What Would French Fries Taste Like If You Made Them On Jupiter?

sciencehabit writes "Hoping that studying deep frying in different gravitational conditions will help them improve space food for future astronauts, scientists with the European Space Agency chopped potatoes into thin sticks and deep fried them in extra-virgin olive oil, one side at a time, in a spinning centrifuge that created conditions of up to nine times Earth's gravity, akin to that seen on Jupiter. Higher gravity levels significantly increased the heat transfer between the hot oil and the potato, shortening frying time and resulting in thick, crispy crusts, the team reports. In fact, the scientists may have discovered the ideal gravitational condition for creating crunchy fries: The crust reached its maximum thickness when the potato was fried at three times Earth's gravity; any further increase in gravity levels did not improve the fries' crispiness."

Jupiter is 9?

[Wolfger]

Every source I've found says it's 2.53, where did these people come up with 9? Nonetheless, I am looking forward to trying some high-gravity fries. Sounds delicious.

Olive oil?

[sochdot]

I would think olive oil a poor choice for making french fries. In general, olive oil has too low of a smoke point; it just doesn't get hot enough to fry things well. Maybe the increased pressure made a lower oil temp better? I was always taught to use olive oil as a flavoring on pastas, salads, bread, etc. but never for actual hot-oil-cooking.

Re:Olive oil?

[benlwilson]

It's a complete myth that olive oil has a smoke point too low to fry with.

The smoke point of oils varies by oil type and by how refined it is
Here's some examples of oils people use for deep frying.
  - Canola oil 190 - 204C (375 - 475F)
  - Sunflower oil 107 - 232C (225 - 450F)
  - Peanut oil 232C (450F)
  - Tallow 215C (420F)

And here is olive oils..
- Extra virgin olive oil 191C (375F)
- Extra light olive oil 242C (468F)

Normally you deep fry stuff around 175C (350F) which is fine for all types of olive oil.
It's best to use light olive oil if you're deep frying in a saucepan rather than
a proper deep fryer because you have less temp control on a saucepan and light olive gives
you more leeway.

As far as starting a fire goes, It's more risky to deep fry using canola or sunflower oil rather than olive.
The main reasons not to deep fry with olive is
- It's expensive
- It can sometimes leave an aftertaste on the food.

It is however much healthyer

Re:Harumph.

[FatLittleMonkey]

Next up, how to cook a burger on Venus...

Actually, Venus is better for roasting. The sulphuric acid helps tenderise the meat. You can customise the temperature by floating the meat at a specific altitude. Diners themselves float at about 55km.

(Mercury is for burgers.)

Re:Jupiter is 9?

[Dahamma]

Not only are you correct, but TFA didn't even mention Jupiter. The submitter made that part up and got it completely wrong...

Re:Harumph.

[Dahamma]

Well, when reading TFA my first question was "why bother frying the fries anyway, why not just bake them!?"

But that's because the article had absolutely ZERO to do with cooking fries on Jupiter. Jupiter is completely inhospitable to human life and there would be no reason to have humans live on the surface. Jupiter isn't even mentioned in the article, that was a stupid (and incorrect) addition by the submitter.

The ACTUAL point of the study was that cooking in *zero* gravity brings up a bunch of challenges (ie. cooking with oil in zero G!) so they wanted to figure out what levels of artificial gravity would be acceptable/ideal for deep frying.

Re:Am I the only one thinking of building this?

[nitehawk214]

I enjoy that most of the Wiki article on pressure frying basically is trying to state, "For fuck's sake, don't try this at home."