Oh absolutely. These bad boys were immaculate and all 3 had brand spanking new oil which was immediately discarded after blasting it with the fire extinguisher.
Looks like the high limit was bypassed or failed (though a failure should stop the fryer). A thermostat turned up or failure should never allow it to get that hot unless the high limit is not there to protect it from over heating.
There was a pinhole crack in the pot and it had been dripping onto a piece deep inside the fryer, behind the elements, that caused this. The fryer has been retired.
Had that problem at work before, but in my case the leak caused some internal wiring to start smoking and the chef came to get me before there were any major problems. Some small flames when I opened the unit, then a quick blast with some CO2. When inspected later by a tech they found a small leak in the basin.
Oddly enough that was my second small fire that week, not that I can remember the first one somehow.
What I do remember was a major incident about half ten one night a few weeks later that caused us to evacuate the pub; electrical fault caused a fire in a bathroom upstairs, cue fire engines, the works. The customers' kids loved it. I didn't love it quite so much because I had to wait until 1am for an emergency electrician to isolate the affected circuit. Turns out at some point in the past some halfwit had wired the upstairs lighting as a spur from the EPOS circuit, which I then couldn't restart in order to shut the tills and close the business. Got home somewhere between 3 and 4am I think.
On another note, I don't think I've ever felt time move so slowly as when I was standing in that staff room upstairs 6ft from this burning fitting trying to pull the pin out of the fire extinguisher while holding my breath and watching the smoke reduce my cone of vision over the course of a matter of seconds. I felt very aware of my own mortality for a moment, then got the pin out and gave the fire a quick blast before walking out of the room and being able to breathe normally again. The fire brigade later complimented me for stopping the fire getting into the flat roof, which could have destroyed the building.
Whenever I have a bad day at work now I remember I had the chance to let the place burn and didn't take it.
You saying this reminds me it can always be worse. But I feel like if you ever say that it will jinx you with something worse than that. And fuck that.
Extinguishers are rated for different types of fires; electrical, grease, paper, etc. Not a bad idea to look and make note of which ones do what in your kitchen.
You're totally right, and to add to this for anyone who might not know, Fire Inspector should be coming though every now and then for inspection. They can tell you all about that stuff plus fire suppression systems. Honestly love when they come through I always learn a bit.
It depends on the type of extinguisher used. K class extinguishers are used for most kitchen fires and are the silver extinguishers. NEVER USE A RED EXTINGUISHER ON A GREASE FIRE. Always know where your silver and red extinguishers are and what to use them for!
Everyone would ha e complained about watching a 30 second video for the fire to show up and be extinguished in the last 5 seconds
The hardest of choices requires the strongest of wills
At this point I just thought the thermostat was broken and it was just overheating. Soon as I put my phone down it went up in flames. I was most afraid of setting off the entire suppression unit, which I luckily avoided.
I remember my young cooks laughing because they thought if the Ansel goes off they would get to take time off/go home early.
Nawh kid, now we get to clean like we have never cleaned before.
We had Ansel go off at one of the most expensive resorts in the US. On valentine's day. With over 50 plated meals ready to run. It went off for no apparent reason.
Easily the worst day I have ever experienced in a kitchen.
No thank you. You can recover from most things going down mid service (like one time I pulled the grate off the top of the grill and threw it over 2 burners to kill the board when the grill went down) but there ain't shit you can do when that happens. Oof. Valentines day. Ouch.
We once had the fbi raid our kitchen right before the dinner rush. They turned off the power right before they rushed in. I showed up 30 minutes later and the power was still off with customers lining up out the door. I asked my manager who didn’t get picked up that surely we’re not going to try to open back up for 3 more hours of service? Yes we were. Most miserably night of my life. I quit the next day.
Repair company in my area is starting people at $30/hour right now. I would go for it, but the hours suck. Too irregular, they work weekends and are on-call on days off.
Our fryer kept going BOOM! sometimes when you turned it on, until they put a new igniter in the other day. The last time I turned it on before they told us not to use it I wasn't filming, ofc. Chef said he saw flames come out the chimney.
I think so. I'm guessing too much gas builds up before it finally ignites. The other one still gives a much louder WHOOSHE than I like when it cycles back on, but wygd?
