Refurbished Commercial Standing Deep Fryers

Oil volume and recovery. A floor-standing fryer holds a bigger body of oil, so dropping a basket of frozen product does not pull the temperature down as far, and it comes back faster. That is the difference between food that fries and food that stews in warm oil during a rush.

It also frees the bench, lines up at cook-line height with the rest of the equipment, and rolls out on castors so the floor and the sides can be cleaned. A benchtop fryer is the right buy for an occasional item on a small menu, not for a shop whose main product comes out of oil.

Two, in most shops, and for two reasons. Flavour transfer is real — fish, chicken and chips in the same oil taste of each other — and a single fryer is a single point of failure that stops service when it faults or when the oil needs changing mid-day.

Two vats also let you run different temperatures for different products. Against that, two machines cost more to buy and use more oil in total. If the menu is one product, one bigger fryer is the simpler buy; if it is fish and chips, buy two.

The vat, above everything. Look for pitting, weeping around the welds, and any sign of a past leak around the drain valve, because a vat that is on its way out is not an economic repair. Then the burners and pilots on gas, or the elements on electric, and the thermostat and the high-limit cut-out.

Then the drain valve itself, the baskets and the basket hangers, and the castors. Ask us what was replaced during the refurbishment rather than what was looked at. A fryer is a simple machine, so most of what fails is cheap — but the vat is not, and the high-limit is a safety device rather than a convenience.

More than people expect, and it is the real running cost of frying. Oil degrades with heat, water and food debris, so filtering daily and skimming through service extends its life considerably. A fryer filter machine pays for itself in oil in a shop with any volume.

You also need a plan for draining hot oil safely and for disposing of it. Check the drain valve and the clearance under it on a used machine, because a fryer that cannot be drained into a container without a bucket brigade will get its oil changed less often than it should.

Yes to the canopy. A fryer is a commercial cooking appliance and ventilation requirements follow the appliance, not its age or price, so the exhaust hood has to cover it and the total load under that hood has to stay within what the system was designed to shift. Filters need washing on a short schedule, because fryer grease loads them faster than anything else.

The floor matters too. A fryer on castors needs a flat, sound surface so it rolls back to the same place and sits level, and the area around it will get oily however careful the kitchen is. Think about the non-slip surface and the drainage before the machine arrives, not after.

Often yes. Silverchef Rent-Try-Buy lets you rent the fryer rather than buy it outright, so the cash stays in fit-out and stock and the payments are an operating expense.

For a takeaway or a pub kitchen it also makes the vat-count decision reversible, which is the one most often got wrong at the start. Ask us which of the units in stock can be put on a rental.