what is your standard cooking oil?

Kitchen Knife Forums

Help Support Kitchen Knife Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

boomchakabowwow

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2013
Messages
3,611
Reaction score
5,484
i'm a home cook. no pro.

never really thought much about cooking oil until yesterday. we have been using coconut and grapeseed oil, until we ran out and i bought a bottle of canola oil. hmm..wife asked me,,"what is a canola?"

i googled it. and it brought me to reading about rapeseed and all about oils.

what do you use? i think the coconut oil is good and kinda fun to use, but it makes all my food smell like the carribean. :)
 
We use a lot of olive oil, some canola and some corn oil for cooking. For high-heat cooking it is typically canola. We have only done real deep frying a couple of times, and used peanut oil for that.

Various other oils get used here and there, such as for some salad dressings (i.e., walnut oil, grapeseed oil, etc.)
 
Rice oil for mayonnaise (because of its neutral taste) and for anything that requires very high temps, olive oil for the rest.
 
What David said;

Various other oils get used here and there, such as for some salad dressings (i.e., walnut oil, grapeseed oil, etc.)

I also use Virgin Olive Oil (generally been flavored along the way with various items) for low temp poaching of fish.

Stovetop use is either Avocado & Canola (depends on how high it is likely to go) ... probably 50/50 use of either though ...
 
Grapeseed previously, but I've been using a lot of mustard oil lately. So grapeseed where I want a neutral oil, and mustard where the strong flavour works.
 
i'm a home cook. no pro.

never really thought much about cooking oil until yesterday. we have been using coconut and grapeseed oil, until we ran out and i bought a bottle of canola oil. hmm..wife asked me,,"what is a canola?"

i googled it. and it brought me to reading about rapeseed and all about oils.

what do you use? i think the coconut oil is good and kinda fun to use, but it makes all my food smell like the carribean. :)

I'm largely olive or peanut for deep frying.

Speaking of canola, I live in the prairies of Canada and our landscape doesn't get much prettier than when the canola and flax is in full bloom. There are a few areas near me where you can drive for quite a long time without seeing anything but fields of bright yellow, at the right time of the year.
 
For cooking fat, 99% of the time I use duck fat.

But when I use oil, it's mainly olive oil in combination with butter. I only really ever use neutral oil for deep frying and then it's either rapeseed or sunflower.
 
Coconut oil is kind of special - solid at room temp, and comes in two very different kinds, and hell expensive. Love it as a tadka oil (instead of ghee).

Peanut as the one go-to oil - €5 a liter, super heat stable and *does not degrade to something completely unpalatable if overheated*. Rice oil as an alternative if there is somebody around that even claims to possible be sensitive to peanuts.

Cheap canola/sunflower oil and/or Alsan Bio (a german brand of quality margarine, probably like Earth Balance in the US) for baking.
 
For cooking fat, 99% of the time I use duck fat.

But when I use oil, it's mainly olive oil in combination with butter. I only really ever use neutral oil for deep frying and then it's either rapeseed or sunflower.

On one of my trips to China, we spent about half a day killing and rendering oil from a duck. And then we cooked everything the rest of the day in that oil. And that was the one day I got "sick" in China so I've been kind of shy about duck oil since then. :)
 
Honest question, wasn't canola designed for internal combustion engines or is it a street myth?

I personally use sunflower 90% of the time for pan cooking, olive oil if it has Italian roots, butter for decadence and extra virgin olive oil for dressings.

I use sunflower because that's what my mom used to use, so I'm happy to learn if there's a better option for high temp pan use..
 
The canola plant, IIRC, was cultivated from a rapeseed variety that yielded an oil that wasn't very healthy to consume due to very high erucic acid content (like mustard oil, which also is not considered healthy in the west if consumed in quantity), and was indeed used for non-food purposes.

Canola/sunflower stuff is rich in PUFA - healthy but burns the easiest, so unlikely to END UP healthy if heated severely - you could be better off with an intact monounsaturate or saturate than with the ashes of a polyunsaturate. Let's mention the topic of O3/O6 PUFA ratios once but NOT start a health discussion :)
 
Canola/sunflower stuff is rich in PUFA - healthy but burns the easiest, so unlikely to END UP healthy if heated severely - you could be better off with an intact monounsaturate or saturate than with the ashes of a polyunsaturate. Let's mention the topic of O3/O6 PUFA ratios once but NOT start a health discussion :)

Any layman recommendations to replace the sunflower? I do most of my cooking on carbon steel and cast iron, high temp sears then to the oven...

Not really sure if I should add some salt to that puffa!

Thanks!
 
I also avoid using PUFA in high temp cooking. It oxidises readily at high temp. Oxidised fats are not good for you. MUFA is harder to oxidise. SFA are harder again. FWIW, trans fats oxidise even more easily, which is probably why they are so dangerous.

Sunflower is mostly PUFA (unless it's the variety developed in Russia, I think, that is entirely MUFA and is often used to fry potato chips).
Canola is about 60% MUFA and 30% PUFA IIRC.

