Hello Fellow Ketonians, I made a bad purchase at Christmas of a deep fryer that is a pain to clean and therefore not being used. I would like to try again and would like your recommendations.
It is now mainly just the two of us, but would still like family or entertaining size. Easy to clean; such as let it cool and put the lid on 
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Thank you!
Not really. I bought a metal scooper, but the one it comes with has worked fine. Iāve thought about getting a basket, but havenāt gotten around to it.
Iād never disagree with @Baytowvin as he likely has about 1000x more experience than I do with deep frying, but I recently got the DeLonghi D677UX and was very pleased with it. My primary concern was cleanup, and I chose it because of the ability to drain out the oil. I drained it out after using, wiped out any remaining food bits, then poured the drained oil through a strainer back into the fryer for storage. It was important to me, for whatever reason, to know the oil was free of food particles for next time. The basket thingy works well too, you can raise and lower without opening the lid at all.
Feel free to. People do it all the time, and often because Iām wrong 
I actually looked at that one too, and if youāre going to cook in oil I think that one probably is the best. I ended up going with the frydaddy because I knew I wanted to stick to tallow and lard for frying and a lot of what I read online said the animal fats do better with a non-exposed element.
I love how every time your wife comes up, the main gist is that sheās the boss of you. 
Oh, @MountainGirl, I just realized after re-reading your OP that you are looking for a fryer large enough to make food for a group, I was focused on the ājust the two of youā part. The fryer I recommended is probably too small then.
I found itās next to impossible from the descriptions on Amazon to know what clean-up is like, I always tried to picture what an exposed heating element looked like. So Iām not sure what it is, still. The DeLonghi doesnāt have any exposed coils or anything, just a nonstick smooth interior with the drain hole. I think the heating element is embedded underneath that non stick surface somewhere.
I am using coconut oil, though. I was going to try tallow and couldnāt find it at the store, but I understand you can make your own quite easily, is this what you do?
Thatās good to know. I thought it was exposed. Iām pretty sure it has a bigger capacity than the frydaddy. The one down side of the frydaddy is because I fry so much pork belly, I end up haveing to dump out fat because the pork belly adds more fat to the volume. Thatās also why Iām switching from tallow to lard, since Iām basically cooking in pork fat from previous pork belly frys.
I had been ordering tallow in quarts from amazon, but itās pretty expensive.
Yeah, even the coconut oil wasnāt cheap (buying enough to fill the fryer, I mean). Itās nice we get to keep and re-use oil/fat in deep fryers though, so itās mostly an up-front expense. It must be painful to pour some out though. Hope youāre finding some other good use for it!
I second the Fry Daddy. I got a tiny one and reuse the lard till the food no longer comes out crispy. Scoop it into the trash and wash the unit. I also like the safety of the magnetic power cord. It just pops off when you are done.
Iāve got the Presto Kitchen Kettle, same maker as FryDaddy but larger, comes with a tempered glass lid, a frying basket and itās cheaper. Best part is you can pull off the temperature control and put the whole thing in the dishwasher when you need to, I just always leave my tallow in mine until itās time to replace it then give it a wash.
