Lifestyles Ideas Management - Melted Plastic in Hot Oil

In Johor Baru, some hawkers are literally cooking popular snacks like goreng pisang (banana fritters) and keledek (Tapioca fritters) with melted plastic in hot oil. It was circulated in the emails reporting hawkers (street vendors) adding plastic drinking straws or melted five liter empty cooking coil bottle in boiling hot oil by stirring it in. This will improve the crispiness of the snacks for several hours. The customers will get to enjoyed extra crispy banana fritters, extra crispy keledek, and extra crispy chicken. We love our extra crispy snacks, the type that can hear the crunch when you bite into it.
This adding plastic into hot oil has been allegedly started in Thailand for frying ikan bilis (anchovies) and onions. The extra crispy method spread to Kedah and Perlis, then the rest of the country until Johor Baru, which is the border town next to Singapore.
I wondered whether our food seller in those eating places will also do the same, I have yet to go around and spot one out. It will be hot news creating a scare; at least it is better than the recent scare of escaped Selamat which have been always on our mind.

I believe that plastic can be melted at very hot temperature and chemical release into the oil which may cause cancer and birth deformities if ingested. To improve crispiness of the snack will have to do with the batter, adding vinegar when deep frying can improve crispiness. Our food seller has to undergo one day course on food preparation and handling besides hygiene before a license can be issued. So I think the plastic drinking straw and five liter empty cooking oil bottle will not happen here. Our snacks sold here is already extremely crispy without a need to throw in the plastic item.

That reminded me of quite many years ago, one of our colleague was out-stationed in Thailand for one week project assignment. She came into the office with a big plastic bag of fried yam fritters. The yam was crispy but there was a certain funny after taste. I took a few pieces and threw the whole bag away with the permission from others. The yam fritters was fried in palm oil plus (can you guess?) kerosene oil. Back then, the cooking oil was very expensive and it was later reported in the news that some illegal cottage industries were frying yam and all kind of snacks with cooking oil mixed with kerosene.

That reminded me during my five days free and easy tour to Hong Kong about ten years ago. Someone told me that you must taste the fried goose at Shatin as it was crispy and the taste was nice with cinnamon. I love the smell of cinnamon on anything especially breads. So off we went by MTR (subway) to Shatin and into a certain restaurant. It was so crowded with lunch time hungry workers, so we packed one big goose in a take away bag. Once back in the hotel room we were tucking in the juicy meat of the goose. The next second, third and fourth day it was goose meat every lunch or dinner. Until one day we decided to eat at the restaurant since it was our last dinner. We went there early before dinner time; the door of the restaurant was closed. SO we walked to the back door hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the serving crew. We saw the most horrible sight!
The big cooking pot of hot oil that was used to fry the whole goose was black as soot, and we saw some of the fried meat floating up the black oil. This is the poisonous oil that fried the few goose meat we ate during the last few days. We quickly make our way out to the front and took the MTR (subway) back to the hotel. All of us felt so terrible wished that we have bulimia for the last few days. We skipped dinner for the whole night and go for fruits and milk hoping to cleanse our digestive system. We left Hong Kong and did not mention about the delicious goose meat to anyone back home.