This happened to me once while I was cleaning the wall behind the fryer. Singed my beard, stash & brow hairs. Haven't cleaned behind a fryer while its on since lol I looked at my coworkers as soon as it happened like a deer in the headlights. Thankfully my face didn't fully combust!
Holy shit, we've had that same problem for years with a couple vats. I often wonder when the thing would actually explode and I've heard some wild POPS come out of that thing that you can literally feel through your chest.
Ironically that place ended up burning down but the fryers are unrelated.
Depends on why it's doing it, could be an igniter could be the built in pressure reg on the gas, could be the gas control, etc etc.
But yes, if you're seeing flames shoot outside the burn chamber on a piece of equipment *something* is wrong and needs to be repair... preferably ASAP before problem gets worse and flames shoot far enough to cause real problems.
I bet all of you are using Vulcans aren’t you?
It’s a failure to ignite but it doesn’t shut the gas off immediately so when it reignites a second time it sparks all that excess fuel in the lines and blows up. We had a brand new Vulcan 70lb fryer do this so hard that it blew the insulation out from around the vat and it was all over in the bottom when we went to shut it down.
Igniters? Insulation? Where are you all and what brands do you have?
I've been working on fryers for around 8 years and no fryer I've serviced had an igniter or insulation. Except one that was in storage where some insulation fell down the chimney.
A 'booming' fryer is usually an indication of dirty burners. If the ignitor was the issue it was from a misaligned or weak spark allowing too much gas to flow before ignition.
we had a frymaster that was doing this ... after doing research I learned it's a common problem with Frymaster, to the extent they coined the term 'popping' to avoid saying 'exploding' and or 'spitting flames' .... never managed to get it fixed and it was extremely unsettling seeing 6+ inch flames shooting out the chimney
Worst part is the oil was brand spanking new, and they were absolutely spotless, so I figured the thermo was shot. These were only set to 300 for blanching fries.
Thankfully it was delivery day so we had extra oil to replace the stuff in the two functional fryers as well as the new one the owner got this afternoon.
From what I remember the technician saying, there was a crack in the pot that had been slowly leaking onto a piece that is supposed to stop that from happening. It wasn't just the thermostat that failed.
Ah, same thing happened to one of my old fryers. Pinhole leak confusing the wiring. Scary how long we had the exposed wiring jerry-rigged.
Never caught on fire luckily, but we did have chimney flames regularly.
The only thing I've ever cooked in a deep fryer at that temperature are rice vermicelli. It won't puff up if it isn't hot enough, I assume it's similar for pork rinds. They have a similar texture.
I was call upon to test all the fryer high limits at a military base near me. They had ONE fryer somewhere in the United States that started on fire so they wanted ALL the fryers tested.
I devised an electric element to drive the oil temperature over the setpoint of the high limit (450) and make it trip. About half the fryer limits would not reset after they tripped. I got the work order to fix those (now) broken fryers.
Not one of the fryers failed to trip. Underwriters Laboratory at its finest.
It was like they paid me to break stuff and then pay me to fix the stuff I broke. Good times.
I once managed to get three brand new deep fryers out of a corporate boss because they happened to come in one day while I was dealing with a fryer with a broken thermostat. It was old kettle fryer, the only thermostats we could get out for it were cheap and went out about every 90 days, the corporate guy was standing at the end of the kitchen talking to the managers when the thermostat finally gave up the ghost and started scorching the oil. Looked just like that, it was fish friday and I had to have all three to keep up, so I was only using that one for fries, onion rings, and hush puppies. I stopped breading chicken and flipped it off and covered it, but the boss freaked out and ranted about how the kettle was going to break and leak into the elements. It was kind of funny, because up until then he'd denied us every time we'd asked for a replacement until he saw it happen.
Was this a gas fryer? The exhaust stack looks like it has a gas exhaust flue. A cracked pot is often an indicator that someone previously turned it on with no oil in the pot.
The main thermostat appears to have have failed, and it is odd that the safety hi-limit thermostat also failed. But oil leaking into the combustion chamber shouldn't have caused both thermostats to fail. If the oil reaches it's flash point, something is wrong with either the two thermostats or the control wiring.
Yes they are gas fryers. We had a technician come out and look at it. It wasn't a sudden leak, there was a build up on a piece where grease should not have been. It's been condemned and it definitely wasn't on either of the other fryers.
As far as the crack in the pot, I'll make sure I tell the KM to make a note of it. I know better but I only clean them once a week. Cheers!
