Abstract: Cooking apparatus is provided which, in use, continuously circulates cooking oil from a cooking pot, where a removable basket for comestibles to be cooked is disposed, through a heating unit and then back to the cooking pot. The heat input of the heating unit is turned on and off by a controller which responds to the temperature that is sensed for the cooking oil to maintain the cooking oil at a predetermined temperature selectable from within a variable range of comestible cooking temperatures. The controller also has a fixed setting which overrides the selectable variable range setting of the controller and which is operable to maintain the cooking oil at a low non-cooking temperature for extended non-use periods of the cooking apparatus.