Commercial Gas Deep Fryers

Start with how much you fry at once. Floor-standing commercial gas deep fryers start at around 20 litres in a single vat and go up to three or four vats of 30 litres or more. If chips, fish and anything crumbed all have to come out at the same time, you need more than one vat so the flavours stay apart.

Then look at the space you have and whether the site is set up for gas or electric. A first fryer often needs gas or electrical work done before it can go in. If floor space is tight, benchtop deep fryers do the same job on a bench.

Last, decide which features you will actually use: tighter temperature control, built-in filtration, or an idle mode that drops the oil temperature between rushes.

We stock the brands that hold up in a commercial kitchen. The best one for you depends on the vat size and features you need, but the models we recommend most often come from Luus, Fagor and FryMAX.

Call our team if you want it narrowed down to two or three models for your kitchen.

Five to ten years, depending on how hard you run it and how well it is looked after. Daily cleaning, filtering the oil and regular boil-outs make most of the difference. There is a guide to deep fryer maintenance on our blog.

Your fryer comes with the maker's maintenance instructions. Follow them and book a service now and then. It keeps the food coming out the same every time.

Roughly every six to eight uses, but it depends on how well you filter it and how hot you run it. Oils with a high smoke point, like canola, peanut and safflower, take the heat better than the rest.

Filtering the oil stretches that out. Some gas fryers filter on their own; others you do by hand.

You will know it is time when the oil foams at frying temperature, smells off or goes cloudy. Food coming out darker than usual is the other sign.

Yes. A fryer needs proper extraction to meet safety rules and to stop it overheating. Good airflow pulls the oil mist out of the air instead of letting it settle on everything around the fryer, which is what turns a small flare-up into a kitchen fire.

Venting also takes away the steam and the smell, and keeps the air above the fryer from getting too hot. What you need depends on the model and the layout, so get a professional to look at it before the first fryer goes in.

Nothing, really. They are the same machine. A deep fat fryer just means more oil to the amount of food, which gives a slightly different result.

Measure the space first, including room for the gas or power and for the extraction above it. Then work out how many serves an hour you have to get out at your busiest.

Use about six parts oil to one part food. Drop more food than that into the vat and the oil temperature falls away, and the food comes out soggy instead of crisp. That ratio is what the vat litres on each listing should be checked against.

Gas needs a site that already has gas connected. Where you have it, gas recovers oil temperature faster under constant load, which matters when a basket of chilled product goes straight in after a cooked one comes out.

Electric takes longer to recover but holds the temperature more steadily between batches, and it installs anywhere with the right electrical supply, which is why it is the usual answer in a shopping centre tenancy or a food court. That is the whole trade-off: recovery against steadiness and where you can put it.

It pays for itself if you fry all day. Filtration pulls out the crumbs and bits that end up in the oil, so the oil lasts longer and the food keeps tasting the way it should, and nobody has to stand there filtering it by hand.

Oil in a fryer with no filtration spoils faster, and you get through more of it.

Space and volume decide it. A benchtop fryer can be moved and put wherever there is bench, which suits a small kitchen. A floor model holds more oil and keeps up better at volume.

Plenty of kitchens run both: the floor model for chips, and a benchtop kept for gluten-free or vegetarian orders so nothing crosses over.

A chip warmer, filtering and extraction. Chip warmers hold fried food hot, fryer filter machines extend oil life, and commercial kitchen exhaust hoods handle grease vapour. Smaller sites can use benchtop deep fryers instead.