How much oil do potatoes absorb?

[Anonymous]

I'm counting my calories and my family was frying potatoes when I came back so I had to guess the amount of it which sucks bc sometimes it turns out i ate 1000 calories and sometimes 500calories. Anyways I still tried guessing the amount of the oil and the potatoes. I guessed from the serving plate it was probably around 800g of potatoes and when I took a short look into the pan it looked like there was around 700~1000ml of oil as a leftover after frying the potatoes. I tried to find the answer accurately and it came out that the potatoes absorbed 333grams of oil in total. Could that be true? I'm not sure how much oil they used for frying the potatoes but mostly it's around 1.5l so ig it's somewhere around 1.5l

[bolverk]

Deep frying food requires you to completely submerge your food in hot oil until the food is cooked. Deep frying sounds like the perfect recipe to make food greasy and fattening. But if food is correctly cooked, the oil heats up the moisture inside the food, and the steam escapes. That’s the bubbles and sounds you hear.
The moisture turns to water vapour that pushes outward and repels the oil, preventing it from entering the food. The evaporating water actually creates a protective barrier as oil is “hydrophobic” to the moisture.
Generally, the longer you cook something in oil, it runs out of moisture and the easier it gets for the food to absorb oil. Dense foods absorb less oil, and porous, starchy foods absorb more.
You can see that longer cooking times will make deep-fried foods greasier, and the larger the food is, the more your cooking times will increase. But smaller pieces of food have more surface area to absorb oil which is the most calorific. Even the densest foods can easily get coated in enough oil to increase their calories by over 50%.
Some food types are more absorbent of oil, and these are often the ones we love for their crispy fried texture, like batters and crumb coatings.
For example, the surface of chicken is not very penetrable, but a crumb coating that’s porous and with lots of surface area will absorb oil like a sponge. At 120 calories a tablespoon of oil, the calorific content of fried foods can add up quickly.
Let’s look at ways we can reduce the cooking time and have our food absorb the least amount of oil.
A rough guide is that for each portion of deep-fried food submerged in two and a half cups of oil, around two tablespoons of oil is absorbed. The calorie count is very high with two tablespoons of oil usually around 240 calories.
The only way to be completely accurate is to perform a long-winded method of weighing oil before and after cooking to judge how much oil has been absorbed, and use the nutritional data for that oil (around 880 calories per 100g).
For estimating, there are some elements to consider when considering the calorie count of fried foods.
Different foods will absorb more oil; for example, batters and starches absorb more oil when fried, while the skin on a chicken leg will prevent more oil from entering.
Denser food, such as chicken breast, can absorb enough oils to increase their calorie count by 50%, while starchy foods like potatoes or foods with batter added can double or more their calorie count because of the amount of oil they absorb.
Reducing the surface area of the food, using less absorbent coatings, and frying for a shorter time will mean the least oil will be absorbed when frying.
The more surface area your food has, the more oil it will absorb. In other words, larger items are better than items that are cut up small as lots of small items have more sides to soak up oil.
That’s also why things like breadcrumbs are bad as they have lots of surface area which is also porous. Avoid batters, crumb coating, and anything that absorbs oil easily (unless you remove it after frying).
You want to avoid cooking your food too long in oil, but no one wants a potato fried on the outside and raw inside. A solution to cutting down frying time is to par-boil your vegetables first.
A common kitchen myth is that the temperature of the oil will affect how much oil is absorbed, but studies on donuts and French fries seem to indicate that lower temperatures such as 280F don’t increase oil absorption compared to 365F. The longer your food cooks in the oil does seem to make a difference, and the longer a food sits in high-temperature oil, the more oil it soaks up.
The shorter you can keep your deep frying time, the less oil your food can absorb.
Some food naturally soaks up more oil because of its porous nature. Starchy foods such as doughs, noodles, and potatoes are prone to absorbing more oil than dense foods like meat and chicken. If you add batter to food, the batter will also absorb more oil.
If you can avoid battering your food, this will also decrease the extra calories you add and how much oil it absorbs. Cooking for less time will help prevent absorption.
Dense food like meats will actually not absorb much oil. Meat is packed with water and there isn’t much space for oil inside. That’s why marinating meat in oil for hours doesn’t make it oily on the inside.
You may be interested to know that most oil is absorbed in the cooling down period after you’ve finished deep-frying the food. Hot oil and evaporating moisture in the food don’t mix well when cooking but this changes when the food stops cooking and the steam stops coming out.
The oil sitting on the surface is quickly absorbed as the food cools. The best way to reduce this oil is to use kitchen towels to immediately absorb the excess oil as soon as the food comes out of the fryer.
Drain your fried food by placing them on absorbent kitchen paper towels as soon as you take them from the oil. Pat them dry with another kitchen towel to get as much of the oil off your food as possible.
Pan frying is healthier than deep frying as long as the food isn’t coated in oil. If lots of oil is used like in shallow frying, then the calorific impact is similar.
The less oil you use to cook food, the less it can absorb, so methods of frying that use only a little oil and cook quickly are usually healthier.
If you shallow fry your food in a pan instead of deep frying, you can reduce some of the oil content but if the food is still sitting in lots of oil then there is not much difference.
Of the frying methods, stir-frying is the most healthy as it uses the least amount of oil, and the food is cooked quickly at a high temperature.
You can also reduce oil by using an air-fryer for cooking your food at high heat while using only a little oil for taste. An air-fryer is a convection oven and not a method of frying, but it can recreate some of the crispy texture associated with deep-fried foods.
From the estimates and methods of calculating in this article, you should now have an idea of how much oil is absorbed when deep frying.
Reduce the oil your food absorbs when deep-fried by not cooking it for too long and immediately absorbing excess oil with a paper towel. Battered and starchy foods are porous and absorb more oil; exchange these for denser food. You can further reduce the oil in your food by switching to shallow pan frying or stir-frying rather than deep-frying.

[Anonymous]

It is difficult to determine exactly how much oil potatoes absorb during frying, as it can vary based on factors such as the thickness and type of potato, the temperature of the oil, and the duration of frying. However, it is commonly believed that potatoes can absorb up to 50% of their weight in oil during frying.

Based on your estimates of 800g of potatoes and 700-1000ml of oil used for frying, it is possible that the potatoes absorbed around 333g of oil. This would mean that the potatoes absorbed approximately 41% to 50% of their weight in oil, which is within the expected range.

However, it is important to note that fried potatoes can be high in calories and fat, regardless of the amount of oil absorbed. To accurately track your calorie intake, it is recommended to measure and weigh your food portions as much as possible, and to use online resources or apps to estimate the nutritional content of your meals. b

[Quackthulu2]

If you are worried about your caloric intake stop eating fried food.

[Asker]

A lot of people think I'm anorexic even though I'm not and I want to prove them I'm not anorexic

[Asker]

Do you know any excuses to not eat oily food though?

[Quackthulu2]

You can literally just say that you are trying to avoid eating too many fried foods. But if you are trying to show that you aren't anorexic let them see you eating healthier things. Lean protein, whole grains, and veggies should do the trick.

[NamerOfStars]

If you're particularly concerned about it, you can simply cook the potatoes by parboiling them for four or five minutes, then roasting them at 450 for 30-45 minutes (until they brown); no oil or fat of any kind at all that way.