What Fats & Oils I Recommend You Cook With…

I was brought up being told that the only oil you should ever cook with was olive oil.  Olive oil is fairly cheap, has a beautiful flavor and is very easy to cook with. While consuming olive oil brings with it many health benefits, I recently discovered that when used to cooks with, maybe it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be…

I’m by no means and expert on this but I have done a lot of reading and this is what I have discovered:

• Most of the nutrition and health benefits of consuming olive oil is lost when it is heated
• Olive oil has a very low smoke point which means it can not handle a lot of heat and loses its nutritional benefits when heated
• When you cook with it, it burns very quickly and the chemical composition changes which causes it to be toxic to the body

Olive oil is still a great option to use cold such as drizzled on salads as a dressing

 

Instead I choose to cook with the following oils and fats:

Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is a fairly new addition to my pantry but I have to say I absolutely LOVE it. It does have a subtle coconut flavor which can scare some people off cooking with it, but I am yet to find something that doesn’t taste amazing cooked in it.

Without getting too scientific, coconut oil while being high in saturated fat, it is made up of medium chain fatty-acids. Our bodies immediately converts this fat in the liver into energy rather than storing it in the body as fat.

Coconut oil is said to be antibacterial and is also great for helping with digestion issues such as irritable bowel syndrome.

My favourite brand of coconut oil is Niugini Organics. It is reasonable priced, easy to buy and has a beautiful flavor which is quite subtle. One of the great benefits of this brand is the fancy jar that is come in which is great to recycle and reuse after you have finished the oil. I use the jars to store nuts, flours and any other pantry item.

 

Organic Butter

I’m sure most of you will agree with me that anything cooked in butter is absolutely delicious as it has a beautiful, rich flavor which you just cant get enough of mmmmm!!!

Because of the milk fat content of butter it does burn fairly easily so I would generally only cook at a low to medium heats. I like to cook things like my morning omelette and sautéed vegetables such as zucchini and mushrooms.

 

 Organic Ghee

 

Ghee (also called clarified butter) is something that I have only recently been introduced too and I can’t tell you how much it has changed my life!!!!

Ghee is butter that has had the milk fat removed leaving just the “butter oil”. Unlike butter which burns quite easily, ghee has a high smoke point which means that it is great for roasting and frying.

A lot of paleo recipes use grass fed organic ghee which is meant to be great nutritionally for you. I buy it when I can but it is just so god damn expensive that quite often I just buy any organic ghee I can get my hands on.

I use ghee for roasting vegetables such as potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potato, carrots and parsnip. The flavor it gives them is absolutely delicious!!!

Try using ghee with my roast veggie salad recipe. You will love it 🙂