I hardly ever deep fry, but I do shallow fry sometimes. I normally use about 1/2 inch of oil in the pan, if that. After cooking, I try to keep the pan covered, and re-use the oil the next day. Eventually, when the oil is unusable, I just squirt lots of fairy liquid into the pan and wash thoroughly in the sink. Now, I always feel a little guilty about disposing of oil in this way. I’m sure other people pour gallons of the stuff down the sink - but I just wanted to know the straight dope was on this issue.
My questions: Does the oil break down as it goes through (presumably) the sewer system, and what harm does it do to the environment (if any)?
Since cooking oil is completely biodegradeable, and pretty much harmless to the enviroment you can just through it outside if you want.
Or you can do what I do, and light it on fire!
Cooking oil is usually corn oil, which “the environment” doesn’t really mind when it’s poured into the sewer, which your sink hopefully leads to. I have no idea what it does in septic tanks, although it probably is just digested by resident bacteria in a short amount of time.
No not pour cooking oil down the drain. It is the #1 cause of septic field failure. And it adds a significant cost to the operation of sewage treatment plants. It will also act as a “binder” to solids in your pipes and create slow drains and clogs.
Just because something is “organic” or “biodegradable” doesn’t mean you should just dump it wherever you like it. Some of the very worse stuff out there are organic solvents.
Throw it out with your garbage if it’s a small quantity, for large amounts you have to make arrangements with a recycler (if it’s good enough) or the local hazardous waste folk (seriously).
Restaurants usually have a used oil collection system which is picked up by recyclers - IIRC they use it in rendering plants. If you ask they’ll probably let you dump your used oil - I think they are paid by the recyclers.
Cooking oil does cause problems to sewer systems and treatment plants. Depending where I am at the time I will either throw it away in a container or at least in a garbage bag w/ a lot of garbage or use it to help start the fire for bbq or the burn bucket.
This is imposible to do. I worked in the Waste restruant Grease recycling industrie for almost a year.
As the food is cooked certian minerals and other impurities are cooked out of the food and absorbed into the oil. This changes the way the oil is burned after a long period of time. Most people unlike restruants don’t use the same oil for several days and cook a large about of foods in it. so this is ok for the home user such as below. but on a large scale like a restraunt they hydrodize there oils wich makes it solid at room tempature and burns at a higher tempreture. By doing this that allows them to heat the oil hotter as to cook the food faster. wich changes the melachular properties. Restruant grease is mainly used as a feed substitute, rubber softner, and make up for a solidifier and base. I am getting off topic here so I will end this one here if you have any more questions I will check up on this thread.
Er, why do you say that? There are companies, TV shows, researchers, and hundreds of web pages saying it can be and are apparently doing it. Search for “biodiesel” on Google to come up with pages like these:
Maybe as written it doesn’t work (reused as opposed to recycled), and I’m sure it isn’t commonly done, but impossible? - that seems to be wrong. All the cites above state that this stuff can be made from used cooking oil/grease within the first paragraph.
I remember seeing reports that waste oil from restaurants (which had been dumped down the drain) causing serious problems with the sewer system, but these were fats that were solid at normal temperatures - as soon as they hit the cold environment of the sewer, they solidified into a thick layer of tallow, reducing the overall diameter of the drain.
I generally save animal fats that will set (such as those from lamb, pork or duck) in dish in the fridge - they are excellent for roasting potatoes in.
My household consumes fruit juice (UHT cartons) at a fair rate, so I tend to dispose of any unwanted liquids (such as used cooking oil) in an empty carton in the bin. I used to pack the cartons with newspaper first, to absorb the oil and prevent spillage, but some oils can self-catalyse and catch fire this way (not sure if this is actually true of any common cooking oils, but I like to err on the side of caution).