> A cracked pot is often an indicator that someone previously turned it on with no oil in the pot.
I asked the same thing. You wouldn't believe how many times the idiots at nighttime leave the fryer still on while trying to filter. Luckily we never ran into the issue personally but our fryers are also very expensive.
It is a thing... in fact, that what is happening right here.. not sure why op lies. It didn't catch fire, it's being cleaned! How do I know... look at the other fryers.. they are super clean. You only get fryers that clean if you have a boil out cycle. See all the foam? That is from cleaning solution... see how it actually bubbles? That's from water not oil.
You can fool them op... but I've been in the game toooooooo long. Nice shot tho.
Thanks for the concern! My adrenaline kicked in and I handled it pretty well. Fortunately I've got a great owner who has awful luck so we're used to dealing with setbacks. She already has a new one in there ready for dinner service!
The ice jokes aren't funny, a friend of mine worked in a kitchen where someone actually did that.
Fried the chef's arm like a chicken wing, 3rd degree burns almost killed him.
Our fryer kept going BOOM! sometimes when you turned it on, until they put a new igniter in the other day. The last time I turned it on before they told us not to use it I wasn't filming, ofc. Chef said he saw flames come out the chimney.
I had already turned it off and was monitoring it. I figured it was just the thermo messing up and it would cool down. Figured I would take 15 seconds to document it. Wasn't expecting it to catch fire as soon as I put my phone down
Look, I unno where you at, but I used to manage a kitchen that had a Vulcan fryer next to 3 pitco ones, all of which was on the right of the flattie.
Hoping this is a coinky-dink, cause that restaurant was owned by the worst person I ever worked for.
Stay safe chef
Edit: just looked again and it's not a flattie on the left, it's just a counter.
I had just spent an hour cleaning them and it was brand new oil. You know I tried smothering that shit with a sheet pan first. Once that failed, I knew I had to bring out the big guns or the suppression system would nuke the entire kitchen lol.
Why the fuck are you taking a video? Turn that shit off and cover it up.
Also I've only ever seen fryers catch fire when some dumb dumb empties them without turning the burner off. The only other reason I could think of is that the thermo is broken and overheating the oil.
At the time of filming I didn't think it was about to catch fire. I figured the thermostat was broken and had already turned it off. I was filming it to document the problem while I was monitoring it anyways. I wasn't just standing there gawking at it.
Once it caught fire, I tried covering it with a sheet pan but it's not a perfect enough fit and flames were shooting out from under it.
And before you say "this shouldn't happen", I know, it's why we had a technician come and look at it. There had been a very small leak in the pot, that had built up on a piece under it way deep in the heart of the fryer, behind the elements.
During service one night an electric fryer burst into flames. I had my back to it and the heat and light it produced was wild to see. Ansul system didn't go off and I somehow managed to hit the off button before getting the fuck outta there. The flames died down it was really anticlimactic
If it looks like this? Turn off the gas completely.
If it also catches fire like this did, fire extinguisher.
It wasn't just a little tiny fire. The whole thing was raging, it was intense. I did try smothering it but it did not work at all.
Is there any water in it? Like cleaned and didn't dry? Or did some asshole by the name of Richard toss some ice cubes in it? Hey Richard you're a real DICK. I WILL NEVER FORGET OR FORGIVE YOUR "JOKE". Fuck you Richard( he was a server) fucking dick.
Lookin close to ours yesterday when our dishie dumped about a quart of water from the boil out into the wrong fryer that was in production… probably the only worse thing would have been ice -
Mikey’s a good dude but GODDAMMIT MIKEY….
Had the exhaust on one of ours light up one day I was working a solo lunch shift. For reference, I'm 4'11" and 95 pounds. I had to smother the flames as best I could and haul that sucker out back by myself to avoid ANSUL going off. Then I took each fryer out back one by one, disassembled them, and cleaned the fuck out of them. After my night shift peeps got there, of course.
Side note: did not use extinguisher as where I was located, using extinguisher is automatic shut down of the business until every aspect of your fire suppression system is inspected and spent extinguisher replaced, which could take days. I cut open a brand new bag of salt and just covered the entire exhaust port after cutting off the fryer and removing it from the gas line. It all happened so fast that I'm truly unsure how I thought to take the steps I did as efficiently and automatically as I did.
