Control Freak/Vollrath 59500P

chadxp

What are your go to temperature for simmer/medium/medium high/high/searing/deep fry

Brandon_Byrd_40557

The Vollrath's temperature control isn't particularly accurate, as it doesn't have a probe. What temp/power-level setting maintains a simmer depends on your cookware and the volume of liquid you're cooking. It also depends on what you mean by "simmer" (small, rare, lazy bubbles VS larger, numerous, rapid bubbles). But if you set it to somewhere around the boiling point and let the temperature equilibrate, it will maintain that level of simmer relatively well (unless you hold it for a long time and there's a lot of reduction). But I usually go by power level rather than specific temperature settings.

The same thing is true of medium/high/searing temps are kind of subjective, and again I usually just let the pan get "hot enough" judging by the look of the oil or the sound of the food cooking in it. Shimmering oil = medium/medium-high. Whisps of smoke = high (actual temp depends on the oil, obviously). I don't make a distinction between high and searing temps. Searing=high (in my mind).

Temperature control matters much less for deep frying. Power matters more. You want to bring your oil to temp, then drop the product in, and crank the power so that the oil temp recovers (or just drops less... if you're frying even medium sized batches of CS fries, you're always going to lose temp by the end of the fry, even if the Vollrath is cranked to 100). I'd do the same thing on the Control Freak rather than using temp control. But if you do use the temp control, set the responsiveness to aggressive so that it is more concerned about heating up cooling oil than it is about accidentally overshooting the target temp.