How To Choose & Use Cooking Oils
A cooking oil is the purified fat of a plant origin. Although the amount of fat as a component of daily food consumption can be controversial, oils are essential in many types of cooking.
An excessive consumption of fat has been proved correlated with coronary heart disease. However, this does not mean that you should not consume any fat at all. The American Food & Drug Administration recommends that 30% or less of your daily calories should come from fat. For other nutritionists, it is only 10%.
That’s why you should choose the cooking oils you are using with care depending on your type of food and your personal health condition.
Why using different types of cooking oils?
There are many different kinds of edible vegetable oils available on the market, with different properties, in particular different levels of saturated fat (bad fat). You should vary the types of oils you are using as part of a balanced diet.
It’s also important to mention that heating an oil can change its characteristics. Because some oils can be unhealthy when heated above a certain temperature, you should use different oils for high-temperature frying, for medium-temperature frying or for dressings.
The most commonly used cooking oils
The following 4 cooking oils (sunflower, olive, peanut and soybean oils) are to be found in any supermarket. They can be used as complementary sources of good fat.
- Sunflower oil - 11% saturated fat - suitable for cooking, frying and salad dressing
- Olive oil - 14% saturated fat - suitable for stir-frying, frying and salad dressing
- Peanut oil - 18% saturated fat - suitable for deep-frying
- Soybean oil - 15% saturated fat - suitable for salad dressing
Cooking oils labelled as “vegetable oil” are a blend of a variety of oils often based on palm, corn, soybean or sunflower oils. Among those, palm oil is particularly high in saturated fat. Therefore I prefer to avoid them for cooking.
Selection of less common oils
The following cooking oils are more difficult to find and often more expensive as well. They are available in shops specialised in organic products or you can buy them online.
Because of their price, they are not to be used in your everyday cooking, but they can bring a special flavour to some of your dishes.
- Argan oil - 12% saturated fat - suitable for salad dressing & couscous - very expensive, North Africa
- Grapeseed oil - 12% saturated fat - suitable for cooking, salad dressing, marinating - mainly produced in Italy, France & Spain
- Hazelnut oil - 8% saturated fat - suitable for salad dressing
- Saffflower oil - 10% saturated fat - suitable for cooking and salad dressing - this oil is flavourless and colourless
- Walnut oil - 8% saturated fat - suitable for salad dressing
Cooking oils to avoid
Two vegetable oils in particular are very high in saturated fat and should not be used for cooking, or at least used with care: coconut oil and palm oil.
- Coconut oil - 92% saturated fat - used in commercially baked goods, candy and sweets, whipped toppings
- Palm oil - 52% saturated fat - used for cooking, flavouring and in vegetable oil
Cooking oils I have in my kitchen
There are some cooking oils that I always have in my kitchen: olive oil (directly imported from France where it’s much cheaper) and sunflower oil. I use them for dressings and stir-frying.
At the moment, I also have corn oil for deep-frying and grapeseed oil for dressing.
When we were in France, we also used to buy walnut oil or hazelnut oil quite often, because we like the flavour they give to salad dressings. However, I find them way too expensive in the UK and haven’t bought any since we live here.
In short
- Variation is always good: try to use different oils depending on what you are cooking and how you are cooking it.
- Some cooking oils mentioned above may be a luxury treat, but several of them are affordable and widely available.
- Prefer oils with a low level of saturated fat.
What about you? What cooking oils do you use and what for?
(c) photo by LeWaggis via Flickr
Most Popular Posts
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Hey there!
Well, I kind of cook everything with olive oil, I love it! But sometimes, for example in a tomato salad, I like to put walnut oil and garlic, it is just delicious!
And I don’t know much of the other types of oils but I think I will try other ones… if you put some in your recipe, i will try!
Thanks for the information