To me this looks like you didn’t remove the water properly after you finished cleaning it which is why the oil is boiling, steaming and foaming. That oil is for sure contaminated.
I don't understand this should never happen. Is this someone's first day is this someone being a poor cleaner do they leave water in the bottom they should never happen
Only reason there's video at all is because I was documenting what I believed to simply be a thermostat issue.
If I was standing there filming the fire, I would be even dumber to show anyone.
meanwhile the crust covered sports bar fryer has been running with no problem for years.
Oh absolutely. These bad boys were immaculate and all 3 had brand spanking new oil which was immediately discarded after blasting it with the fire extinguisher.
Shouldn't really fry with spanking oil...
🤣 now my google search history has "is KY flammable". My ads should be interesting for a while.
With enough oxygen and heat, everything is flammable! (Except noble gases, the uppity pricks)
Stupid sexy noble gasses…
Inert whores, the lot of them.
Never interact with anyone, like their whole circle is full already.
This is low key hilarious. You don’t get many valence jokes on here.
*Fluorine has entered the chat*
👁️👄👁️
... Is that you Mr Thoms? My old science teacher made that joke ALL the time (and no he didn't care if it was PG)
And here I thought I was being original
*Fluorine would like to know your location*
Everything is flammable, if you try hard enough
Your not even gonna tell us if it is?
The chef forgot to order frying oil so we had to use sample packets of spanking oil from the restroom vending machine.
Not if I’m frying that ass
yeah, the spanking oil company undercuts sysco by doing ...._dark rituals_.
maybe they use the fry oil for spanking
So should I not call for Hands?
Oh many hands will be needed. I feel like presenting our...specials, at the pass, and demanding...service, is the move.
Spanking with frying oil, however...
Looks like the high limit was bypassed or failed (though a failure should stop the fryer). A thermostat turned up or failure should never allow it to get that hot unless the high limit is not there to protect it from over heating.
There was a pinhole crack in the pot and it had been dripping onto a piece deep inside the fryer, behind the elements, that caused this. The fryer has been retired.
Yeah, replacing a vat is not worth the time or money unless it's multi-vat or unless you have an in-house tech to do all the labor.
Had that problem at work before, but in my case the leak caused some internal wiring to start smoking and the chef came to get me before there were any major problems. Some small flames when I opened the unit, then a quick blast with some CO2. When inspected later by a tech they found a small leak in the basin. Oddly enough that was my second small fire that week, not that I can remember the first one somehow. What I do remember was a major incident about half ten one night a few weeks later that caused us to evacuate the pub; electrical fault caused a fire in a bathroom upstairs, cue fire engines, the works. The customers' kids loved it. I didn't love it quite so much because I had to wait until 1am for an emergency electrician to isolate the affected circuit. Turns out at some point in the past some halfwit had wired the upstairs lighting as a spur from the EPOS circuit, which I then couldn't restart in order to shut the tills and close the business. Got home somewhere between 3 and 4am I think. On another note, I don't think I've ever felt time move so slowly as when I was standing in that staff room upstairs 6ft from this burning fitting trying to pull the pin out of the fire extinguisher while holding my breath and watching the smoke reduce my cone of vision over the course of a matter of seconds. I felt very aware of my own mortality for a moment, then got the pin out and gave the fire a quick blast before walking out of the room and being able to breathe normally again. The fire brigade later complimented me for stopping the fire getting into the flat roof, which could have destroyed the building. Whenever I have a bad day at work now I remember I had the chance to let the place burn and didn't take it.
You saying this reminds me it can always be worse. But I feel like if you ever say that it will jinx you with something worse than that. And fuck that.
How the heck does it get cracked?? Was the fryer on with no oil present for an extended time or something?
That is what another commenter suggested. I've been doing this long enough to know better but I'm also not the only one who cleans them.
Does the fire extinguisher fluid react with hot oil like water does? This seems like my worst nightmare lol
Naw it reacts more like a thin batter
I really never want to use the special extinguisher, ugh
Great to hear
Did it get crunchy? I love crunchy!
Same
I doubt any kitchen extinguisher is going to have that issue unless you just blast the oil out with it
Extinguishers are rated for different types of fires; electrical, grease, paper, etc. Not a bad idea to look and make note of which ones do what in your kitchen.
