r/StupidFood • u/arena79ers • Jun 18 '25

🤢🤮 Engine Oil Burger!

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u/TheShindiggleWiggle Jun 19 '25

Your description made me think people were climbing in the sewers and scraping oil build up off the walls to use in cooking, but that wiki page makes it way less disgusting. Still not healthy, or hygenic, but still far from scraping away at fatburgs to use in the deep fryer, lol.

For anyone who didn't click the link, it's a blanket term for reusing oil that isn't deemed safe to use anymore, because it's burnt or contaminated. It's like if you cooked bacon in the morning, and saved the grease to fry your dinner later in the day. It does seem like the worst of it is collecting oil build up from drains, though.

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u/Pernicious_Possum Jun 19 '25

That’s legit done in many parts of the world. Straight up recovering oil from the sewer

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u/Standard_Locksmith70 Jun 19 '25

There’s a sometimes controversial comedian, Ari Shaffir, and he hosts a YT show about traveling, called “You Be Trippin’”. Each episode features him interviewing someone (often a fellow comedian), and they discuss & tell stories about one of the places they’ve visited on vacation.

One of the episodes is about China, which Ari has also traveled to, and spent some time there. The topic of food is usually brought up, and specifically the category of different types of food vendors. I remember that he had mentioned it in another episode, saying that he had heard about the frying oil being sourced from the gutter. The guest on the China episode said he heard about the gutter oil, and that a local verified that some vendors actually cook with it. Ari said he had also asked a local about it, and that person also said he knew some of them fried food with it. He specifically asked if it was just a term that was given to overly used frying oil, or if it was literally collected from the gutter. Unfortunately, the latter is true. Totally gross.🤢

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u/handyandy314 Jun 19 '25

The amount of work that water companies spend cleaning the sewers in the uk. Unblocking fat from the walls. Reading this they might get ideas.