After coming close to burning my house down last week (read all about it on my blog), I am taking an interest in oils. Who can delineate the difference in oils--canola, vegetable, peanut, sunflower, etc. Are there better times to use a particular oil or are the above interchangeable? Note: I am not including olive oil in this as I have that pretty well figured out.

WOW.. that was scary!
where there flames or not?

Flavor is one BIG reason to use and oil, or lack of it.
I almost always use olive oil, even for frying desserts, using peanut oi tastes chinese to me, so I save that for stirfry.

When I make an american salad dressing, like poppyseed, I use sunflower or corn oil.

Carrot cake the same, although after making my olive oil cake, now I can use olive oil, seems a little darker and richer.

Like wine, I usually pair my oils with where the recipe cam from ,although olive is my preferred oil! and since it is so cheap here compared to the states I can use it liberally.

Light a candle!

Jane that was quite an experience. I found this site which discusses the smoke points of various oils. It looks as EVO is quite high.

Like Diva, I tend to use olive oil for the majority of my cooking. If I'm making a salad dressing I use grapeseed oil (one of our cooking class instructors taught us that) because it doesn't have much of a flavour of its own (like vodka and martinis )

If I am deep fat frying I use Saffflower or Sunflower oil.

For asian foods - stir fries etc - I use peanut or sesame oil.

Have you finished cleaning up yet?

Diva and Jerry, thanks for the information and for commiserating with my stupidity!. No fortunately I got there before the flames started and so not much clean up. I suspect there is more than I recognize as walls may be coated. Dumb, dumb, dump.

Wow, Jane!

So glad it wasn't worse.

Grape seed oil is one that has almost no flavor at all. So if you are doing something very subtle and son't want to mask the flavor, use it.

I find I use extra virgin olive oil almost exclusively--for cooking and salads.

For baking I usually use butter but when the recipe calls for oil, I use canola.

jan

Was there any oil left in the pan?
Do you have a gas stove?

It could have gone up as you were walking through the house. Let's not dwell on that.

I prefer to use Ghee for curry, but we don't because of Jude's cholesterol count.

Sesame oil adds a special flavour to asian dishes, but it is a very strong taste.

I like making cakes with olive oil - no creaming butter and sugar - but the flavour does come through overmuch. I think you need 2/3 the weight of olive oil to substitute in a butter recipe. Maybe I need to try a very light olive oil.

I live in a macadamia growing area. It also has a high smoke point. One day I will try using macadamia as my basic oil.

John, there was some oil left--not much. And, fortunately, we do not have a gas stove which I often wish we had--this time I was glad we didn't.

Jane, glad you and your house were ok!

I'm with the others who say they use olive oil almost all the time - even for baking. Though I have also used Grapeseed oil when I really needed something with no flavor.

My latest purchase was a small bottle (because it's so expensive and goes rancid quickly) of locally produced walnut oil. It is delicious with salads. And I plan to try it with some other things, too.

-Krista

Like most of you, I mainly use olive oil, but for certain things I use flavored olive oils (and vinegars) made by Cuisine Perel. They are sold in a lot of winery tasting rooms, but I order them online from Gourmet Country.

Nancy

Oops! I see I made a mistake in my post shown above this one.

I meant to say I used flavored GRAPESEED oils.

Sorry!

Nancy

I am bumping this thread.

I finally got round to buying my macadamia nut oil and made a cake with it on Saturday.

Orange and Blueberry cake

Cake
125gm butter (used 100g macadamia nut oil instead)
½ cup (castor) sugar (I used raw)
2 eggs
2 cups self raising flour (I used wholemeal)
½ cup flour
¼ cup orange juice (about 2 oranges)
1 cup blueberries (I used 2-3 cups tropical raspberries)
Finely grated orange rind from one orange

Orange Syrup

¾ sugar
½ cup orange juice
Heat in small saucepan until all the sugar is dissolved. I like to reduce it until it just starts to thicken, but will still soak into the cake.


Use lined & "buttered" 20cm/8 inch deep round cake pan (or whatever e.g ring pan)

Mix oil and sugar in bowl
Add eggs, 1 at a time
Stir in flour, yogurt and juice in two batches
Stir in fruit and orange rind
Spread mixture into prepared cake pan

Bake in moderate oven (FF = 150c, 300F) 1 hour or until cooked.
Stand cake in pan for five minutes (or it will break apart)
Turn onto plate and drizzle hot syrup over it.

When hot it makes a good dessert.

We are fortunate in having the raspberries growing on the back fence, and orange trees in fruit. So this is out of season for the northern hemisphere.

You do not get a macadamia oil taste, so I am going to try this for the Olive Oil Cake on this board.
I suppose a light olive oil may work similarly, but I cannot afford to have too many varieties of olive oil on the go.

This wikipedia article on cooking oil smoke points makes interesting reading. Especially the variations for different olive oils.

I have a friend who uses rice bran oil. Maybe because it has the highest smoke point. I will have to ask him.