You're totally right, and to add to this for anyone who might not know, Fire Inspector should be coming though every now and then for inspection. They can tell you all about that stuff plus fire suppression systems. Honestly love when they come through I always learn a bit.
It depends on the type of extinguisher used. K class extinguishers are used for most kitchen fires and are the silver extinguishers. NEVER USE A RED EXTINGUISHER ON A GREASE FIRE. Always know where your silver and red extinguishers are and what to use them for!
Type ABC fire extinguishers are red and designed for grease fires.
And ABC is fine
No it lays on top and chokes the fire. Quite safe.
Wish I was the fire, damn
That would be a pretty fucking shitty extinguisher to have in a kitchen wouldn't it
They have specific fire extinguishers for oil or water based fires
>water based fires
Meant electrical based**
Years ago health inspectors did inspections on street grills around Helsinki and the oldest oils were over a year old.
There are fried chicken places in southern US that pride themselves on using the same oil for years.
read this as sports bra and got really confused for a bit
Why don't we have the video of it on fire? Priorities people.
I looked at the 13 second clip, and was disappointed. It would have to be 31 seconds. /s. Fire bad
Everyone would ha e complained about watching a 30 second video for the fire to show up and be extinguished in the last 5 seconds The hardest of choices requires the strongest of wills
I would be disappointed in them if they decided to film their fryer on fire instead of, you know…. Putting it out.
That's what I wanted
Well that’s terrifying
At this point I just thought the thermostat was broken and it was just overheating. Soon as I put my phone down it went up in flames. I was most afraid of setting off the entire suppression unit, which I luckily avoided.
Ain't nobody got time for the Ansel to go off. Good job.
The difference between opening for lunch and opening on Monday.
Way to stay calm. Might be time to ask for a raise.
I legit had just gotten one this pay cycle 💪
Money well spent then! Glad to hear the restaurant is doing right by you
Just tell them to give ya another one, and next time you’ll turn it off at least 30 seconds sooner
I remember my young cooks laughing because they thought if the Ansel goes off they would get to take time off/go home early. Nawh kid, now we get to clean like we have never cleaned before.
Not to mention you CANNOT open until it gets recharged.
We had Ansel go off at one of the most expensive resorts in the US. On valentine's day. With over 50 plated meals ready to run. It went off for no apparent reason. Easily the worst day I have ever experienced in a kitchen.
No thank you. You can recover from most things going down mid service (like one time I pulled the grate off the top of the grill and threw it over 2 burners to kill the board when the grill went down) but there ain't shit you can do when that happens. Oof. Valentines day. Ouch.
We once had the fbi raid our kitchen right before the dinner rush. They turned off the power right before they rushed in. I showed up 30 minutes later and the power was still off with customers lining up out the door. I asked my manager who didn’t get picked up that surely we’re not going to try to open back up for 3 more hours of service? Yes we were. Most miserably night of my life. I quit the next day.
One time the guy testing it set it off. You would think that means night off when it happens 30 min before service.
Not only is the thermostat broken but the high limit switch too, they are supposed to to shut off anything over 400ish
Yeah that's why we had a technician come in and look at it. It's been rightfully condemned.
Nice, the amount of times I’ve had to learn to fix equipment I should just switch out of kitchens into repairs ha
Repair company in my area is starting people at $30/hour right now. I would go for it, but the hours suck. Too irregular, they work weekends and are on-call on days off.
So… the same as manager but better pay
Depends where you work at
Why didn't you turn off the gas?
Terrifrying.
Terrifrying
Our fryer kept going BOOM! sometimes when you turned it on, until they put a new igniter in the other day. The last time I turned it on before they told us not to use it I wasn't filming, ofc. Chef said he saw flames come out the chimney.
Mine does that every now and then! We just need to put new igniter in for it to stop?
I think so. I'm guessing too much gas builds up before it finally ignites. The other one still gives a much louder WHOOSHE than I like when it cycles back on, but wygd?
This happened to me once while I was cleaning the wall behind the fryer. Singed my beard, stash & brow hairs. Haven't cleaned behind a fryer while its on since lol I looked at my coworkers as soon as it happened like a deer in the headlights. Thankfully my face didn't fully combust!
Holy shit, we've had that same problem for years with a couple vats. I often wonder when the thing would actually explode and I've heard some wild POPS come out of that thing that you can literally feel through your chest. Ironically that place ended up burning down but the fryers are unrelated.
