grates on the stove top and im going to try it on the ss stovetop pan. you dont want to see the stove top pic, its very similar to my egg pic

texaswig

@SGH you ever heard of people dropping a few cans of biscuits in oil to take out the fishy taste. Don't know if its true or not just something I heard. 

Thatgrimguy

texaswig said:

@SGH you ever heard of people dropping a few cans of biscuits in oil to take out the fishy taste. Don't know if its true or not just something I heard. 

Cut a hole in the middle first and you get donuts. Not a bad worse case scenario.. unless they are fishy donuts.

SGH

texaswig said:

@SGH you ever heard of people dropping a few cans of biscuits in oil to take out the fishy taste. Don't know if its true or not just something I heard. 

I have heard of dropping bread and potatoes in the oil to remove off tastes from the oil it's self. But no sir, I haven't heard of the bread removing the strong taste from fish. However, now that you have mentioned it, I will certainly look into it my friend. 

NC_Egghead

I used to wedge up 4-5 lbs of potatoes and put them in my turkey frying oil after the bird came out to help clarify it. It definitely helped but turkey isn't as strong as fish so I'm not sure how much it would help there. 

FarmerTom

How often do you change the oil in your deep fryer?  I just have a cast iron kettle (Bass Pro fish cooker set).  When cool, I pour the clean top oil into a container to reuse, clean out the bottom gunk, and ready to go again.

Eggcelsior

Pro Tip: just pee on everything. Saves money!

SGH

FarmerTom said:

How often do you change the oil in your deep fryer?  

Brother Farmer, that just depends my friend on what I have been frying, what coating I have been using, etc, etc. As great tasting as cornmeal or a cornmeal mix coating is, it's much harder on grease than flour. It builds up and collects in the oil much faster than flour does. Also meat that contains a lot of fluid/liquid takes a harder toll on the oil than than leaner meat or vegetables. Also how hard you push the oil plays a big part. I do a lot of flash frying between 450-550 degrees. This really breaks the oil down much faster than running at lower temps. So with the above said, there really is no set time as to how long the oil will last. Through years of frying I have learned one simple trick that I follow. Heat the oil to 350 degrees and smell it. If it still smells like oil, it's fine. If it smells off, I change it. Cold oil will deceive you so always heat to 350 to smell it. I find that the smell test works as good as anything out there. Hope that the above helps my friend. 

SGH

Eggcelsior said:

Pro Tip: just pee on everything. Saves money!

When I have been drinking heavy, I usually do that very thing

SGH

I bypassed some safety features (I don't recommend that you do that) on my electric PC. I got distracted and this was the result. I blew the safety plug out of the top. This is in no way a reflection on the safety of electric PC's. This is a direct result of the user mentality that bigger is better or that stronger is better. This would not have happened if I wouldn't have modified the PC. However, now I get to use my own cleaning tip that I recommended. Hope I get this $hit cleaned up before the old lady gets home. 

Lesson learned here. If you want to cook at high pressure or real high pressure, stick with a traditional pisser pot or high pressure sanitizer. Don't modify your electric PC. I got real lucky today and only blew a safety plug and melted a gasket. And made a huge mess to boot. This could have been catastrophic if the safety plug would have jammed or failed to blow. The whole pot would have exploded. 

BilZol

Yikes! I'll play with fire and electricity, but stuff that can blow up scares the hell out of me. 

westernbbq

@SGH.  Can ammonia be used to clean a multi blade ss meat tenderizer?  I have a LEM one that i never used due to my fear of not being able to get it clean.   I am a germophobe and go thru a ton of bleach on kitchen surfaces and degreasing dish soap on items like meat grinder parts and sausage stuffers.  I even boil water to clean amd sanitize meat grinder parts!

SGH

westernbbq said:

@SGH.  Can ammonia be used to clean a multi blade ss meat tenderizer?  

It certainly can be used to clean the blades, plates, housing, hopper etc, etc. Any of the SS or carbon steel parts are safe to clean with ammonia. The only thing that I'm hesitant to use ammonia on or near is some sort of seal or gasket. Example- The silicon gasket in the lid of an electric pressure cooker. Strong ammonia can weaken seals and gaskets depending on what they are made off. But as far as the metal, it's good to go. I have ran many grinder parts through ammonia over the years with no ill affects. Neither to me or the grinder. Short of some real strong chemical that you probably don't won't to use, ammonia and hot water is one of the best degreasers that I have found. I use it almost religiously.  

Tspud1

SGH said:

FarmerTom said:

How often do you change the oil in your deep fryer?  

Brother Farmer, that just depends my friend on what I have been frying, what coating I have been using, etc, etc. As great tasting as cornmeal or a cornmeal mix coating is, it's much harder on grease than flour. It builds up and collects in the oil much faster than flour does. Also meat that contains a lot of fluid/liquid takes a harder toll on the oil than than leaner meat or vegetables. Also how hard you push the oil plays a big part. I do a lot of flash frying between 450-550 degrees. This really breaks the oil down much faster than running at lower temps. So with the above said, there really is no set time as to how long the oil will last. Through years of frying I have learned one simple trick that I follow. Heat the oil to 350 degrees and smell it. If it still smells like oil, it's fine. If it smells off, I change it. Cold oil will deceive you so always heat to 350 to smell it. I find that the smell test works as good as anything out there. Hope that the above helps my friend. 

Oil starts to smoke at 450 degrees. Aren't you close to having it burst into flames at 550?

SGH

Tspud1 said:

Oil starts to smoke at 450 degrees. Aren't you close to having it burst into flames at 550?

Here is the thing, most flash frying is done with reasonably small amounts of oil. A gallon or so. And it's usually done when cooking things that the grease will not be reused. Thus surpassing the smoke point is a nonissue as the grease is usually not reused. 
On that note, well refined peanut oil is listed as having a flash point of 600 degrees. However there is a safety margin built in. You have a little cushion if you will. So at 550 degrees, I'm a minimum of 50 degrees below the flash point. More realistically it's 100 degrees below. 
With all of the above said, I'm certainly not the first, nor the only one who pushes oil this high. It's a very common practice down here when cooking shrimp and crab claws. In no way would I run 550 degrees with something that took more than about 60 seconds to fry. Flash frying is usually 30-60 seconds. 90 seconds being the absolute maximum. 

westernbbq

@SGH

give yourself a seal of approval.  +1 on the ammonia recommendation.  I got a LEM hand crank multiblade meat tenderizer- it's horizontal and adjustable but i have been reluctant to use it for past few years due to my fear of not getting it clean enough

problem solved- thanks to you!

RRP

One point of caution which I don't believe has been brought up in this thread is if you use a septic system whatever you do don't pour the used ammonia down the drain! You can do some real damage to all that bacteria at work in your septic eating your "waste"! 

SGH

westernbbq said:

@SGH
problem solved- thanks to you!

My pleasure brother. I actually created this post with the hope of saving people a lot of trouble with cleaning as I know how aggravating it can be. Ammonia and real hot water works miracles. Just be cautious of using it on rubber and silicon based gaskets. Most plastics are not affected by ammonia. I clean the plastic covering on my PC with no ill affects. As far as your manual meat grinder, the ammonia and hot water will clean it right up my friend.  
Here is another useful tip. A Brillo or S.O.S pad, along with the hot water and ammonia will clean just about any mess that you will encounter when cooking. Just be mindful that the S.O.S and Brillo pad can leave light scuff marks on highly polished finishes.