Are you concerned with the cleanliness and air quality of your kitchen? You might be surprised to know that Air frying is the least-polluting cooking method you can use. The rest produce varying levels of visible and invisible contaminants…
A modern, gas-fired restaurant kitchen: The massive, high volume exhaust hoods attest
to the importance professional cooks place on a pollution-free working environment.
We all know there’s a good reason for the ventilators and range hoods found in every kitchen. They’re especially important – and mandated by law – if you have a gas stove because you’re burning fossil fuel in it. But foods themselves also pollute your cooking space environment…
Dangers and nuisances
The unavoidable grease that builds up on your range hood, ceiling fan blades and other kitchen sur-faces seems to come from nowhere. But it really comes from the foods and cooking fats/oils you use. heated to a vapour, it condenses on surfaces as it cools. And turns to greasy gook. But it can also get into your lungs, clothes and hair! And that’s far from all…
So it’s good to know which cooking method(s) are cleanest, safest and healthiest.
Another new study
If course, the anointment of Air Frying as the ‘cleanest’ cooking method you can use comes as a result of a new study.
The researchers, from the University of Birmingham (UK) (UoB) preface their study report with facts some readers will find surprising.
“People spend, on average, more than 80 percent of their time indoors, with cooking emissions con-tributing significantly to indoor air pollution, including both particulate and gaseous pollutants.”
Particulate matter includes of both solid and liquid particles, and can be toxic depending on their, “size, surface area, and chemical composition.” Volatile organic compounds include, “fatty acids, alkanes, alkenes, ketones, aldehydes, alcohol esters, aromatics, and heterocyclic compounds,” which are “key indoor pollutants.” And some are, “precursors for the formation of secondary pollutants, including aerosols and ozone.”
Scary stuff
Well! When you out it that way… It’s enough to make you think about wearing a COVID-type mask every time you turn on a burner!
But there is a broad range of pollution levels and types produced by various cooking methods. And you can choose the ‘cleanest’ one for whatever you’re preparing. If you know what you’re dealing with.
What they did
The team tested five cooking methods: deep-frying and boiling in the pot, stir-frying and pan-frying in the pan, all heated on an induction platform, and air-frying in an air fryer. The only cooking media used were Canola oil for frying or water with salt for boiling.
The researchers measured the emissions rates, and collected aerosol samples from each.
What they found
The results, “demonstrated clear differences in the cooking methods with respect to particulate mat-ter emissions.”
Pan-frying ranked dead last as the worst offender, followed by stir-frying, deep-frying, and boiling (in that order). Air-frying came out on top. Actually beat the other methods by a mile.
“Particulate matter levels [from the air fryer] were so low that they were hard to distinguish from background air,” says Dr. Christian Pfrang, chair of Atmospheric Science at the University of Birm-ingham, and the study report’s co-author, shared with Yahoo!. “This means that switching from pan frying [or] stir-frying to air frying will substantially decrease indoor air pollutant exposure.”
The takeaway
The team postulated that air frying proved exceptionally ‘clean’, because the cooking vessel remain-ed closed during cooking. Also, air crying uses far less oil than other methods of frying.
“There are a number of factors that will affect the levels of pollution from cooking [aside from] the method used, including the amount of oil used and the temperature of the stove,” Pfrang says. “What we can say with certainty, however, is that improving the ventilation in kitchens by opening windows or using extractor fans will help to disperse polluting particles and reduce personal exposure.”
My take
I was taken aback, initially, by the results of the study. My first intuition was that boiling should be the cleanest method. No oil used at all. But there’s still the particulate matter and aerosols that are liberated by the food itself when heated. So it appears that using a closed-lid cooking method mat-ters almost as much as what you’re cooking and what you’re cooking it in.
As someone who’s been ‘diagnosed’ as a borderline super-taster -smeller, I can attest that a really efficient exhaust system (see photo, top of page) is a wonderful asset to anyone’s kitchen!
~ Maggie J.