I use various fats for different things.
Olive oil is great in salads and for low temp frying.
Macadamia oil also good in salads and has a higher smoke point, so works for medium temp frying. I sometimes use instead of peanut oil because it has a mild nutty flavour but it's almost 100% MUFA.
Avocado oil is similar but has a slightly stronger flavour (Avocado is about 5-10% PUFA IIRC)
Coconut oil works well for higher temp frying. I use it a lot in stir fry.
Ghee/ clarified butter is good for high temp frying.
Butter is good because it tastes great. Burns easlily though (sometimes this is desirable).
Rice bran oil is IMO good for seasoning pans (high smoke point). It has a mixture of MUFA and PUFA. I occasionally use it for high temp frying but I do worry about oxidising the PUFA.
 
I use EVOO the majority of the time. I like using coconut oil when sauteing shrimp and mild flavored fish. I use to use butter, but that was 150 lbs ago.
 
Also, don't confuse the smoke point with the point at which fats oxidise.

The smoke point is generally governed by the type and amount of impurities in the oil. Eg: virgin olive oil will smoke at a lower temp than refined olive oils, but both are mostly MUFA.
 
Also, don't confuse the smoke point with the point at which fats oxidise.

The smoke point is generally governed by the type and amount of impurities in the oil. Eg: virgin olive oil will smoke at a lower temp than refined olive oils, but both are mostly MUFA.

I also avoid using PUFA in high temp cooking. It oxidises readily at high temp. Oxidised fats are not good for you. MUFA is harder to oxidise. SFA are harder again. FWIW, trans fats oxidise even more easily, which is probably why they are so dangerous.

Sunflower is mostly PUFA (unless it's the variety developed in Russia, I think, that is entirely MUFA and is often used to fry potato chips).
Canola is about 60% MUFA and 30% PUFA IIRC.

I use various fats for different things.
Olive oil is great in salads and for low temp frying.
Macadamia oil also good in salads and has a higher smoke point, so works for medium temp frying. I sometimes use instead of peanut oil because it has a mild nutty flavour but it's almost 100% MUFA.
Avocado oil is similar but has a slightly stronger flavour (Avocado is about 5-10% PUFA IIRC)
Coconut oil works well for higher temp frying. I use it a lot in stir fry.
Ghee/ clarified butter is good for high temp frying.
Butter is good because it tastes great. Burns easlily though (sometimes this is desirable).
Rice bran oil is IMO good for seasoning pans (high smoke point). It has a mixture of MUFA and PUFA. I occasionally use it for high temp frying but I do worry about oxidising the PUFA.

Wow. I'm even more perplexed now. Even less sure what to use now. Is there a pdf or a website that explains all of this?

Thanks
 
So when we talk about prolonged heat load... Hours isn't really a realistic frying time. The few studies I have seen on this the oils were heated over 2-5 hour period. Perhaps some application for commercial fryers but ... At home I wouldn't be concerned
 
EVOO for dressings. Coconut oil, ghee or rendered bacon fat for cooking (depending on what I'm cooking) and peanut oil for frying. Ocacasionally safflower for homemade mayo.

I never touch non-food items like canola, "vegetable oil", corn oil, soybean oil and the like
 
Olive oil for almost everything. I buy 30L once a year in while to a producer in south of France that I like.
Sunflower oil for mayo
peanut oil when deep frying and for the any recipse that my grand-mother used to do: she came from Algeria and made everything with peanut oil.
Butter for certain ingredient that are so much better in butter, and for recipe requiring dark butter.
duck fat when I want that taste (potatoes for instance).
sesame oil for the taste when I cook asian style food.
 
@spoiledbroth given that ...


... some canola brands start to smell rather unpleasant even when just sauteeing...

... the oil for your deep fryer or frying pot or chip pan might easily clock in a few hours total...

... we all probably laugh at "do not heat over a 180°C" when there is a culinary reason to go higher....

... no one wants unnecessary rancid (burnt/pyrolized/oxidised) oil in their food without a good reason

I would say it is perfectly relevant to home cooking as well.


By smoke point, refined safflower, soybean and avocado oil should be the most heat stable. The last one is too expensive to fry with, the others... let's say your nose tells you a different story...
 
I mostly use safflower oil, unless I'm looking for the flavor of olive oil. Very high smoke point, and no discernible flavor. It's also ideal for seasoning steel and iron pan surfaces, with it's high unsaturated fat content.

There are a few other oils I'd use just as happily, but where I live (NYC) safflower is usually the cheapest option. I understand that this can vary a bit regionally.

Re: canola oil smelling bad ... I've experienced this, with some canola oils but not others. An unpleasant fishy smell. Maybe it has to do with the level of refinement. FWIW, when I staged at a Michelin 3-star seafood restaurant, they sautéed all the fish in canola oil. They had gallon cans of it piled high on wire shelves. I don't remember what brand.
 
Felt compelled to go ahead and order 4 litres of refined Avocado Oil. I didn't know sunflower didn't live up to high temps.

Good thread.
 
Used to be grapeseed for neutral, and ovoo (but not a high end one) for everything else. These days's I've been using a lot more coconut oil, as I've been getting more into Thai curries. Whatever I cook, it's usually coconut oil that I use for coating steel/iron pans after washing.
 
Used to be grapeseed for neutral, and ovoo (but not a high end one) for everything else. These days's I've been using a lot more coconut oil, as I've been getting more into Thai curries. Whatever I cook, it's usually coconut oil that I use for coating steel/iron pans after washing.

I'm not saying it isn't used but I've never found coconut oil common in Thai curries. Most places I've been in Asia, Thailand, China, Viet Nam, like to use corn or soybean oil because its cheap. And cheap tends to rule the day.
 
Back
Top