How to Choose Cooking Oils

Oils have different smoking points and flavors that affect both how they're cooked and what they should be cooked with. Use this quick guide to find out what oils do, what tastes the best compliment and how you can add them to your home-cooked meals.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Explore the different oil options. We have been accustomed to pick vegetable and olive oils almost by default. But the range of flavors and textures is more diverse than that. Most are familiar with canola oil (popcorn, anyone?) and corn oil, but other popular are pervasive (read: easy to find) oils are grape seed, sesame, peanut, safflower and sunflower.
2. Understand the meaning of "flavor level." This is important because some oils have a much stronger hue than others, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it cooks with extreme flavor. Low- to medium-flavor oils are canola, vegetable, grape seed, safflower and sunflower oils. High-flavored oils include corn, peanut and sesame. These will shape the flavor of your dish to greater degree than the others.
3. Beware of the smoking points before you start cooking. A low smoking point means the oil will burn at a lower temperatures--and oil will burn. A high cooking point means the oil is more resistant to the heat, thus more enduring. Of the major oils mentioned in this article, sesame oil is the only one with a low smoking point. Grape seed, on the other hand, has an extremely high smoking point--even higher than the already durable vegetable, canola, peanut, etc.
4. Associate the proper oil with its appropriate cooking method. Nearly all oils, save sesame, are good for pan-frying, deep-frying and stir-frying. Some excel in a certain fry method over others, but you really can't go wrong there. Most that are good for frying are also good for sauteing, although corn oil should probably be avoided if you plan to saute a dish. Peanut and sesame oils are good for wood cooking, and canola, safflower and vegetable oils are great baking additives.
5. Step out of your comfort zone. Many high-end and gourmet oils can be found. It's popular to flavor olive oils, for instance, with citrus, berry or nut. It's typically a natural flavoring process and adds subtle hints to each, not unlike wine.