Without a vent fan, how can I keep my apartment from stinking when I fry anything?

Factual Questions
1

Tomorrow, as part of the pre-Yom Kippur meal, I will do Gila’s Annual Feast of Fried Foods, because I’ve found that fats are more sustaining going into a fast. However, I sadly lack a vent fan, and whenever I fry anything (or even brown meat/chicken for a relatively short time), my whole apartment fills with greasiness, and the smell lingers for a good while. My kitchen has a window, but it’s right next to my stovetop, so I have to keep it closed while I have anything cooking there because the breeze doesn’t work well with gas flames. I only deep fry about twice a year, so I can’t see making the investment in a dedicated deep-fat fryer.

Any ideas?

2

Since you don’t fry often, I would suggest doing it outside if at all possible.

3

Try putting a box fan in the window pointing out. Perhaps you can suck the greasy goodness out of the kitchen without also extinguishing the flames.

4

Even if I didn’t live in a Manhattan apartment building, with no facilities or space whatsoever for outdoor cooking, how would that work? Frying on the hypothetical grill?

5

Get a Fry Daddy and plug it in outside.

Even if you use a stove hood exhaust, you still get a fried stink in the house.

6

I used to just plug mine in either in my garage (attached to the apartment) or on the little patio slab/deck thing that most apartments ('round here) have.

7

Kids nowadays…

Have you no knowledge of “fire escape”?
:wink:

8

No fire escape (we have the fire-proof staircases thing instead), no patio/porch, no driveway, no (personal) garage, no space in which I’m allowed to cook that’s not my actual apartment. I live in a twelve-story building with about a hundred apartments - we don’t each have our own little outdoor space, and cooking is strictly forbidden on the roof or the communal yard area.

Given that I don’t fry often, and have limited space in my kitchen for appliance storage (I try to avoid single-use items anyway, so I also don’t have an ice cream machine, which I’d probably use more), I’m not buying a plug-in deep-fat fryer, which wouldn’t help me with the much more common smoke-from-browning-chicken issue anyway. It sounds like a box fan is my best option.

9

Get a DC/AC inverter and use your cigarette lighter, then you can do it while you drive.

Yeah, I’d put a box fan in the window. It’ll probably still stink, but maybe for only one day instead of three.

10

I have a vent fan and a window in my kitchen, but I still manage to stink my place up every so often when trying to cook with any amount of oil…

I find that smoker’s candles work really well in clearing up the smell fairly quickly. Here’s an example of one place to buy them online but I’m sure you can find them at any candle shop or smoke shop.

Also make sure that everything is clean when you’re done. If you leave grease lying around for any length of time it just gets stinkier. I clean off the big globs (say, from my Foreman grill) with a paper towel and put the grease and the towels in old jars before I throw them away. Of course, you could just get rid of your trash bag as soon as you’re done, too.