A guide to cooking oils and their uses: canola for versatile high-heat cooking, walnut oil for omega-3s in dressings, and coconut oil in refined or virgin forms. The host covers smoke points, fatty acid profiles, and best applications for each.
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Hi, welcome to the Be Complete Supermarket Series Explore the Store. We are excited to bring to you nutrition and food tips every month. So now it's January and everyone's into diets, but we know that diets don't work and healthy eating does, and healthy fat is a critical part of that. Today we are in the fat oil, the oil section, and we're going to talk to you about mono and polyunsaturated choices. We're going to start out with the most common oil that's used in the United States, which is canola oil. Canola is made from crushed canola seeds, and did you know this oil is the lowest in saturated fat? A great benefit of canola oil is that it has a really light flavor and texture, and it really goes well with many applications. It has a high smoke point, meaning it doesn't oxidize when it's exposed to high heat. So moving on to the flower oils, we have both sunflower and safflower oil. So these oils, similar to canola, have very smooth textures, light flavor, and they're good in high-heat applications. They have both mono and polyunsaturated fat, which is good for your heart. Now, these oils are higher in omega-6 fatty acids versus the omega-3 fatty acids, and you might have heard omega-3s are good for your brain and lowering inflammation and your heart. So if you're looking for omega-3, you want to look for a different type of seed. Walnut oil is a great application to give you a good amount of healthy omega-3s. So when I mentioned canola oil had high smoke point, walnut oil actually has lower smoke point, meaning you shouldn't expose it to high heat. So the way to use these types of oils are after you cook. So you can use it to flavor your food after it's done cooking, or you can use them in salad dressings. So a lot of press is on coconut oil right now, and there's some good and there's some bad, but ultimately it's delicious and it imparts a really nice tropical flavor. So you can see there are lots of different types of coconut oil. The two you want to look out for is refined and unrefined. So the refined, as you might guess, is more heavily processed, meaning it has less of the nutrients, but the non-refined or the virgin actually has more of the nutrients. So if you can find that type, I advise using that. Coconut oil has a high smoke point, meaning you can use it in a lot of applications. It tastes great if you put a little bit with meat when you're cooking it with fruit, in granola, and also adding to oatmeal. So those are just a few oils, but there are so many more. So if you're looking for different types to season your food, You could try avocado, macadamia nut, or even this delicious Kalamata olive oil. If you enjoyed learning about these oil tips, we're going to come back next month and teach you about herbs and spices. So until then, be educated, be inspired, and be complete.
