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Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

I've tested with oil. You don't see a large spike unless something is blackened or the oil smokes

Biggest generator of pwm during cooking is when things actually burn. Which can be just a very tiny portion of the food, like one black speck that came off and heated extra. This produces more pwm than the mass of oil and food.

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You’re right but I also think as you hint, that it’s very hard to cook without causing this to happen. I would add that when frying, even if you are below smoke point, just the act of cooking food in that oil atomizes the oil enough that it lowers air quality.

Have you ever wiped the top of the cabinets in your kitchen? Mine always get coated in grease. It is almost like the oil is being atomized like perfume. Hood works great with smoke testing but this still happens. Inside of the hood is also extremely gross to the point where the oil condenses and drips if I forget to clean it for a while.

I personally take special care to never vaporize fat. It can be done but you have to change your cooking style and only cook with certain styles outside.

How do you prevent this? I keep temperature below smoke point already but also it has to be high enough so things actually cook upon the oil vs being saturated with oil.

How powerfull is your hood? In my experience, consumer hoods are extremely underpowered. You can make them work, but that involves taking several minutes, even up to 10, at max power to set up a draft that will exhaust fumes from your stove.

It is powerful enough to smoke under it and have it draw out the smoke. It also ate its carbon filter at one point, just sucked it off the grease trap into the fan. I shut the door to the kitchen and open some windows and there is very appreciable draft coming out of those windows. I tend to only use the back two burners directly under the hood while cooking. Certainly no commercial unit, however.

A good test is to see if a piece of paper will stick or fall off (mine will actually keep a plastic tray stuck to it).

Often the problem is the exhaust path, not the extractor itself. Mine has a short straight path with a low resistance terminal cowl.

Yes that's a big downside of oil. I'm not sure about atomization but oil spatters a lot even if it isn't smoking.

Worth it over eating teflon I suppose.

Yeah, I suspect its the burning that is more effective.

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