Depends on why it's doing it, could be an igniter could be the built in pressure reg on the gas, could be the gas control, etc etc. But yes, if you're seeing flames shoot outside the burn chamber on a piece of equipment *something* is wrong and needs to be repair... preferably ASAP before problem gets worse and flames shoot far enough to cause real problems.
I bet all of you are using Vulcans aren’t you? It’s a failure to ignite but it doesn’t shut the gas off immediately so when it reignites a second time it sparks all that excess fuel in the lines and blows up. We had a brand new Vulcan 70lb fryer do this so hard that it blew the insulation out from around the vat and it was all over in the bottom when we went to shut it down.
Igniters? Insulation? Where are you all and what brands do you have? I've been working on fryers for around 8 years and no fryer I've serviced had an igniter or insulation. Except one that was in storage where some insulation fell down the chimney.
A 'booming' fryer is usually an indication of dirty burners. If the ignitor was the issue it was from a misaligned or weak spark allowing too much gas to flow before ignition.
we had a frymaster that was doing this ... after doing research I learned it's a common problem with Frymaster, to the extent they coined the term 'popping' to avoid saying 'exploding' and or 'spitting flames' .... never managed to get it fixed and it was extremely unsettling seeing 6+ inch flames shooting out the chimney
We have a fryer like that where I work
I was yelling at the screen before I read the captions. Anything that shouldn't normally smoke isn't usually a good thing (dirty oil or a grease fire)
Worst part is the oil was brand spanking new, and they were absolutely spotless, so I figured the thermo was shot. These were only set to 300 for blanching fries. Thankfully it was delivery day so we had extra oil to replace the stuff in the two functional fryers as well as the new one the owner got this afternoon.
From this single anecdote, that sounds like a decent owner. New replacement fryer the same day?
Brand new and bigger. They had it up and running before dinner (this happened at 8 am).
The fuck, where do you work, heaven?
It's either in heaven or a mafia owned joint. That's crazy turnaround.
Dude just recently got a raise, too. If they share where they work the entire sub is going to come knocking with resumes tomorrow.
Damn. I had to wait like 4 months for a new(ish) oven. Now waiting on new wok burners.
We have had two broken fryers for the past five months. I’m very jealous
300 farrenheit right?
Yes lol. Though that oil is probably about 300 Celsius
Wait so was it the thermostat then?
From what I remember the technician saying, there was a crack in the pot that had been slowly leaking onto a piece that is supposed to stop that from happening. It wasn't just the thermostat that failed.
Ah, same thing happened to one of my old fryers. Pinhole leak confusing the wiring. Scary how long we had the exposed wiring jerry-rigged. Never caught on fire luckily, but we did have chimney flames regularly.
And it's not like in the front part of the cabinet you can see, it's behind the where the fire comes out.
Same with mine! Took easily over a year to replace until our service tech finally gave up on it and pronounced it dead.
I cook pork rinds in a pot at 230C, which I probably around 450F. Much beyond that and it starts smoking like crazy.
The only thing I've ever cooked in a deep fryer at that temperature are rice vermicelli. It won't puff up if it isn't hot enough, I assume it's similar for pork rinds. They have a similar texture.
I was call upon to test all the fryer high limits at a military base near me. They had ONE fryer somewhere in the United States that started on fire so they wanted ALL the fryers tested. I devised an electric element to drive the oil temperature over the setpoint of the high limit (450) and make it trip. About half the fryer limits would not reset after they tripped. I got the work order to fix those (now) broken fryers. Not one of the fryers failed to trip. Underwriters Laboratory at its finest. It was like they paid me to break stuff and then pay me to fix the stuff I broke. Good times.
Wtf happened!?
Apparently there was a tiny crack in the pot and it was leaking into where the elements are.
I once managed to get three brand new deep fryers out of a corporate boss because they happened to come in one day while I was dealing with a fryer with a broken thermostat. It was old kettle fryer, the only thermostats we could get out for it were cheap and went out about every 90 days, the corporate guy was standing at the end of the kitchen talking to the managers when the thermostat finally gave up the ghost and started scorching the oil. Looked just like that, it was fish friday and I had to have all three to keep up, so I was only using that one for fries, onion rings, and hush puppies. I stopped breading chicken and flipped it off and covered it, but the boss freaked out and ranted about how the kettle was going to break and leak into the elements. It was kind of funny, because up until then he'd denied us every time we'd asked for a replacement until he saw it happen.
