The Many Uses of Sunflower Oil in Restaurants

Owning a restaurant can be very demanding at times. You need to keep your customers satisfied by preparing good fresh food and keeping your kitchen hygienically clean in addition to the excellent customer services skills that you need to hone. When it comes to fresh food, it’s the preparation and ingredients that makes the difference. Starting off with a pure sunflower oil will add to the goodness of the dish.

I want to explore how many uses there are for sunflower oil in restaurant kitchens and how it improves these dishes.

• Frying. Deep frying is one of the most common uses of sunflower oil namely because it has a high smoke point of at least 227 degrees Celsius. It can be used to fry French fries, onion rings, battered fish, chicken and much more. It is, however, imperative that the chef uses pure sunflower oil when deep frying and does not reuse the oil for the next batch. Reusing frying oil will lower its intensity and pose a health risk.
• Roasting. Using sunflower oil during the roasting process will add a lovely golden brown colour and crispy texture to dishes such as chicken, roast potatoes, vegetables, etc. When a chef prepares the roasted chicken dish, he adds oil to the roasting pan and coats the chicken with the oil before adding the spices. He then places the chicken in the oven, turning it over only once so that he can obtain that sought after golden brown colour that people love.
• Cooking. This is probably the most common use of vegetable oil, for cooking purposes. When preparing any dish on the stove, the chef will heat the pot; add the sunflower oil, then onions and the remainder of the ingredients. Cooking any meal always starts with heating the cooking oil. Many wonderful dishes are prepared in this manner such as stew, curry, biryani and casserole.
• Baking. Any good restaurant has dessert on its menu, especially cake. Cake cannot be baked without sunflower oil. The type of oil that you use in baking will make a difference to the texture and lightness of the cake. Sunflower oil makes the cake lighter and complements the other ingredients, thus making the cake more flavourful.
• Salads. This may seem strange to some but vegetable oil can be used as salad dressing or in the making of salad dressing. Therefore, creating another element of flavour to an otherwise ordinary salad. Every restaurant should have their own signature salad dressing.

Sunflower oil has many different uses for any restaurant that offers a wide array of dishes. It is clearly a very versatile oil that can be used for frying, roasting, cooking, baking and in salads.