Blue Seal Fast Fri FF18 Freestanding Fryer Review - U-Select

Intro
Blue Seal are a New Zealand company who have made their name with great value, hard wearing catering equipment. Their most famous products are the TurboFan fan ovens, which are in millions of kitchens around the world. Check out our review of that range here. But Blue Seal make a huge range of equipment, and it's fryers are very popular too. This review is of their single well, double basket FF18 FastFri.
What is it?
The FF18 is a gas fryer with a deep oil well. It’s only 400mm wide but holds 18 litres of oil. The machine is single well, but double basket. This means you can cook multiple items in it, but there will be taste transfer if you cook things like fish. It also means you couldn’t cook vegetarian or vegan meals in it if you had already cooked meat or fish.
Latent heat - oil
What’s it do?
The name gives a clue: speed. This is a fryer designed to retain heat and therefore cook food that bit quicker. It’s also aimed at a wide range of businesses because of its narrow width. This is a machine which will fit in anywhere. The FastFRi FF18 is a well built, small, versatile fryer.
Who is it for?
The Blue Seal FastFri FF18 is made to fit into any business, cafe, pub or restaurant. It could also do a job for a takeaway if space was an issue. It’s freestanding which means it can slot in pretty much anywhere you have a space. It’s also very good value. Blue Seal are famously well made, but still have very reasonable prices, so these are a great buy for a small business.
How does it perform?
Well, apart from the normal: “Blue Seal are really well made” statement, the key to the performance of the FastFri is that 18litre well in a slim 400mm body. The big challenge with smaller fryers is latent heat. When you put cold food into the oil to cook it, you lower the temperature of the oil, increasing cooking times. More oil holds more latent heat, which means the overall temperature of the oil drops less when you put food in and it takes less time to get up to full cooking temperature. Not only does this reduce your cooking times, but it also saves you money as the fryer is not constantly working to get up to temperature.
The machine is simple to use, with big, easy temperature controllers, and it has a large drain pipe which is good to get rid of all the debris that builds up during a busy service.
All in all, this is an impressive package, especially for the price, which is not high despite the great build quality and heat retention.
Conclusion
The Blue Seal FastFri FF18 is well made, ready to fit into any business, quick and easy to use. It’s a great machine that does a top job without taking up too much space, slowing you down or costing the earth.

[@leelake307]

I’m not surprised it uses very little electricity as it’s a gas fryer! 🤦‍♂️

[@manninghr1]

what a fail - it doesn't use ANY mains electricity whatsoever. .