Chip pan
From Wikinfo
- For criticism see Criticism of Chip_pan
A chip pan is a deep-sided cooking pan used for deep-frying. Chip pans are named for their traditional use in frying chips (French fries).
Today, they are made from either aluminium or stainless steel, although in the past were commonly made from cast iron. A basket is placed inside the pan, to lower the chips into the hot cooking oil, and to raise them once cooked.
Chip pans are commonly used in the United Kingdom, although are slowly being outmoded by deep fryers.[1]
Contents |
Manufacture
Chip pans are commonly manufactured through a spinning process, as the metal used is malleable. The lid is typically stamped out by a die in a heavy press. [2]
Health issues
Repeated heating of oil is believed to greatly increase the free radicals in the oil, leading to a higher risk of heart disease.[3]
Oil burns
Injuries, particularly to children, caused by the hot oil from a chip pan falling on them are a common cause of hospital admission in the UK.[4][5]
Fire risk
Chip pans are well known for being a fire hazard. In the UK, chip pan fires are the largest cause of fire-related injuries in the home[1], such that several local fire brigades have offered a "chip pan amnesty", trading old chip pans for a deep fryer.[6]
The two main causes for chip pan fires are:
- The oil or fat overheats and catches fire.
- The oil or fat spills onto the cooker, either because the pan has been filled too high; or because wet chips are put in the hot oil, causing it to bubble up and overflow.
Chip pans are the most common cause of house fires in the United Kingdom, with around 12,000 chip pan fires every year, with 1,100 chip fires being considered serious. These fires result in over 4,600 injuries, and 50 deaths per year. British Fire Brigades frequently issue warnings and advice, urging households to switch to a safer means of cooking chips, and advising that unless the fire is easily contained to leave the fire to the emergency services.[7]
Cooking oil fires (US class K, Europe class F) burn hotter than other typical combustible liquids, rendering the standard class B extinguisher ineffective. Class F fire extinguishers use saponification to put out chip pan fires by spraying an alkaline solution which reacts with the fat to make a non-flammable soap. However, these extinguishers are generally only available in industrial and commercial kitchens.
Effect of water
Adding water to burning oil from a chip pan can greatly exacerbate a fire. The following sequence of events results in an "explosion" (deflagration, not detonation):
Chip-pan-fire-cross-section-1.png
Oil gets so hot that it catches fire all by itself |
Chip-pan-fire-cross-section-2.png
Water is poured into the burning chip pan |
Chip-pan-fire-cross-section-3.png
Water is denser than oil, so it sinks to the bottom of the chip pan (shown in red). As the water touches the bottom, it is heated above its boiling point and instantly vaporizes. |
Chip-pan-fire-cross-section-4.png
The water vapour expands rapidly, ejecting a fireball of burning oil out of the chip pan and into the air where its surface area increases greatly and combustion proceeds much faster |
Chip-pan-fire-4.jpg
Oil is heated strongly |
Chip-pan-fire-3.jpg
After some time, it gets hot enough to catch fire |
Chip-pan-fire-2.jpg
Pouring a very small amount of water into the fire ejects a plume of fire |
Chip-pan-fire-5.jpg
With all the oil burned, there is no more fuel to supply the fire |
References
- ^ http://www.surrey-fire.gov.uk/sccwebsite/sccwspages.nsf/LookupWebPagesByTITLE_RTF/Chip+pan+fires?opendocument
- ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?lr=&id=xzVoc53dytwC&pg=PA145
- ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Oza7FQPiV8UC&pg=PA3
- ^ C . Liao. Landmarks in burn prevention. Burns, Volume 26, Issue 5, Pages 422 - 434
- ^ IS Whitaker, DW Oliver. A 5-year retrospective study: burn injuries due to hot cooking oil. Burns, 2002
- ^ http://www.staffordshirefire.gov.uk/redirect/?oid=%5Bcom.arsdigita.cms.contenttypes.NewsItem%3A%7Bid%3D3970033%7D%5D
- ^ UK Fire Service advice on chip pan fires
External links
- London Fire Brigade advice on chip pans
- Online copy of an Oxfordshire council safety flyer (PDF document)
- Photo story of a chip pan fire
- BBC News - A woman pulled from a chip pan fire thanks her rescuers
- North Yorkshire Fire Service - demonstration of a chip pan fire
| This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Chip pan. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of this Wikinfo article is available under the GNU Free Documentation License and the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. |