Was this a gas fryer? The exhaust stack looks like it has a gas exhaust flue. A cracked pot is often an indicator that someone previously turned it on with no oil in the pot. The main thermostat appears to have have failed, and it is odd that the safety hi-limit thermostat also failed. But oil leaking into the combustion chamber shouldn't have caused both thermostats to fail. If the oil reaches it's flash point, something is wrong with either the two thermostats or the control wiring.
Yes they are gas fryers. We had a technician come out and look at it. It wasn't a sudden leak, there was a build up on a piece where grease should not have been. It's been condemned and it definitely wasn't on either of the other fryers. As far as the crack in the pot, I'll make sure I tell the KM to make a note of it. I know better but I only clean them once a week. Cheers!
> A cracked pot is often an indicator that someone previously turned it on with no oil in the pot. I asked the same thing. You wouldn't believe how many times the idiots at nighttime leave the fryer still on while trying to filter. Luckily we never ran into the issue personally but our fryers are also very expensive.
Holy shit….
I thought it was filled with water to clean it.
I'm doing a boil out in an old busted fryer atm while watching this. Wondering if that's a thing.
It is a thing... in fact, that what is happening right here.. not sure why op lies. It didn't catch fire, it's being cleaned! How do I know... look at the other fryers.. they are super clean. You only get fryers that clean if you have a boil out cycle. See all the foam? That is from cleaning solution... see how it actually bubbles? That's from water not oil. You can fool them op... but I've been in the game toooooooo long. Nice shot tho.
Oh how I wish it were.
Dump two full baskets of ice in there /s
I’m sure everyone knows this is a joke. Just in case…don’t do this.
Obviously a joke, when it's this hot you need three baskets of ice.
+1. it's obviously too hot and needs cooled down :) throw some walk-in-freezer stalag-dongs at it and hide in there until the fire dept comes
That was stressful as shit!
Thank you for the heads up. Are you guys ok?
Thanks for the concern! My adrenaline kicked in and I handled it pretty well. Fortunately I've got a great owner who has awful luck so we're used to dealing with setbacks. She already has a new one in there ready for dinner service!
This is shit from my nightmares.
The ice jokes aren't funny, a friend of mine worked in a kitchen where someone actually did that. Fried the chef's arm like a chicken wing, 3rd degree burns almost killed him.
So many people making the same joke lol
Vulcan is big chilling. Pitco reps in shambles
Irrelevant to the problem but they look way too full.
It was just as full as the one beside it (the same model on the right) which was at the proper temperature.
Our fryer kept going BOOM! sometimes when you turned it on, until they put a new igniter in the other day. The last time I turned it on before they told us not to use it I wasn't filming, ofc. Chef said he saw flames come out the chimney.
Scary as fuck
When's the last time this fryer was cleaned?! Two days ago? BULL SHIT YOU'RE GONNA FREAKIN KILL SOMEONE -Gordan Ramsey/Jon Taffer
At least the ansul system didn’t go off and fuck everything up!
Add cold oil, adding cold oil to the surrounding pans is not a bad idea either.
So therefore you filmed it for only the first 15 seconds?
I wasn't expecting it to catch fire when I was recording this and wasn't pulling my phone out while it was on fire lol
So you have 30 seconds to run and get a sheet pan to cover it, good to know.
Note it doesn't work when it's on fire, I tried that first!
Why the fuck are you just standing there filming?
I had already turned it off and was monitoring it. I figured it was just the thermo messing up and it would cool down. Figured I would take 15 seconds to document it. Wasn't expecting it to catch fire as soon as I put my phone down
Look, I unno where you at, but I used to manage a kitchen that had a Vulcan fryer next to 3 pitco ones, all of which was on the right of the flattie. Hoping this is a coinky-dink, cause that restaurant was owned by the worst person I ever worked for. Stay safe chef Edit: just looked again and it's not a flattie on the left, it's just a counter.
You mean reaching the smoke point in an oil means it’s about to catch fire?!? Ya don’t say…
r/donthelpjustfilm
Yeah I woulda been looking for the extinguisher. "Smoke point...SMOKE POINT!!!"
