Frying Skimmer

Frying food has a bad reputation due to the many tasty, heart-healthier and lower fat options available today. But once in a while everyone should be a little bad, especially when it comes to enjoying the foods one loves. One way to “get away with this” is to skim the fat off the food while retaining the fattening taste of what we will call “fried naughtiness”. While there are many frying skimmers on the market today, for our purposes we will concentrate on the following three: The Oxo Skimmer, Joyce Chen’s Brass Mesh Skimmer and the Typhoon Professional Cook’s Wire Skimmer.

The Oxo Skimmer is made of durable brushed stainless steel, and even if you don’t use it often, it will really come in handy when you need a tool to get food out of the fryer. It has a long handle that is half metal and half rubber, which has a hole in it, either for hanging or storage. The Oxo Skimmer is fully guaranteed and is also dishwasher-safe. At a cost of about 10 dollars ($9.99 if you have some influential friends), the Oxo Skimmer is like all other skimmers, basically a flattened slotted spoon. The Oxo Steel Skimmer measures some 15 inches and weighs about 7 ounces. You can use it to lift and separate out and thin other foods, such as sauces, stews, etc.

Joyce Chen’s Brass Mesh Skimmer is great for frying and boiling foods, easy to use and inexpensive. The strainer, however, has been known to bend with a heavy-handed user and the handle is not ergonomically molded. This Brass Mesh Skimmer is basically a mesh basket that is connected to a bamboo handle. It is designed for Asian food, but can certainly be used for any type of fried food including tempura, fries, fried mushrooms, fried zucchini and pasta. It can also be used to remove chicken bones from homemade chicken stock.

Being that the Brass Mesh Skimmer is metal, it will not work with Teflon-coated pans. It also cannot pick up any liquid. The mesh is made at a slight angle, and therefore cannot be used like a spatula. This skimmer also comes in stainless steel and both versions are corrosive-resistant. The main complaint about this skimmer is that the bamboo handle is not contoured to the human hand. (One can only wonder what the manufacturer had in mind.) Although it is not hard to hold, it is not that comfortable either, and a major improvement would involve a contoured rubber grip. The Brass Skimmer is very easy to clean and weighs about 3 ounces.

The Typhoon Professional Cook’s Wire Skimmer is a deft combination of form, function and style. The Typhoon line of cookware tools is unique in that the tools are especially designed with a contemporary flair to coordinate with a variety of home decors. The result is tools that are highly sophisticated with a distinct retro edge. Made of heavy gauge metal, the Typhoon Professional 6 inch Skimmer feels sturdy in the hand and has a rustproof design. It needs to be cleaned in soapy water and is not at all suitable for the dishwasher.

So which one will it be? Skimmer anyone?

For more information:

http://www.epinions.com/content_175633108612