Basically, when fat from a plant or animal is purified and kept at room temperature in the form of liquid, it is known as cooking oil. Naturally, this gives rise to many different kinds of cooking oil of which soybean, olive, peanut, sesame and rice bran oil, amongst others are good examples. There are some types of oil that are termed as vegetable oils and refer to cooking oil products that are a blend of different oils based on corn, soybean, and palm as well as sunflower oil.
Many Flavored Oils Are Also Available
Many cooking oils are flavored and this is achieved by immersing aromatic foods including peppers, herbs and more into the oil for a considerable period of time. You need to exercise care not to take in too much of these oils as it could adversely affect your health. No doubt, you need fats which are essential nutrients in a persons diet. However, a diet that is not well balanced will harm a persons health. Thus cooking oil has a special problem as there are trans fats created in the oils that form because of hydrogenation of oils and which are detrimental to a persons health.
Cooking oils are also sensitive to heat, light as well as being exposed to oxygen and you can tell when they have gone bad when they begin to give off a rancid smell and thus have greatly diminished nutrient value. A way to prevent the oil from turning rancid is to use what is known as tank blanketing. Otherwise, it is best to store these cooking oils in a refrigerator or in a cool and dry place.
There are many different types of cooking oil including carnola oil, coconut oil, corn and cottonseed oil, grape seed oil as well as lard and much more. Each has different amounts of saturated fat and monosaturated as well as polyunsaturated fats, and they also reach smoking points at different temperatures. Thus, you may want to use different cooking oils for different uses are they for frying, baking, salad dressing, shortening or for simple cooking.
In fact, there is no real consensus about what the exact smoking points of many of the more popular cooking oils are and there is also no real standardization about how they are termed refined. In any case, to help you decide on which the best cooking oils are, you could consider the fact that lighter as well as more refined oils are going to have higher smoking points. So, be careful to enquire about this aspect and ensure that you put out any burning oil fire prior to heating. Also, waste of these oils can be used to produce bio-diesel.
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