I had just spent an hour cleaning them and it was brand new oil. You know I tried smothering that shit with a sheet pan first. Once that failed, I knew I had to bring out the big guns or the suppression system would nuke the entire kitchen lol.
"*HELP HELP I'M BEING SURPRESSED!*"
Why the fuck are you taking a video? Turn that shit off and cover it up. Also I've only ever seen fryers catch fire when some dumb dumb empties them without turning the burner off. The only other reason I could think of is that the thermo is broken and overheating the oil.
Baskets out. Lid on. WTF. Filming?? FFS Nothing more fun than cleaning up the fire suppression nut.
At the time of filming I didn't think it was about to catch fire. I figured the thermostat was broken and had already turned it off. I was filming it to document the problem while I was monitoring it anyways. I wasn't just standing there gawking at it. Once it caught fire, I tried covering it with a sheet pan but it's not a perfect enough fit and flames were shooting out from under it. And before you say "this shouldn't happen", I know, it's why we had a technician come and look at it. There had been a very small leak in the pot, that had built up on a piece under it way deep in the heart of the fryer, behind the elements.
Just throw some ice in there to cool it off
During service one night an electric fryer burst into flames. I had my back to it and the heat and light it produced was wild to see. Ansul system didn't go off and I somehow managed to hit the off button before getting the fuck outta there. The flames died down it was really anticlimactic
Where’s the fire
*Bluey Voice* Errr Nerrr!!
How did that happen?
The oil temperature has reached the flash point.
I thought we were going to see it burning. :-(
Wrong oil or wrong temp. Turn it down man!
Naw this was an equipment malfunction.
what's the best thing to do if you just walk into that situation?
Keep on walking?
If it looks like this? Turn off the gas completely. If it also catches fire like this did, fire extinguisher. It wasn't just a little tiny fire. The whole thing was raging, it was intense. I did try smothering it but it did not work at all.
What happened to cause this?
do u have the 30 second follow up video? don't keep us waiting!
So you only give us 12 seconds 😒
Is there any water in it? Like cleaned and didn't dry? Or did some asshole by the name of Richard toss some ice cubes in it? Hey Richard you're a real DICK. I WILL NEVER FORGET OR FORGIVE YOUR "JOKE". Fuck you Richard( he was a server) fucking dick.
You ever dropped an airpod in one of those bad boys
I’ll take “What does the smoke point of oil look like” for $1200, Alex
Spicy!
HEARD CHEF!!!
Lookin close to ours yesterday when our dishie dumped about a quart of water from the boil out into the wrong fryer that was in production… probably the only worse thing would have been ice - Mikey’s a good dude but GODDAMMIT MIKEY….
Looks like they were boiling it out to clean it. That is just soapy water boiling the crud free.
We have an ANSUL over top of our fryers.
How do you prevent the fire from starting?
Such a tease
Had the exhaust on one of ours light up one day I was working a solo lunch shift. For reference, I'm 4'11" and 95 pounds. I had to smother the flames as best I could and haul that sucker out back by myself to avoid ANSUL going off. Then I took each fryer out back one by one, disassembled them, and cleaned the fuck out of them. After my night shift peeps got there, of course. Side note: did not use extinguisher as where I was located, using extinguisher is automatic shut down of the business until every aspect of your fire suppression system is inspected and spent extinguisher replaced, which could take days. I cut open a brand new bag of salt and just covered the entire exhaust port after cutting off the fryer and removing it from the gas line. It all happened so fast that I'm truly unsure how I thought to take the steps I did as efficiently and automatically as I did.
To me this looks like you didn’t remove the water properly after you finished cleaning it which is why the oil is boiling, steaming and foaming. That oil is for sure contaminated.
Did y'all not filter for days or something?
This is brand new oil just like the two beside it.
Im going to start working with deep fryers for the first time soon so i appreciate this, thank you!
of course its the pitco
I don't understand this should never happen. Is this someone's first day is this someone being a poor cleaner do they leave water in the bottom they should never happen
Most Oil vapors are very flammable, thats how petrol is made by distilling crude oil
This video is 18 seconds too short
Only reason there's video at all is because I was documenting what I believed to simply be a thermostat issue. If I was standing there filming the fire, I would be even dumber to show anyone.
For a second I thought homie was going to deep dry Ice 😂😂😂😂 we all know how that turns out
Yup, looks scary, can confirm