What kind of oil do you use?

[Ratton]

I use Rice Bran oil. It has one of the highest smoke points at 490*, is very mild tasting and is great for stir frying and deep fat frying. Check it out! :cooking:

 

[mano]

Olive and grape seed for high temps.

Canola oil for my paper shredder and sometimes for higher temps.

Coconut for massages. Before I got married I went through a lot of it!

 

[swarfrat]

Avacado

(what can I say, I'm from California)

 

[Grunt173]

I just read through 33 posts and finally,somebody had mentioned Avacado oil on post number 33.
I just bought my first bottle of Avacado oil yesterday and was trying to do a search on how and what to use it on. I realize that even post number 33 is dated back in 2012 but this might be interesting to kick start it again.I did read that it is good for your heart and eyes.

 

[DamageInc]

Low grade olive oil and rapeseed oil for frying, but only if I don't have any duck fat or bacon fat on hand. Currently have 6 kilos of duck fat in the freezer so it will be a while.

Occasionally I'll use coconut oil for Asian cooking.

 

[RonB]

I remember when the food Nazis demonized coconut oil to the point that movie theaters stopped using it for popcorn. Theater popcorn has not been as good since. Now it's at or near the top of the list of healthy oils.

Just wait long enough and any oil you choose will be or have been healthy. I use peanut oil and olive oil mostly, but occasionally use bacon grease or butter.

 

[Benuser]

Nobody using goose or duck??

 

[Grunt173]

Nobody using goose or duck??

Check out post 35. He does. I never ever have used duck or goose fat.I am not sure I would like it. My first try at eating duck was a disaster and haven't liked it since.

 

[StonedEdge]

Frying...light olive oil, clarified pork fat, duck fat, coconut oil.

Dressings...extra virgin oo

Lubing my Arkansas stones...mineral oil or baby oil if there's nothing else at hand

 

[StonedEdge]

Bacon fat can't be healthy?

Animal fats (from properly raised and fed sources) are way healthier than any trans fats or hydrogenated wanna be oils. So there's that.

 

[DamageInc]

Nobody using goose or duck??

I like using cans of duck confit when I have a large amount of guests. I save the fat from the cans, filter it, then bag it and put it in the freezer. A small jar of goose or duck fat in Denmark is around 8 euros or so. A can of confit duck legs (15 euros) will yield more than the standalone jars. I'm nearly getting the duck legs for free.

I opened twelve or so cans at the end of last year, so I have a huge amount of duck fat in the freezer. I use it for nearly everything. Stovetop popcorn made with duck fat is fantastic.

 

[chinacats]

Damn, for a minute I thought Oivind waa back.

I to enjoy avocado oil...along with peanut, coconut and olive.

...popcorn w/ duckfat!?! That sounds incredible!

 

[Xenif]

Anything with a hot wok or asian base: peanut oil
Fav olive oil: Greek Kamalata
Butter, duck/goose fat and berkshire pork fat alway in the freezer

 

[Jovidah]

Nobody using goose or duck??

I do! Potatoes and potato products (like gnocci) are almost exclusively fried in duck of goose fat in my house. Once you go duck fat there's just no going back...
Deepfrying is done in cows fat (ossenwit).

Meats I either fry in their own fats (if I have any decent trimmings, for example when I take the skin off), butter, or when I need higher temperature to for example to get a good crust, clarified butter (bougth in Germany as butter schmalz). If I have any decent trimmings (for example when I take the skin off chicken thighs, or have decent trimmings off a chunk of beef) I often render them and fry in the rendered fats. Seems fitting to fry the meat in fats off the same animal.
Groundnut oil for stirfrying and other high temperature work.
Butter and occasionally olive oil (EV) for lower temperature work / veggies.
Might try lard / schmalz again; I must admit that I really liked how it left for example veggies very... non-oily (like EVOO does).

Animal fats (from properly raised and fed sources) are way healthier than any trans fats or hydrogenated wanna be oils. So there's that.

Yeah there's several issues. First of all the scientific opinion on 'animal fats' and saturated fats has largely been reversed over the last few years. Another issue is that a lot of the things that make certain oils (like EVOO) healthy at room temperature aren't stable at higher temperatures and a health bonus becomes more of a health malus. That's an issue with a lot of the unsaturated fats in general; a lot of them actually don't do well at high temperatures.

