Can You Fry With Olive Oil Instead Of Vegetable Oil For Frying
You can use olive oil instead of vegetable oil for frying food. Olive oil gives you a better flavor and also helps to avoid many problems that come with using vegetable oil. Olive oil is the best choice for frying food as it has a high heat rating.
In this post, I shared with you that you can roast chicken in olive oil if you are not going past its smoking point, and the best olive oil to roast it in, and to bake in, is Extra Virgin Olive Oil, as it has a higher smoking point, which is about 374-405oF (190-207oC) (17). The smoked point of extra virgin olive oil is significantly higher than ideal temperatures to fry foods (which is 375o), making it perfectly safe for heating. Vegetable oil, on the other hand, has a smoke point of 450oF, so will not burn if you heat it up to frying temperatures.
The heat required to heat olive oil high enough for deep-frying cannot alter the chemical makeup of the olive oil, and so keeps all its nutrients intact. The point is that frying food in olive oil does add flavour, which is desirable in certain circumstances, but also may overshadow the purely delicious taste of the food being fried. When using olive oil for sauteing or in other heat applications, the flavors are not so evident, so there is little reason to pay for an extra-virgin grade oil.
Most times, when I am cooking in higher temperatures, like searing meats or frying, I am going to stick to neutral oils, such as canola or vegetable oils. According to Mark McEwan, refined oils are best when cooking with extremely high temperatures, like in a deep fry, while unrefined oils are best for salads or lighter sauteing. Unrefined oils have very low smoke points, preserve the majority of their nutrients, and are more aromatic, with more robust flavors, he says, which is ideal for bread dipping, or for enhancing salads and vegetables.
Flaxseed oil has a low smoke point, which means that you should really avoid heating it, according to Cleveland Clinic. There is a myth on the subject saying olive oil produces cancer-causing agents when heated, but the truth is when you heat or fry olive oil to a point that makes it smoke (its smoking point), it breaks down and can create potentially cancer-causing toxins. Both Kenji and I found you can smell the olive oil when using it to saute vegetables for simpler dishes such as veggie soup, but there is no extreme heat involved in this case (the oil is definitely never near the smoke point), so once again, just as with frying, it is just a matter of if you want to smell olive oil.
The olive flavor is going to be predominant if you are using canola oil to fry, so you might want to avoid using that if you are offended by the olive flavor. Even if a recipe calls for olive oil and you do not have olive oil on hand, keep in mind there is no one absolute best oil for French fries – canola oil for French fries and peanut oil for French fries will do the same. Peanut oil for French fries can also be used to cook other things, since peanut oil does not soak up the flavors of the other foods cooked in the oil; so, you can cook several foods at once in a single pan. If you happen to run out of oil called for in a recipe, we found that you can substitute these oils most of the time.
Extra olive oil is not a precise quantity, it is simply that over time and with experience, you learn exactly how much you need to use for sauteing chicken, or cooking in any other recipe. Not only is extra virgin olive oil fantastic at imparting flavours into your foods, it is a far healthier choice than the other oils that are typically used to deep-fry, like conventional olive oil and vegetable oil. High-quality extra virgin olive oil is expensive, and pouring six cups into your Dutch oven to roast a few chickens–instead of something a little more convenient, such as vegetable oil, which we think is a better frying oil–seems wasteful. Not only does cooking in extra virgin olive oil satisfy our cravings for Southern-fried comfort foods, Asian stir-fries, Mexican fajitas, and Italian veal piccata, it does all that while meeting our nutrient requirements for healthy dietary fat.
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Olive oil is perfect for intensely-flavored desserts, such as olive oil cakes, but its neutral taste as a cooking oil makes it perfect for providing baked goods with needed fats without impacting recipe flavors. This is why vegetable oil works particularly well when you want all of the flavours to come from the base foods in your recipe. Corn, safflower, canola, and other neutral oils that have no corn flavor themselvesall fit the vegetable oil category. Refined oils — such as vegetable, canola and avocado oils, for instance — have higher smoke points and more neutral flavors.
| Types | Advantages |
| Avocados | It contains fat which is good for our health |
| Sesame | Sesame oil is high in antioxidants |
| Canola | It contains no trans fat |
| Sunflower | It improves heart health |
Avocados have higher smoking points (400 degrees F and higher), meaning that they are best for cooking at higher temperatures. The best oils to tolerate the high temperatures of deep-frying are avocado, peanut, canola, sunflower, and sesame oils. Whether pan-frying or deep-frying, you want your oils to be able to handle the high heat without breaking down too quickly, impacting the flavor or smoking your kitchen. Deep-frying requires heating several cups of oil, which is why we like using cheap, neutral oils for this method.
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The kind of oil you choose will depend on the method you are using – if you are deep-frying anything, you want one that has a high smoke point, defined by Colorado State University as the temperature at which the fat or oil starts smoking. Interestingly, as Harold McGee found in his own taste tests, flavor differences between higher-quality oil and lower-quality oil are erased by heat, so it makes sense when cooking to go for a cheaper bottle, at least in terms of taste. Tasting skirt steak side-by-side, The Serious Eats team all and I could detect no flavor differences between olive oil and canola oil samples, indicating that, for highly-flavored foods, just a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to sear is not enough to dramatically change a dishes taste. There is this from 2014, published in the Journal of Agriculture & Food Chemistry by the American Chemical Society, that found that olive oil is more stable for roasting compared with some seed oils between 320degF and 374degF.
Is olive oil suitable for pan-frying?
Contrary to widespread assumption, olive oil is one of the best frying oils. Olive oil has a medium-high smoke point, which is higher than the temperatures required for frying. Oleic acid and other small components in olive oil prevent the oil from degrading even after reusing.
Is it bad to fry with olive oil?
Frying with olive oil is safe as long as the temperature does not rise above 350-3750 degrees Fahrenheit. If you let your oil sit beyond that point, it will likely smoke, and produce unhealthy compounds. Too much heated olive oil can cause harm to the body because it is not stable and oxidizes when heated.
Can olive oil substitute vegetable oil?
Salad dressings, marinades, and sautés can be made with olive oil instead of vegetable oil. It is prohibited to use olive oil for cooking recipes that require high heat due to its low smoke point. Baking with olive oil is not recommended because of its strong flavor.