1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to commercial cooking equipment and more particularly to immersion fryers having automated oil management functions.
2. Background of the Prior Art
Conventional deep frying apparatus is commonly used in fast food restaurants for immersion frying of foods such as french fries, breaded chicken and fish. Single or plural deep flying vats are supported in a housing containing gas or electric heating systems which are usually individualized to a particular vat. Current technology includes a cooking computer built into the housing which usually controls the temperature of the cooking fluid and can adjust the time of cooking to take temperature variations into account for the sake of cooking consistency. Available selections enable an operator to select cooking cycles specific to particular products.
Such commercial units are known to include filter pans which roll into the housing and releasably connect to the drain outlet of a manifold which can collect oil from individual vats through manually openable and closeable valves in drain lines of the vats. A filter pump has an inlet connected to the filter pan to pump oil to a selected vat through a return line with branches leading to each vat through a manually operated return valve. In this way, life of the oil in a particular vat can be extended and undesirable burned food particles removed by recirculating oil through a filter in the filter pan and returning it to the vat from which it came or to another vat. Such a system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,890,548 incorporated herein by reference.
Eventually the used oil must be discarded because of deterioration or other factors which create undesirable flavors in the cooked food. This is accomplished by opening the manual drain valve to drain the oil to the filter pan and then rolling the filter pan containing the hot oil out of the housing across the floor of the work area to a disposal container or sump. In many cases the filter pan may have to be lifted with gloves and physically dumped into a disposal container. Alternately, a pump can be put in the filter pan and connected to a dispose container or line leading to a container, all of which creates safety hazards for the employees.
Since the filter pan always has at least one drain line or supply line connected to it at the housing, residual oil runs from the disconnected line onto the floor, generating a sanitation and slipping hazard. Attempts to use easily made separable connections to such lines when the filter pan is rolled into the housing, have not solved the retained oil drippage problem and create additional problems in that the "O"-rings get cut or damaged, creating another source of leakage.
Filling or refilling of vats is accomplished manually by dumping the contents of 35 pound oil containers or blocks of meltable shortening into the individual vats. Often this is done while adjacent vats have oil heated to high temperatures. One can easily imagine the safety hazards associated with this operation where the operator must stand close to heated vats while lifting and dumping the oil on a potential slippery floor. The fill operation and the dispose operation both require considerable operator dexterity and time consuming attention which adds to the burden of a job which usually has low skilled employees and high turnover and requires constant training.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to solve these and other problems, increase efficiency and safety of operation, simplify operator functions, reduce the time required for oil transfer operations, incorporate safety devices which prevent mistakes in oil transfer operations, and automate the oil transfer functions including the fill and dispose functions.