Earlier this week I made chocolate cake with 1/2 cup coconut oil (instead of vegetable oil like the recipe called for) AND a full stick of organic butter. I accidentally left out half the sugar, subbed white whole wheat flour for some of the all-purpose and even used some homemade yogurt instead of buttermilk.
You may as well call my cake a science experiment, because my ingredient list barely resembles the one in the cookbook. I didn’t even use the same pan as they suggested!
It always boils down to how it tastes though, right? And considering Mr. Crumbs and I ate nearly half the cake in less than 24 hours – without my beloved icing – it’s definitely a winner.
Until I figure out a delicious recipe of my own, nourishing my body with healthy saturated fats – especially via chocolate cake – tastes pretty good!
We’re not limited to just baking when it comes to eating saturated fats. It’s really all the other times we’re roasting, grilling, broiling, deep-frying, stir-frying and simmering that matter most.
Those are the times we’re more inclined to grab whatever oil happens to be nearby and jump in to cooking, without giving much thought to how the cooking method could possibly change the molecular structure of our oil. Kinda scary when we think about it, right?
So let’s talk about these methods and how we can cook with saturated fats to keep us healthy and stop causing us to become sick.
How to Choose Good Fats for Cooking
Determining the smoke point of fats and oils is essential to knowing when to use what fat. The smoke point is the temperature at which the fat or oil begins to smoke. When an oil smokes it is starting to create free-radicals. And free-radicals are not good.
If we know the smoke point of the fat AND how we’re cooking our food, it becomes a simple matching game. There is one big thing to consider though before I spill all these awesome numbers: the numbers aren’t exact.
Both smoke points and cooking temperatures are approximations. The purity of the fat, time passed since original pressing, the tools used and even the methods used to determine the smoke points can affect the final outcome. This explains why through the many sources I’ve read, some temperatures vary up to 25°F. The temperatures below are an average of the temperatures most agreed upon, but keep the variance in mind when you’re choosing the best fat for your cooking project.
The Numbers on Good Fats
Smoke Points
Avocado Oil: 520°F*
Ghee (clarified butter): 485° F
Palm Oil: 450° F
Peanut Oil: 450°F
Sesame Oil: 450°F**
Hazelnut Oil: 430°F**
Tallow (rendered beef fat): 420°F
Almond Oil: 420°F*
Macadamia Oil: 400°F**
Walnut Oil: 400°F**
Coconut Oil (unrefined): 350°F
Butter: 350°F
Clarified Butter: 450°F
Lard: 375°F
Extra Virgin Olive Oil: 375°F
Flax Seed Oil: 225°F**
* Avocado oil is expensive (to the tune of $19 per liter!) which is why we don’t hear of it being used in high-temperature cooking often. Its flavor is only moderately strong, but some may not prefer their fried chicken to remind them of guacamole.
** Almond oil, sesame oil, hazelnut oil, macadamia oil and walnut oil are also expensive and each have distinct flavors that are usually not desired in dishes that require high heat (sesame flavored French fries anyone?). These oils are most often used at the end of cooking specifically for their flavors, not their smoke points.
Cooking Methods
Baking: 200-425°F
Roasting: 300-350°F
Grilling: 300-600°F, sometimes as high as 800°F
Deep-Frying: 350-375°F
Stir-Frying: 350-375°F
Boiling: 212°F
Simmering: 180-205°F
Matching Up Good Fats
Baking: The large range in baking allows us to use a variety of fats, but anyone who has baked a chocolate cake knows that you can’t just always throw in whatever you want and have the end result taste good. This is a topic worthy of its own post. You can find more on baking fats HERE.
Roasting: Most roasting recipes call for butter, olive oil or a combination of those. Both of these begin to smoke at the upper limit of the roasting range, so take care when using fats for roasting purposes. If you’re basting for added moisture, consider using broth in place of fat. When roasting vegetables, try to not roast higher than 350°F and allow the food to roast longer.
Recipe Ideas: Ridiculously Easy Potato Skins // Crash Hot Sweet Potatoes // Perfect Crispy Potato Wedges
Grilling: This one is very tricky. Some sources say that grilling period is harmful to your health. But using olive oil and citrus can combat the toxic effects that could occur from charcoal grilling. But then there’s the risk of free-radicals at high temperatures (which can occur one the grill). Other sources stick with the smoke point vs. grilling temperature and advise not to use olive oil.
I’m undecided which is better, to use olive oil or not, and I’ll leave it up to you to decide for your family. (We sure do love our grill!)
One option is to use Clarified Butter. The process to make clarified butter removes the milk solids giving the butter a much higher smoke point, 450F! This makes it safer to use at higher temperatures such as grilling.
