We invited friends for dinner and planned a Chinese meal. Chinese food, in case you’ve never cooked it before, requires a fair amount of deep frying. Even Kung Pao chicken and pepper steak are deep fried briefly before being stir fried. But tops on our menu last night was shrimp toast which needs a lot of deep frying and plenty of oil.

Getting rid of the used cooking oil has always been a problem. Dumping it down the drain’s not ideal. Putting it into the trash can invariably causes a huge leaky mess. But there’s a product on the market here that solves the problem.

The name of the product is Katameru Tenpuru. Katameru means “to harden.” It feels lke sawdust but it’s made of seaweed. You pour it into the hot oil, stir and let it cool. It turns your leftover greasy mess into a solid mass that can be lifted from the pan and put into a trashbag. Posted by kuri at May 01, 2001 10:18 AM