Oil Absorption during Deep-fat Frying: Mechanisms and Important Factors

Deep-fat frying is a rapid and low cost process widely used to prepare tasty food. During this cooking process, oil is used both as the heating medium and as an ingredient producing calorific products. Nutrition has become a major health issue, especially in developed countries where increasing obesity is a problem, particularly among children. Many food research projects involving snack food industries therefore attempt to understand oil uptake during the frying process in order to control and reduce the fat content of fried products without deteriorating their desirable organoleptic characteristics. The main objectives of this paper are to review the literature on the frying process and more precisely the mechanisms and parameters involved in the oil uptake phenomenon. Both products and processes will be considered and their influence via experimental results will be discussed.