Deep-Frying: Palm oil, tallow and peanut oil are the most commonly used oil for deep-frying because of their high smoke points. Not everyone has heard of palm oil and tallow requires some work up front (gotta render it from raw beef fat). That leaves peanut oil and it’s readily available in stores for our deep frying pleasures.
Peanut oil is mostly monounsaturated, so it’s not the best fat option (remember that saturated fat is the best), but it is suitable for frying purposes. Unless you’re the type to take a spoon to the oil leftover from deep-fried twinkie night.
Stir-Frying (or pan-frying): Like grilling, this one is tricky too. We most often stir-fry on stoves that offer temperatures such as low, medium and high. Consider yourself lucky if you’ve got even numbers ranging 0 to 10! Not only do these NOT specifically correlate with certain degree temperatures, but “low” on one oven doesn’t necessarily equate to the same “low” on another.
Stir-fry often call for olive oil and cooking over “medium-high” heat just to thin out the oil to coat the pan. My suggestion would be to cook it on medium a minute or two longer to achieve the same affect and use only as much needed. Another option would be to splurge and use one of the nut-flavored oils that are safe beyond 375°F. You would have an excellent tasting dish and greatly reduced (if not eliminated) the chance of creating free-radicals.
If you aren’t sure about using olive oil because of the free-radical issue, you could try clarified butter. The high smoke point gives you much more room to work with when needing to cook at high heat.
Recipe Ideas: Vegetable Fried Rice // Pan Seared Broccoli // Homemade Chicken Nuggets
Boiling and Simmering: I added these temperatures in just to round out the list, but personally haven’t come across any recipes asking me to boil or simmer oil. Not sure what I would do if I did! Anyway, it’s there in case ya’ll find one. And if you do, let me know!
Final Note: just because we’re using a fat with a certain smoke point IN our cooking, and we cook at a temperature CLOSE to the smoke point, doesn’t necessarily mean that the fat we used is actually getting to that temperature.
Choosing good fats for cooking is really all about matching the right oil with the right temperature. Choosing oils high in saturated fats will give you higher smoke points and the ability to cook at higher heat. Save the olive oil for dressings!
This is so helpful, and something I’ve always wondered about with marinated meats on a hot grill, or marinated veggies that you roast in a very hot oven – with olive oil! I guess that wasn’t the best oil to use, after all! Coconut oil gets tricky to work with, since it becomes solid when it gets cold. Marinating in these fats would be hard, but perhaps the meat could just be dipped in a WARM fat with seasonings added and then placed right on the grill. It would still flavor the meat (although not as much as lengthy marinating) but not allow it to get cold enough to turn chunky. I am constantly trying to get around having my coconut oil chunk up in my quick bread recipes when colder ingredients are added. Finally, what do you think about a pizza dough recipe that includes EVOO if it is baked at 425? Would the oil itself actually reach that temp. if it is mixed into a dough? -Joy
Joy,
I apologize for the delayed answer – I didn’t realize I didn’t answer!
I do wonder what the purpose of oil is in marinating. Olive oil has some flavor, but is that what we want to impart into our meat? If it’s only used because it’s a liquid (to help tenderize), we could use a citrus instead (lime juice, lemon, pineapple, etc.) and still use seasonings for a lengthy marinade.
To answer your pizza dough questions, I honestly don’t know. It’s hard to tell how hot that actual ingredient will become when it’s mixed with other items, yet we can’t rule it out. I think it’s best to use caution whenever possible and know that we can’t always do it 100% “right.”
If you’d like, my pizza dough recipe doesn’t use olive oil. Check the thread post: https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/2012/10/basic-components-ultimate-diy-guide/
~Tiffany
What a fun and informative post Tiffany! We’ve started using more olive and coconut oil, but it’s nice to know the best oils for different types of cooking!
Anna,
Thanks for coming by! Knowing the best types of oil for cooking methods is super important – those free-radical can cause wrinkles and I don’t need any more help in that department THANKYOUVERYMUCH! 🙂 ~Tiffany
What is the smoke point of plain vegetable oil? Is peanut oil less processed than vegetable oil? My daughter is allergic to coconut so I’m leery to try coconut oil. I have made the switch to butter from any types of margarine!
Leah,
Various vegetable oils have smoke points ranging 425-475, depending on what “vegetable” the oil is made of. Yes, peanut oil is MUCH less processed than peanut oil. You know how in a jar of natural peanuts (ingredients containing only peanuts, maybe salt) the oil rises to the top? That’s peanut oil! Vegetable oil is created through a long process with lots of chemicals, and there’s great concern with the original “veg” (corn) being GMO.