There's also been a reappraisal of the 'general benefits of unsaturated fats'; there's more nuance to it. One example is how for example there's at least the idea that the ratio of omega3 to omega 6 is more important than was first realized, and adding more omega 6 (as found in most unsaturated fats) might make things worse instead of better. But this is really a field of science that's very much in motion, and nothing set in stone. What is certain though that a lot of the stuff that we took for granted 10/20 years ago was based on really terrible research and / science and is certainly worth calling into question. As a result a lot of the dietary guidelines in Europe have changed quite a bit in recent years.

 

[Jovidah]

BTW how an animal is fed has a huge impact on its fat composition. Grass-fed animals have far higher omega 3 content in their fats. Once put on a grain diet (often used to fatten them up before slaughter) the omega 3 content slowly lessens over time the longer they are fed grains.

Another interesting example is farmed salmon. They are actually given food supplements in their fodder to guarantee the omega 3 content in their feds that would otherwise be lacking in their farmed diet.

 

[StonedEdge]

Jovidah, I know what you mean that there is little scientific concensus in the world of nutritional sciences and that opinions among experts constantly change. Long story short, we don't know as much as we think we do in terms of healthy/unhealthy fats and their long terms effects.

For me though, if it comes from an American source I treat is as more or less false information. Too many huge agricultural/pharma lobbies actively sway nutritional sciences behind the scenes over there.

 

[Jovidah]

Jovidah, I know what you mean that there is little scientific concensus in the world of nutritional sciences and that opinions among experts constantly change. Long story short, we don't know as much as we think we do in terms of healthy/unhealthy fats and their long terms effects.

For me though, if it comes from an American source I treat is as more or less false information. Too many huge agricultural/pharma lobbies actively sway nutritional sciences behind the scenes over there.

To be honest a lot of the 'misinformed science' was done with the best of intentions... it was just shoddy science and maybe conclusions that went far beyond anything the data could support, but that doesn't mean there were bad intentions. The food industry mostly just went with it. Admittedly there are some large 'interest groups' that at least try to push certain trends; the pushing of soy-based products like soy milks and what nots are largely a result of efforts to get more money out of what used to be considered waste streams, or at least elements with a lesser economical value, but they mostly try to play into the 'scientific trends' rather than influencing all that much. From what I've seen the sugar and corn syrup industries have been guilty of this to a far larger extent.

But to be honest... the main reason the scientific state of nutritional science is so bad is that it's simply really hard to do within the ethical constraints one normally has. You simply cannot test these things in an experimental setting, so there's always a billion variables you can control. There's a lot of covariations and confounded variables that really muddy the waters and make it very hard to isolate the effect of individual variables.

Another issue is that within research settings things are often categorized together that aren't necessarily equivalent. For example when you just measure 'meat consumption', there's a pretty big difference whether one eats those in the form of steaks from free-range grass-fed biological fancy happy cows, or in the form of processed fast-food trash burgers filled with growth hormones and covered & bundled in complete trash. Yet in research it's often all thrown together. There's tons of more issues like these that plague pretty much every research done in this field, and for every hole you plug you discover 3 new ones, and it's simply impossible to take into account or compensate for all the different variables you can't control.

 

[Paraffin]

Peanut oil is the one I use most. I like the (relatively) neutral flavor and high smoke point. Always used for wok cooking, or mixed 50/50 with butter for cooking eggs. Great for deep frying, or as a thin film for pan-searing steaks or fish with a little butter added at the end to finish.

Olive oil for lower-temp cooking like sweating onions and garlic, or saute'ing vegetables.

Saved and filtered bacon grease as an all-purpose flavor additive.

Once in a while I'll use coconut cream for something like a curry or curry-like sauce. I buy cans of coconut milk and skim the cream layer off the top. Not too worried about health issues one way or the other, because I don't make curries that often.

My wife likes using canola oil, so we keep a big bottle of that. I never use it, not a fan of the taste and I don't see anything good about it except that it's cheap. She also cooks occasionally with commercial lard (Crisco), and would use chicken fat (schmaltz) for some of her Mom's Eastern European recipes, if she could find it locally. We don't go through enough chicken to hassle with rendering it ourselves.

 

[Grunt173]

So far,it doesn't look like there are to many fans/users, of Avacado oil.

 

[DamageInc]

So far,it doesn't look like there are to many fans/users, of Avacado oil.

In Denmark it's incredibly expensive.

 

[Grunt173]

In Denmark it's incredibly expensive.

