Cooking Oils

Most people prefer to cook their food on a frying pan or in a baking dish these days…if they cook at home at all.  Obviously we encourage people to make their own food and prepare dishes at home for the health benefits and the overall satisfaction of making your own meals.  Not to mention the amount of appreciation your family will give you if you can actually pull off a great meal.

The problem is, however, that most people are cooking with the wrong types of oils and non-stick additives to ensure their food doesn’t adhere to the pan they are using.  In fact, most people use the exact wrong types of non-stick solutions! We also use oils for flavor and to add a certain character to food (i.e. crisp outer layer on veggies, searing a steak, etc.).  However, using the wrong type of oil at the wrong temperature can cause the oil to become rancid.  That is, the oil releases free radicals that then begin to eat away at your body and could lead to serious long term illnesses, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, skin diseases, inflammation, etc. 

In order to ensure you are using safe oils for cooking and heating, I strongly suggest you review the smoking point of these various oils.  If you are going to be cooking at higher temperatures, be sure to select an oil with a high smoking point.  For baking, obviously you can use the majority of the oils on here since they are mixed in with all the other ingredients and won’t turn rancid.  For seasoning a cast iron skillet, use flaxseed oil.

Although we want to ensure we are giving our families the best possible health benefits of these oils (monounsaturated and high in Omega-3′s and ALA), we still want to avoid the downside that these oils have as well.  That’s why knowing what the smoking point of oils is important to ensure healthy levels of fats and reducing free radicals.  However, oil can turn rancid just sitting on your shelf, and naturally decomposes over time.  Polyunsaturated fats decompose and break down the fastest, so ditch the vegetable oil altogether.  Polyunsaturated fats cause vegetable oil to turn rancid very quickly, and this happens even faster when the oil is used for cooking, so just get rid of it altogether and find a suitable replacement.

To keep oils free of free radicals as long as possible, store all oils in a cool, dry, place, preferably the refrigerator.  This will help to keep the oils safe for as long as possible.  Also, buying oils high in saturated and monounsaturated fats will help minimize the total number of free radicals and rancid oils from entering yours and  your family’s bodies.  Our best recommendation is to use coconut oil or butter for cooking in pans and baking dishes for most cooking.  If you are using low temperature cooking, then using olive oil is okay, but if the oil starts smoking, then toss it out and start over.  

Wikipedia has a great list of oils and their properties, so you might wnt to check these out as well.