In any commercial kitchen, there are two methods of frying that could be used to prepare foods at scale: pressure frying and open frying. While open frying is a reliable method of producing crispy, crunchy fried foods, pressure frying is key to delivering juicy, flavorful fried chicken batch after batch.
What is Pressure Frying?
Pressure frying uses pressure and heat to fry food. After food is placed in hot oil, a lid is lowered over the fry pot and sealed, creating a pressurized cooking environment.
Pressure increases the boiling point of water (in this case, the water inside the chicken) and decreases the energy (heat) it takes to cook a piece of food. So, pressure frying allows you to fry at a lower temperature for less time and retain moisture while doing it. With a shorter cook time per batch, you can produce a high volume of fried chicken even during rush times.
How is Pressure Frying Different from Open Frying?
The main difference between pressure and open frying is…well…the pressure. With open frying, food is submerged in a deep-frying vat of hot oil that can only cook at the boiling temperature of water (100 C or 212 F). Further, open fryers have a fast recovery time, meaning that they can reheat to your desired temperature quickly after your batch is finished. However, with more exposure to air, cooking oil has a shorter lifespan in open fryers than in pressure fryers.
Because open frying requires more time, more moisture is lost to evaporation, resulting in a crispier, not-very-moist piece of food. This makes open frying ideal for non-protein foods that you want crispy and dry––such as French fries, chips, and mozzarella sticks––and unideal if you’re looking to avoid crispy fried chicken.
Take it from the Top 
Don’t just take our word for it –– many successful restaurant brands like Chick-fil-A, KFC, and Cracker Barrel use Henny Penny pressure fryers to prepare their signature fried chicken recipes every day. Why?
Superior Taste, Texture, and Flavor
Because pressure frying benefits from a faster cook time and higher boiling point of water, less of the moisture in the chicken is lost to evaporation. Plus, with a pressurized cooking environment, oil is locked out, while flavor is locked in. The end result is not only a piece of chicken that is juicy, tender, and flavorful, but healthier than its open fried counterpart as well.
One of the biggest benefits of locking in flavor is the ability to customize your chicken. Like Chick-fil-A, KFC, and Cracker Barrel, you can develop your own unique breading and combination of seasonings, and rest assured that these flavors will remain intact from the first bite to the last.
Optimized for High-Volume, Commercial Pressure Frying
Why do these big-name brands choose Henny Penny’s pressure fryers for their everyday operations?
Our pressure fryers are ideal for frying large amounts of chicken simultaneously, giving you the flexibility to handle mealtime rushes with ease. Our newest pressure fryer, the Velocity Series, helps you do more with less, with the capacity to cook up to 8-head (or 64 pieces) of chicken per load.
Plus, the Velocity Series comes with a built-in, automatic oil filtration system and top-off, making it the perfect high-volume solution to save oil, labor, and time. For example, the fresh oil tank within the fryer automatically tops off the oil in the vat when it senses the oil level is low. All the crew needs to worry about is adding new oil to the fresh oil tank as needed.
A Henny Penny pressure fryer, with the addition of a heated holding cabinet, can enable you to create a highly efficient “system” in your kitchen by allowing you to implement batch cooking. With a heated holding cabinet, once you’ve cooked several loads of fried chicken, you can store it and serve it fresh throughout the rush.
Stop Clucking Around
…and get some chicken on your menu!
At Henny Penny, we love helping restaurant owners embrace this incredibly versatile protein. So, we pecked our experts’ brains and put together a free, step-by-step planning guide to teach you everything you need to know about adding chicken to your menu.
Get the free guide now and start serving chicken like the pros.
 
 
 

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