We've often been puzzled why some recipes specifically call for vegetable oil while others call for olive oil. Here's a quick run down of both oils and when you might choose one over the other...
Olive oil has a reputation for being the "healthy oil" since it's rich in monounsaturated fats and some antioxidants. Good olive oils also have a pleasant flavor and aroma that compliment many dishes.
However, olive oil has a relatively low smoke point, making it less ideal for cooking methods requiring high heat like pan-searing and high-heat stir fries. There are also times when you may not want want the assertive flavor of olive oil in your dish or when its cost makes it less than ideal to use in cooking.
For these times, there's vegetable oil. This is really a general category of oil that encompasses canola oil, grapeseed oil, and peanut oil, among others. Most vegetable oils have a higher smoke point and are better for high-temperature cooking. Canola and grapeseed also have less assertive flavors and are good to use for things like searing meat, making mayonnaise, and even popping popcorn.
In summary, use olive oil when you want its flavor in a dish and for moderate-heat cooking. Choose a vegetable oil when you want a cleaner flavor and for high-heat cooking.
If you find yourself out of the oil called for in your recipe, we've found these oils can be used interchangeably the majority of the time. For safety reasons, just pay attention to your heat when cooking with olive oil.
Do you find that you usually use one oil or the other when cooking?
Related: Salted Butter vs. Unsalted Butter: What's the Difference?
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actually, olives are fruit, not vegetable : )
sometimes i'll get the best of both worlds and mix olive oil with a higher smoke-point oil if i want a little more flavor when i'm browning or sauteeing. or i'll finish off a dish with a drizzle of olive oil to get the flavor.
i'm a huge fan of peanut oil in stir-fry dishes or when popping popcorn.
No, olives are a fruit.
we use olive oil almost exclusively, although we also have grapeseed oil on hand. If our daughter didn't have a nut allergy, we would use peanut oil more for Asian cooking.
here in France though, we have a wonderful butter that doesn't burn when used for cooking, so we use that as well...
should have mentioned, we specifically DON'T use canola oil because we are not convinced it is a healthy oil
Monica, what's the intel on canola? I use canola as my default, non-assertive oil. I can't remember if I've heard anything to the negative or not (always so much info flying around.) I do know a lot of canola is genetically engineered. But, organic products cannot be genetically engineered.
Quite right--olives ARE a fruit! Sorry--correcting this now.
I use both in about equal amounts. Canola oil is my go-to oil for Asian dishes, with its high smoking temperature and low-key flavour. (Canola is a patriotic choice, being "invented" in Canada) Olive oil gets used in most of our non-Asian dishes, which tend to be Italian or Portuguese in inspiration.
Canola oil is just rapeseed oil. I don't believe there's anything unhealthy or "unnatural" about it at all.
Olive oil is an excellent oil, and canola, peanut, and grapeseed oils are fine. But avoid soybean, cottonseed, corn, safflower, and sunflower oils: much too high a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 to be healthful.
Olive oil is a vegetable oil as distinguished from an animal oil, also used frequently in cooking: lard, chicken fat, goose or duck fat, and the like. Vegetable as in "animal, vegetable, or mineral." Most vegetable oils come from things we would not call "vegetables" in the sense of serving them at the table: cottonseeds, olives, peanuts, walnuts, pecans, pistachios, and so on.
pixie --
a number of concerns have been raised about canola oil (it's not rapeseed, as that contains high levels of toxins, but rather a crossbreed with safe levels of erucic acid) -- some of them a bit "out there".
The reason that I avoid it is that it is one of the most genetically modified (GM) foods along with corn and soybean. It's a pretty safe bet that your bottle of canola is a GM food (that's what we get without labeling regulations). I am uncomfortable with the lack of research on human health effects, not to mention all the other associated issues with GM foods (the effect on farmers and farming, the idea of a couple of corporations owning and controlling genetic diversity, the ethics of agri-business, etc.).
On a completely unrelated note, there was research in the past couple of years which showed that duck fat is actually a healthy fat.
oops -- just read the bit about buying organic canola oil. I've done that a couple of times too, but I'm not convinced they can keep organic canola GM-free (it's a big problem).
Actually, the advice in this post is incorrect: Vegetable oils are not good for high-heat cooking. Actually, once you heat these oils, then you ingest the food that has been cooked in it, you will, in the long-term, harm your health.
Do not eat canola oil. Stay away from the stuff. That stuff is poison; soy oil is too! (Only eat fermented soy products.)
If you want to cook in a fat at a high heat you should use: butter, lard (non-hydrogenated), coconut oil, red palm oil, or beef fat.
Do not take my word for it, for I am just some unknown [to you] person with a catchy log in name; check out these websites for more information on what are healthy fats to eat and/or cook with:
http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm
http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/
http://thehealthyskeptic.org/
http://www.ninaplanck.com/
http://www.coconutoil.com/
P.S. The author of this post should check out the above sites, too. You need to do some research on fats, for you are giving out advice in this post that is wrong.
