Cooking oil?

I am a man and don't cook much!
My wife uses olive oil because we have read so many good reports about it.

Perhaps your best option is to use the web and search for [cooking with different oil] omitting the brackets.
Google finds many pages and one of the first lists all the oils with their advantages and disadvantages.

Read several serious looking sites and draw your conclusions from what you find.
I hope this helps you, and good cooking!!

Canola is a monosaturated oil (from grapeseed or rapeseed) as olive oil is monsaturated - and quite different than butter and lard which are highly saturated fats. Both of those - monosaturated or highly saturated - should be distinguished from synthetic trans fats, the kind of fats you find in the products along the cookie aisle (partially hydrogenated soybean oil, whatever - the key words being "partially hydrogenated".)

If I run across a good website to explain all this, I'll come back and post it.

15-W-40

Olive oil, as I like the taste of it. Sometimes I use (real) butter.

Well, for a start, here's Snopes.com's refutation of the bad rap canola oil got quite a while ago, and why it isn't true -
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/canola.asp

Wikipedia.com has a pretty good chart on cooking oils and fats, although the page I looked at didn't go much into the various pros and cons of health aspects - it is still very useful for understanding cooking temperatures, etc.

Speaking off the top of my head -
Generally, the monosaturates are best for health, but some oils previously thought terrible (nut oils, which can be a poor choice for someone allergic to nuts) have gained in new regard for various reasons (their omega 3 content?).

Margerine can be good or bad, have trans fats (baddies) or not. Label reading important for margerine.

Butter and lard in excess is plain dumb, but in someways not so bad as fthe synthetic trans fats (partially hydrogenated fats). Good butter is hard to beat for flavoring for certain dishes.

Personally, I have a bottle of canola at hand, usually for some kinds of baking; a bottle of pure olive oil for things I want to add olive oil to that will be heated; a bottle of good extra virgin olive oil, for salads and bread dipping (that is, not heated extensively); and butter. The one that disappears by far the fastest is the pure olive oil.

I have some walnut oil in case I want to make a pizza with mozzarella, a little gorgonzola, some walnuts, and a dribble of walnut oil...

On the different olive oils, a good evo (extra virgin) can cost a lot of money, and that is (I'm told) wasted as you might just as well use "pure", the way cheaper product, when you subject the oil to a lot of heat.

I forgot - when I checked Wikipedia, the article listed both grapeseed oil and rape seed (canola), and they have differing amounts of monosaturation, the canola being best. So I was incorrect above saying canola was grapeseed or rapeseed.

Ialso use sunflower oil. It seems to stand the heat of a skillet better than olive, and doesn't have the intrusive taste of canola. I got this suggestion from Mr. Stillwater on my own cooking oil question, and have used it ever since.

I use olive oil for almost everything. Canola for baking and asian cooking. I look for low-saturated-fat oils which come from foods we would naturally eat - NOT safflower oil, not palm oil, etc. I may look into corn oil instaead of canola. Sometimes I use butter with the olive oil when cooking eggs, risotto, and roux-based soups.

We make infusions of olive oil (cooking grade cause it holds up to heat better than eV) and lotsa garlic smashed chunks. Takes a brief hit in the microwave with about 6 cloves per 8oz (smashed to hell or very thinly sliced) then cool and let stand in the frig for a few weeks. Then use as quickly as you can cause the sugars get the oild rancid in a few weeks. We have no problem using it in a week or so.

My ex, the cad (kidding), was always the better cook. He added a teaspoon or tablespoon of butter, whatever made sense, at the end of cooking some sauces.

I guess I now wonder about the corn oil... is it all whatchacallit corn oil?
That's another whole subject, re the genetically modified everything. I'm not clear on my opinion on that except that I hate to see whole vegetables cut down to one predominant type that ships well.

Stillwater, how I wish he'd post more often.

Not sure, but when I was looking for oils, it seems corn oil didn't rank anywhere close to olive or canola, healthwise. So far as taste and withstanding heat, it is just fine.

I sooo understand Farmerman...

Roger, by the way, my refrigerator stopped singing! (I hit it, moved it about 3/4").

Anyone know a good website that nails all this re both nutrition and flavor? (I'm dumb on flavor, with my nose). I bet Jane Brody in the NY Times would be up to date on all the pros and cons, although she's had a history of oats and groats bent that got pretty boring a while ago.
Maybe Gina Kolata?

Corn oil is probably a poly, not the worst thing in the fat world right now. Maybe I'll go drag up that Wiki article.

My own little cooking oil thread.

Oh, yeah. Sometimes appliances make noise because they are out of level. Sometimes, they just need a little discipline.

Here's Wikipedia on it (somewhere I read there were 28 pages).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_oils











Just saw your link quickly, Roger...

Sometimes the weasel comes up with sooth.

I always make an example of my toater when something doesnt work right.

"ALRIGHT , start working or the toaster gets it"

Haven't clicked on your thread yet, but I know olive oil doesn't like extreme high heats - people have often used peanut oil for that (thinks to self, you should look at the chart before making these claims.. but that is my memory.)

I really - really really - don't need my refrigerator bearing going out now. So, I am glad I did the old refrigerator heave ho, urk, oof, after discussion with Roger at some point. I checked the level, a smidge off. What the hell, I gathered my wits and moved it a bit. Otherwise it'd still be whistling.

Back to olive oil, your post is useful, farmer.