Is FryAway the Best Way to Dispose of Cooking Oil?
We tried out this oil solidifier as well as Hard Oil, Quickshine, and SolidiFry to see which one is the best option after an epic fry day
FryAway gelatinizes cooking oil and keeps it solid at room temperature for easy cleanup and disposal.
By Perry Santanachote
Thanksgiving is one of the biggest days for clogged kitchen drains because of the grease, cream, gravy, and other fatty liquids people pour down them. We’ve reminded Consumer Reports readers time and time again not to do this, but there’s a product called FryAway that might make it easier to heed such advice.
FryAway turns used cooking oil from a liquid to a solid state, making it easy to toss in the garbage without the added step of pouring it into a container first. It is also claimed to be nontoxic and better for the environment because the grease isn’t contaminating and clogging up waterways and isn’t being disposed of in a plastic container.
I tried it to see if it works, how convenient it is, and if it’s any better for the environment than chucking used oil in old yogurt containers.
What Is FryAway Made Of?
The only ingredient listed on the FryAway package is “natural plant-based fats,” but it looks and works just like stearic acid, a saturated fatty acid that’s naturally found in animal and vegetable fats. It’s the same stuff used to make candles, bars of soap, and your fancy shea butter.
In an email, a FryAway representative said that the product is patent pending and the manufacturer won’t disclose the ingredients or formulation, but that “it can be expected to have some naturally occurring stearic acid.”
I didn’t chemically analyze the FryAway to see if it’s indeed stearic acid or some kind of blend, but I did purchase stearic acid to do a side-by-side comparison. Gram for gram, the stearic acid gelatinized the same amount of mixed refuse cooking oil and pork fat in the same amount of time as the FryAway product—it was just slightly less hard.
FryAway can be used for smaller amounts of grease, too, such as what's left in the pan after frying bacon.
Photo: Perry Santanachote/Consumer Reports
How Does FryAway Work?
The instructions say to turn off the heat source and remove food from the oil, then sprinkle FryAway flakes into the hot oil and stir to dissolve completely (which took several seconds for me, depending on the temperature of the oil). Allow the oil to cool down and harden, then scoop it into your garbage, organic waste bin, or compost. It took about 30 minutes to solidify one-third cup of oil in my pan and about an hour to solidify a quart of oil in my deep-fryer. It was easy to scoop and discard.
Assuming FryAway does have stearic acid and the product performs similarly, it hydrogenates liquid oil by melting it into hot oil (stearic acid’s melting point is 156.7° F) and hardening the oil as it cools. In effect, it raises the melting point of the oil so that it remains solid at room temperature.
FryAway says the hardened mixture can reliquefy at temperatures exceeding 115° F.
Is Using an Oil Solidifier Better Than Pouring Fats, Oils, and Grease Down the Drain?
Absolutely. Fats, oils, and grease (what the waste industry refers to as FOG) are the bane of any plumber’s or water treatment worker’s existence. And “the more unwanted waste we can keep out of waterways means fewer contaminants for our wastewater treatment facilities to clean out,” says Shanika Whitehurst, CR’s associate director of product sustainability, research, and testing.
FOGs might start out in a liquid state, but those materials congeal and eventually cause clogs farther downstream. Rebecca Shelton, a water and wastewater engineer in the Atlanta metro area, says that in many areas of the U.S, grease causes about 70 percent of sewer overflows.
The alternative is often pouring FOGs into a container, like a used plastic tub or zipper bag, and tossing it in a trash can. This is much better than adding them to wastewater, but trashing FOGs has a few of its own drawbacks. Plastic containers can break, causing a slippery, smelly mess—either for you or your garbage collector. And if it’s the plastic you’re concerned about, it’s most likely going to end up in a landfill anyway, so you’re not necessarily doing the planet any good by saving it for recycling.
“I’d rather have the oil loose and not in a container, because then the microbial population can get a hold of it as an energy source and convert it to methane, which is captured in most of these landfills and converted into renewable energy,” says Wayne Lee, founder and CEO of Lee Enterprises Consulting, a worldwide bio-economy consulting group.
So in this case, using FryAway or similar products to discard your used cooking oil is actually better for the environment—and everyone involved, for that matter. Solidified oil is more convenient for home cooks to discard, remains gelatinized during garbage collection, and gives microbes something to chomp on. Once the oil hits the landfill, it might reach temperatures that’ll reliquefy it, but at that point, it’s fine.
The most ideal way to discard your old oils, Lee says, isn’t yet available to most people, and that’s curbside oil pickup and recycling. Instead of going to a landfill, your used oil could be turned into biodiesel fuel. “We often don’t see long-term solutions as well as we should, and focus too prominently on short-term fixes,” Lee says. “The key is for the voters to tell their elected officials what’s important to them.”
Is FryAway Worth It?
Okay, so you’ve advocated for a better solution in your community, but until curbside oil pickup comes to your neighborhood, solidifying your used cooking oil is your best option for tossing it out. But here’s the thing: It doesn’t need to be FryAway.
Sure, the brand is well-known, convenient, and available at Amazon and Walmart. But I was able to find a handful of other oil solidifiers on Amazon (Hard Oil, Quickshine, and SolidiFry) that worked just as well for about $1 to $2.50 less per ounce. FryAway Pan Fry was the most expensive at $4.76 per ounce. But here’s the real kicker: Stearic acid is only $1 per ounce.
So save your money and just buy a bag of stearic acid. Use 2 tablespoons per cup of hot oil.
FryAway was the priciest oil solidifier we tried.
Photo: Perry Santanachote/Consumer Reports
This product evaluation is part of Consumer Reports’ Outside the Labs reviews program, which is separate from our laboratory testing and ratings. Our Outside the Labs reviews are performed at home and in other native settings by individuals, including our journalists, with specialized subject matter experience or familiarity and are designed to offer another important perspective for consumers as they shop. While the products or services mentioned in this article may not currently be in CR’s ratings, they could eventually be tested in our laboratories and rated according to an objective, scientific protocol.
Like all CR evaluations of products and services, our Outside the Labs reviews are independent and free from advertising. If you’d like to learn more about the criteria for our lab testing, please go to CR’s Research & Testing page.
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