Choose Your Vegetable Oils Wisely

Even though you hear in the news almost every day that olive oil is one of the healthier oils to eat, many people believe it’s the only oil they should be eating.  That’s just not true.  You really need to consider not only the nutrient profile of the oil but also it’s cooking capabilities.  When you’re cooking with vegetable oils, you need to know about its smoke point.  The smoke point refers to the temperature at which a fat or oil begins to break down to its component parts.  You really don’t want that to happen to have a perfectly cooked dish.

Fat is composed of a glycerol backbone and free fatty acids.  As temperatures increase, the glycerol and fatty acids start to break apart.  Then the glycerol part continues to break down becoming what is known as acrolein.  At high enough temperatures, the acrolein sends up that bluish smoke that can irritate your eyes and throat.  It’s also what makes the oil become acidic tasting and can ruin your dish.

You don’t always want to use olive oil when cooking since other fats may be more appropriate for the type of cooking you’re doing.  Look at the following table and you can see why you may want to use refined safflower oil, for example, if you’re frying but use walnut oil in a salad dressing that doesn’t need to be heated.  The safflower oil can be heated up to 510 degrees F before the oil starts to break apart as compared to the walnut oil that can only be heated to 320 degrees F. 

You’ll also notice from the table how the unrefined form of an oil has a lower smoking point.  Check out the unrefined soybean oil whose smoke point is 320 degrees F, whereas the refined soybean oil’s smoke point is 450 degrees F.  The same applies to extra-virgin pressed olive oil as compared to virgin.  If you want the nutritional profile of olive oil (because of its high monounsaturated fat content), choose regular oil when cooking instead of the extra-virgin variety (and save some money).

If you’re doing a quick saute, you probably are safe with almost any of the oils.  However, when you consider how expensive oils such as almond oil or walnut oil are, save them for when you finish a dish (such as with salad dressings or toppings) because cooking with them isn’t going to influence the flavor of the final product enough to warrant the cost. 

Also, when choosing an oil consider what you want the final dish to taste like.  Oils such as almond, avocado, hazelnut, sesame, and walnut each has its own profile.  Maybe buy a bottle of each and do a side-by-side taste test.  Get a good feel for what are their flavor components so when you choose one, you’ll know what to expect in your final dish.

By the way, keep in mind what’s known as the flash point.  That’s when you’ve heated the oil so much above its smoke point that you can have combustion.  Not a good thing!

*Source: Wikipedia

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Tags: almond oil, avocado oil, butter, canola oil, corn oil, flash point, flax seed oil, hazelnut oil, macadamia oil, olive oil, peanut oil, safflower oil, sesame oil, smoke point, sunflower oil, walnut oil