Best oil for frying

There many different ideas about this question! Best from what point of view? Do you mean 'healthiest' or to achieve best results? It also depends on what you are frying...
 
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The advice on what is healthiest is irrelevant really - it will probably change before you manage to use a bottle of whatever it is was recommended at the time. But it does matter what you are frying - if it's fish and chips then it has to be [for deep frying - the only way] dripping.
 
healthy_cooking said:
What are the best oils for frying?
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I've got a deep fryer, and I also have a massive pot that I use for frying a turkey. And, there's also pan frying, which I'm defining as using enough oil to cook the surface, but not immerse the food. I have two different answers for deep frying vs. pan frying.

Deep Frying

I usually use canola oil. It's cheap, it cooks the way I want it to, and it doesn't add anything to the flavor of the food. Vegetable oil has the same properties, and is also usually about the same price. It's also perfectly acceptable to use sunflower oil or peanut oil: they're usually more expensive, but they have a higher smoke point, which is desirable when dealing with massive quantities (3+ gallons, which I need to fry a turkey).

The one oil I never use for deep frying is extra virgin olive oil. I know, this is going to sound like sacrilege, considering my Italian heritage. But, EVOO has a bitterness that comes out when it's heated. I also find that sesame oil - much as I love it as a seasoning of sorts for Asian dishes - overpowers a dish if it's used for frying.

Pan Frying

I think of a pan fry as being about transforming the surface of the food you're cooking. I have used EVOO here when I want to impart some of that bitterness, and I do like that effect when sauteing garlic and such. If you look at it this way, then you have a whole world of oils you can use. You can still use canola oil if you just want to crisp up the surface, but you can also use more aromatic oils if you want to have a different effect.
 
For frying using a high heat/deep fat frying, I use rapeseed oil. For light frying over a low heat I use olive oil - I have two types, one a general frying olive oil without much flavour, and EVOO. The EVOO I have is delicious but definitely imparts a flavour to food, which may not always be appropriate, and I find the general frying olive oil is best to use in foods where I don't want or need to add any extra flavour (such as curries and other spicy foods, or even eggs!).
 
For the deep fryer I buy canola (rapeseed) but I wish cottonseed was available in non commercial quantities.

I almost never fry in olive oil as it doesn't like high temps & using good quality EVOO is wasteful imho.

If I'm using the wok I normally use peanut oil as I believe it copes best with very high heat.

If I'm cooking eggs I almost always us butter, unless I want a crispy fried egg for nasi or some such then I use peanut oil


I actually want to source macadamia oil, but that's for my hair :whistling:
 
Frizz1974 said:
I almost never fry in olive oil as it doesn't like high temps & using good quality EVOO is wasteful imho. If I'm using the wok I normally use peanut oil as I believe it copes best with very high heat.
If I'm cooking eggs I almost always us butter, unless I want a crispy fried egg for nasi or some such then I use peanut oil
I actually want to source macadamia oil, but that's for my hair :whistling:
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I agree - never use olive oil for high temperature frying. I don't think using EVOO is wasteful if you get one with a good, full flavour and need to impart that flavour.
I very rarely use peanut oil, although there is plenty in the peanut butter I use if I just need a little :laugh:, and I don't use butter for frying eggs because I don't like the taste.
I won't have macadamia nuts or oil in the house, as they are toxic to animals (and some humans); although some cat, and presumably human, shampoos do contain the oil, I still wouldn't have it in the house.
 
At home I tend to use mostly canola oil in the pan for fry browning or searing meats and veggies.
In the commercial cooking environment, my general practice is to use half and half, olive oil and vegetable oil (occasionally canola) for pan sear and saute, as well as "brush and mark" of beef and pork cuts, some seafood as well. This nicely affords the advantages of both--the fuller more complex flavour of olive oil, while the vegetable oil nicely raises the smoke point to a more practical cooking/searing level.
Ive done this for years, but now of course you can buy premade olive oil "blends" that accomplish the same purpose.
 
For shallow frying I normally use ghee. I can't remember the last time I deep fried anything.....for chips I use the Actifry with either a spoonful of ghee or goose fat. I have occasionally used olive oil for frying but I agree it doesn't handle heat well and is not great in terms of flavour transfer so it tends to be an oil of last resort (ie. I've run out of everything else).
 
Yep, I use it for pretty much anything I'd use oil for: sauteing veg, searing meat, and yes also for softening onions for a sauce or for a pie filling.Fried eggs work particularly well because ghee has a slight nutty butter flavour that goes well with eggs (even though I drain eggs on kitchen towel some oil always makes it's way onto the plate).
 
For deep frying, we use vegetable oil. I think canola oil is like cilantro (Chinese parsley), you are either in the camp of hate it or like it. I'm in the hate camp for canola oil, but in the love camp for cilantro. I deep fried a turkey once and used peanut oil. We don't deep fry much anymore. When we are pan frying the oil is most often evoo, but we have a more expensive evoo for finishing. I make a spicy pork meatball for a bahn mi that the recipe calls for browning the meatballs in sesame oil. The flavor is out of this world. I like Mexican food a lot. For carnitas I use Manteca or leaf lard for frying and to make tamale dough.
 
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