I see. lol,it might be expensive here in the States too but since my wife brought it home and won't tell me what she paid for it,I have no idea. Maybe she doesn't want me to know,do you think?

 

[StonedEdge]

In Denmark it's incredibly expensive.

In Canada, too

 

[DamageInc]

I know that all too well. Here it's around 7 dollars for 500ml for neutral avocado oil. I can get a liter of rapeseed oil for a dollar fifty. I'd rather get duck or goose fat if I'm paying much more than that.

 

[Jovidah]

In Denmark it's incredibly expensive.

Same here; that stuff is like 40 euros per liter. It's one of those typical hipsteroils that's only sold by treehugger-shops. It's the kind of stuff vegan delusionals throw on their salads along with agave syrup 'because they don't eat sugar'....

Makes me think... what part of the avocado is it even made of? If it's made of the pits, isn't just another case of selling what's essentially derived from a wasteproduct at top prices because gullible people don't know any better?
Kinda like grapeseed oil. The stuff is sold for top money in small bottles for cutting boards, cooking and what not... yet it turns out it's actually relatively cheap in bulk at the wholesaler (~3 euro per liter) because it's actually a wasteproduct from the wineindustry. They have all these grapeseeds and nothing better to do with them than squeeze them for oil...

 

[DamageInc]

The 7 dollars per 500ml is low grade neutral avocado oil. The cold pressed stuff is much more expensive. It's a damn scam.

My sister buys it. But then again, she also buys gluten free lentil pasta, drinks soy milk, and makes tofu burgers.

 

[Paraffin]

Never used avocado oil, but a quick Googling reveals that it's made from the pulp, with the pit and skin removed. The pulp is pressed, and then run through a centrifuge to draw out the oil and water. Final step is recovering the oil floating on top of the water.

So it isn't waste product. Considering how little "oil" is actually in the pulp, compared to some other sources, it might help to explain the high cost (along with hipster inflation). I'm still not very interested in trying it, since the oils I use are working fine. Not sure what I'd actually use it for?

 

[Jovidah]

Never used avocado oil, but a quick Googling reveals that it's made from the pulp, with the pit and skin removed. The pulp is pressed, and then run through a centrifuge to draw out the oil and water. Final step is recovering the oil floating on top of the water.

So it isn't waste product. Considering how little "oil" is actually in the pulp, compared to some other sources, it might help to explain the high cost (along with hipster inflation). I'm still not very interested in trying it, since the oils I use are working fine. Not sure what I'd actually use it for?

Haha, looks like we were reading at the same time. Yeah sounds like they're actually using at least part of the flesh, so it's not a pure waste product.
To be honest what really stands out to me is the high smoke point. If it was a lot cheaper I might give it a go for that, but at it's current price I just don't want to pay 5x as much for a few degrees extra.
Other than that it might be really healthy when raw (kinda like EVOO)... didn't dig too deep on that. But most of those benefits on vegetable oils tend to dissapear once you heat for frying anyway.

 

[DamageInc]

If you are buying avocado oil for health benefits, you might as well just eat a damn avocado.

 

[Jovidah]

If you are buying avocado oil for health benefits, you might as well just eat a damn avocado.

Haha... yeah. Most likely eating the avocado would be healthier too. Lately it's become a trend to juicy and pulverize lots of fruits and veggies, which doesn't necessarily make it a healthier way to consume (from a glycemic point of view).
Especially with fruits its mindboggling; there's such a wide choice in fruit juices these days which are promoted as 'healthy' but in practise are a lot closer to all the other diabetes-linked soft drinks. Kinda weird... considering how many fruits are basically already in a shape or form that's ready-to-consume. No need to juice it and put it in a bottle.

 

[MontezumaBoy]

I use avocado oil a bit but generally for searing (typically at higher temps) given the smoke point is quite high ... flavor is neutral / cost is around $10 per 1 Litter, I think, although I am always looking for it on sale (that price is for cold pressed). Can't speak to 'benefits' - health, or otherwise, but nice to have an oil that can get super hot ...

Other oils used, more generally, canola-peanut (sear/saute, Extra Virgin - myriad and for anything YUMMY duck fat ... which is either from the birds or I can get 2#'s for $15 locally / cheaper in quantities.

Try it and see if you like it ...

I see. lol,it might be expensive here in the States too but since my wife brought it home and won't tell me what she paid for it,I have no idea. Maybe she doesn't want me to know,do you think?