What cooking oil do you use?

Sandra Piddock

Sandra Piddock

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I tend to use extra virgin olive oil for most of my shallow frying, and sunflower oil for my husband's occasional treat of chips. I find it makes the food taste better, as well as being a healthy alternative to vegetable oil. I've tried the various spray-on oils, but they all seem to compromise on taste, and anyway, everyone needs some healthy fat in their diet.

What about you? What's your cooking oil of choice?
 
Where to start. Depends on what is being made and what time of year it is.

I have some Spanish Extra Virgin Olive oil my mum brought back from spain for me. I have recently finished the greek version of the same.
I have cold pressed, unrefined Sunflower oil, red palm fruit oil, toasted sesame seed oil, ground nut oil and hazelnut oil. Its possible there may be one or two others lurking. Some get used more in summer for salads and some are more for cakes/cooking whilst others are more frying. The Sunflower Oil tends to get the most use because I don't want anything with too much flavour for the indian recipes that we are doing a lot of at the moment. The toasted sesame seed oil is a specialist thing for one of my recipes that requires a nut oil (hazelnut oil is too expensive for that recipe). The hazelnut oil is for the christmas cake - you have to grease the greaseproof paper and anything else makes the cake taste odd - the cake having hazelnuts & walnuts in it, so either could be used.

It's same with vinegars. They all have different uses and they get purchased as they are needed.
 
Ordinary veg oil for cooking, and olive oil (sometimes extra virgin, sometimes not, depends what's on offer) for things like dressings or tossing pasta in.

Plus a little bottle of sesame oil for a simple noodle sauce - sesame oil and soy sauce sprinkled over noodles or stirfry.
 
I once put a litre of extra virgin olive oil in the car and got 84mpg out if it!
The rest of the time I just cook with olive oil, or if I have to shallow fry then ordinary vegetable oil.
 
Extra virgin olive oil for just about everything.
SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
Where to start.

I have cold pressed, unrefined Sunflower oil, red palm fruit oil, toasted sesame seed oil, ground nut oil and hazelnut oil. Its
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Do they make an appreciable difference? I've never tried other oils to be honest. Maybe I'm missing out.:unsure:
 
colly said:
Extra virgin olive oil for just about everything.


Do they make an appreciable difference? I've never tried other oils to be honest. Maybe I'm missing out.:unsure:
Click to expand...
yes they make a difference. Olive oil has a strong taste and does not work with all meals. for the homecooked indian's I use the cold pressed sunflower oil. For anything with a strong nutty flavour, I'll use one of the nut oils. Anything in a wok tends to work best with sesame or toasted sesame seed oil. ground nut oil has a bland taste which goes un-noticed (assuming the person is not allergic to peanuts - that is.
 
Local rape seed oil "pratts" ok for dressings ,great yellow colour,find some olive oils to over powering,sun flower for frying and speciality oils as and when I have som pucca white truffle oil but is very strong, stinks the room for days
 
Just seen that rape seed oil supplies will be down this year,and the fields do look shabby ,due to a pesticide being banned which caused a threat to bees !
So looks like I'll have to use more police oil this coming year
 
I like virgin olive oil, and have started to use coconut oil or palm oil for cooking and I do have to say I am really liking the coconut oil. You would think it might be sweet or heavy but actually it is not and it holds up very well to high heat frying. I think that has always been my complaint on the olive oil, it just seems to get absorbed or break down on prolonged high heat cooking.

This summer I think i am going to try my hand at infusing some oil with some of the herbs that I have in the garden. i also found this recipe for an Asian five ingredient oil that looks really divine. Any advice on what not to use would be greatly appreciate.
 
I was really big on extra virgin olive simply because it was just being presented as the must have at one time. It's so expensive here and therefore I would always ship some home whenever I traveled back in the day. These days I don't do nearly as much traveling so I get most of my oil at home and often my husband will just buy some canola oil which is also pricey to me. Sunflower I have not had in a while.
 
Really depends. Olive oil / sunflower oil / butter, depending on what I'm cooking and what I have at hand at the time. Butter seems to bring the best taste to many dishes but for obvious reasons you might not want to use that with every meal in large quantities. So yeah I just kinda decide on the spot which of the 3 I'll use, but it's always one of those.
 
I like to use different oils for different applications. I use butter and olive oil to saute things, and I try to use vegetable oil sparingly. I prefer to use more natural oils and fats. I have recently started using coconut oil for high heat cooking, and I keep a supply of bacon fat in the fridge to use for everything from making soups and stews to cooking hamburgers.
 
I tend to use vegetable oil for frying. If the oil is an actual ingredient in a meal, rather than for using as a cooking method, then I use extra virgin olive oil. I can't stand cooking with animal fats, such as lard, even though I am not a vegetarian.
 
I had three kinds of cooking oil in my kitchen....Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, Canola Oil and Grape Seed Oil.... I used them for my cooking either for sauteing, deep frying, stir frying or for making vegetable salad dressing. Each had its own unique taste and application that is suited for cooking a certain dish and I used them in different ways.
 
The oil I use is based on what I'm cooking. I use olive and canola oil on a regular basis. Butter, coconut and bacon grease all have their places too.

Olive oil doesn't have a very high smoke point compared to canola oil, but I've found canola can give off a funky fishy smell if it gets too terribly hot. Peanut and coconut oil are good for cooking foods that require ultra hot pans. I love eggs, fried potatoes and sautéed mushrooms cooked in bacon grease, but only for special treats. And - since we're finding saturated fat may not be as bad as previously thought, good old butter can't be beat for scrambled eggs or grilled cheese....yum!
 
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