Gah. Replacing canola oil for coconut oil?! No thanks. Coconut oil has way way WAY too much saturated fat for me to include it in my diet at all.
I think what you consider a "safe" or "healthy" fat depends whether you are more concerned about GMO/inorganic substances, or whether you are more concerned about the type (saturated, poly-unsaturated, mono-unsaturated) fat you are eating.
I'm not sure that I've seen a fat that is both an organic, non-GMO food, and a "good" fat too. Except olive oil. or hazelnut oil.
laetitae --
what makes you so sure that saturated fats are unhealthy?
Since the 1970s, lipids research has been largely controlled by the foods industry, the very industry that had a stake in the sale of margarines and oils.
Everyone now knows that transfats are extremely unhealthy, but it has take some 30 years for that message to get out.
The biochemist Mary Enig was raising red flags about transfats in the 1970s, but her work was marginalized and suppressed by the orthodoxy, and finally, European research in the 1990s bore her out.
These days Mary Enig is challenging misperceptions about saturated fats, and is promoting the health benefits and use of coconut oil.
Here is a link explaining her work:
http://www.stop-trans-fat.com/mary-enig.html
It's funny how here in France, doctors promote butter over oil for its health benefits. The Swiss are the second longest-lived population (after the Japanese) and they eat a diet high in saturated fat (all that cheese!).
I don't use canola oil. I prefer coconut oil! i use it for everything.
thanks for this! we ALWAYS use olive oil just because we like it and we only have room for one bottle on our counter. but recently i've been making some asian dishes and was really bummed to realize that the only veg. oil we had in the house had been used to fry falafel several times! and smelled like it! and i just didn't want my gyoza, etc. to taste like olive oil. when we have a bigger place i will branch out with the staple oils...
Monika - I think that saturated fat is something to be limited in my diet because my doctor tells me this. And I guess I'm willing to trust his judgment on it more than I am a website.
Something strange is that I've been able to find non-extra virgin olive oil this year.
I agree with monika; I avoid canola and other vaguely labeled vegetable oils. I use butter, lard, duck fat, a decent extra virgin olive oil for low temperature cooking, and Spectrum Naturals organic sunflower oil when I want a really neutral oil. I'm not convinced that any oil that's super refined for high smoke points is healthy at all. If you're using canola oil for its supposed health benefits, well, that just seems silly to me.
Reading the comments here, I'm struck by how every choice, even the simplest ones, is rife with responsibility. I think part of the misery of modern living is in this sort of situation being played out too often. Personally, I don't agonize over the fats I use as it's just too much to constantly question every tiny action I take and I'll let myself off the hook on this one. I already make myself crazy with the bigger questions like water and power consumption.
I use olive oil, butter, or saved bacon fat for cooking or preparing anything where I want the taste to be enhanced by the oil. I bake with Canola or butter. I always pan fry with butter or bacon fat (especially for chicken), except when making quesadillas when I use olive oil. I deep fry extremely rarely, but when I do, I use Canola.
My father grows canola. It it is a sustainable crop with a high yeild per acre.
Part of the plant is used for oil production and part is sold to make into feed for cattle (it has a high protein load). Nothing goes to waste.
It is part of the mustard family, so it grows in lovely yellow fields.
I don't care about GM/non GM. GM plants are more disease resistant/bug resistant, which reduces the need for pesticides and fertilizers to begin with. They also give a higher yeild per acre, so the farmer farming them can have a higher profit. Enough with the perception that plant engineers are some kind of mad scientists who are bent on world destruction through modified DNA.
Haha, I just saw the butter/lard/duck fat post. Are you kidding me?
No I'm not kidding. Just because doctors and scientists in the U.S. have villified animal fat does not make it an absolute truth. Heart disease is the number one killer of men and women in this country; it seems clear that even after switching to a diet of vegetable based fats, our heart health is no better. Remember margarine and how it was practically shoved down our throats as a much healthier alternative to butter thirty years ago? Oops. The food scientists were a bit off on that one, weren't they? Are you aware of the rates of heart disease in Southwestern France, where copius amounts of duck, goose, and pig fat are enjoyed?
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/320/7229/249/a
Besides, they taste better.
As for gm canola crops, I take issue less with the safety of this technology than with who owns the rights to it. Monsanto is an unethical corporation who has our government wrapped around its little finger. Though I do also wonder, since this technology is relatively new, how we are qualified to make the sweeping statement that it's absolutely safe in every situation.
I don't care if canola looks pretty either. As far as producing more than conventional crops, I've seen evidence for and against that statement. As yours is purely anecdotal based on your link to canola through your father, I would have to say that's not a very compelling argument.
Here is a web-site that discusses diabetes and oil - in addition to listing 10 common types of oil, they also provide the degree at which each oil reaches a medium smoke point.
http://www.dlife.com/dLife/do/ShowContent/food_and_nutrition/10_best_cooking_oils.html?s_kwcid=ContentNetwork|1826539763&gclid=CNHQzd3IvpcCFQkiagodIwhyRw
I normally use Walnut oil for frying - how does that rate on the heat-scale?