Way to go on switching to butter! I don’t know if I’d recommend coconut oil with coconut allergies, but lard/butter/tallow would do the job stove-top and peanut would work for the higher-temped items. I may need to do a write up on vegetable oil – lots of good questions! ~Tiffany
Great info. I had no idea about avocado oil. Not that I will be buying some anytime soon. More likely I will be buying some grass-fed tallow for cooking.
Suzy,
I didn’t know about avocado oil either, and actually saw it on the shelf yesterday at Whole Foods (Cost Plus) while looking for tahini. I was so excited to actually know what it was! ~Tiffany
Thanks for sharing! And thank you for linking up at Wildcrafting Wednesdays!
Thanks Alix!
Great post!Olive oil is used in marinades not only to flavor but it has been shown to reduce carcinogens in meat grilled at a high temperature.I believe this is because it is high in vit E.This would seem to contradict the info presented here about free radicals being produced when the oil reaches its smoke point.I wonder if this is because the oil does not fully reach theat temperature?I would be interested in finding more info on this ….
S,
Whether or not the oil actually reaches its smoke point during cooking will be tough to prove in a regular kitchen, but I’d be interested to find out as well. The general rule of thumb is that free radicals are more freely able to form when the fat reaches its smoke point, but I’d have to look more specifically into olive oil more to better understand how vitamin E affects this. More on olive oil to come! ~Tiffany
Great info Tiffany! Thanks for sharing on The HomeAcre Hop! Hope to see you tomorrow!
http://www.theselfsufficienthomeacre.com/2013/03/the-homeacre-hop-9.html
Thank you for putting it all in a row! May I add sunflower oil? I think the refined version has a very high smoke point, my dad used it for all his deep-frying. I’m a little sad that it’s now so hard to find, I think it’s less processed than canola oil, and has an extremely mild flavour.
Any thoughts on grape seed oil? A local dietician from an integrative physician’s office just recommended that for high heat cooking.
Hi Amy,
Is grapeseed oil suitable for high heat cooking: based on it’s smoke point, yes. However, it’s classified as a polyunsaturated oil and is close to 70% omega-6. Remember that poly-fats are the bad guys because of their structure and are highly unstable, but the yellow “veg” oils aren’t the only ones that fall into this category: safflower, sunflower and grapeseed are all single oils in the same poly-fat group and we should mark them all with big red X’s and avoid them at all costs. If being a poly-fat wasn’t enough, the high percentage of omega-6 is dangerous – too much can disrupt the needed omega-3/6 balance our body needs, and now studies are showing a correlation between excess consumption of omega-6 and heart disease. This could be because many of the “heart healthy” oils are high in omega-6, but with other more stable and proven beneficial options, I personally wouldn’t use it. 🙂 ~Tiffany
Thanks for the info! Bummer. I bought some and roasted asparagus in it, and did not like the taste at all. Guess I will have to use it in the DIY cabinet cleaner recipe I just saw (baking soda + veg. oil) lol.
AmyP,
LOVE your suggestion! At least it won’t go to waste! 😉 ~Tiffany
May i ask how do we measure the smoking point of each type of oil? That is if there are any standard methods used to identify various smoking point of oil and how are the temperatures at each point monitored by common test standards? thank you!
Measuring the smoking point isn’t something that we can do at home. We’re relying on chemical testing for that one. As for standards, that would be at the discretion of those testing. I’m assuming there IS some sort of standard, otherwise the results would be all over the board, but when you’re dealing with agribusiness, you never can really know. 😉
IF PALM OLIEN (PER OXIDE VALUE -12) SO HOW IS THE TEMP FOR HYDROGENATION PROCESS.
I’m not sure I understand your question Shahid – can you rephrase?
Hello Tiffany. Great work keep it up. Just a little question about the use of butter. How is it that ordinary solid butter has a much lower smoking point than clarified butter. Surely the latter is just the state butter becomes once melted? Am I being thick or have I just had too much “fresh” London air today?
Hi Tiffany,
I wonder which oils have the best balance of Omega’s and which of these would be best to use if not wanting to raise the simmering point above 280 degrees F, for rendering herbs in an oil/water mixture for making creams? I do not want to destroy the properties in the herbs that I’m trying to preserve so would be simmering the potion slowly for about 2 hours. I’m not too concerned about the cost of the oil…more the quality and health properties. I want the oil to be good for the skin and absorption. I love the discussion you’re hosting about oils….so important for our health! Trish
What fat/oil would you recommend for popping corn?
Avocado oil would be okay, as would fractionated coconut oil with the higher cooking temp.
Does coconut oil still retain it’s high smoke point and also the beneficial saturated fats after fractionating? I know it gets rid of the coconut taste, but didn’t know if it’s other properties were affected in any way. Many thanks
John