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How to Choose the Right Cooking Oil

Oil is an essential part of the Indian kitchen because it imparts flavour, distributes heat from the burner to the food, and prevents food from sticking to the pan. Choosing which oil to choose is pretty difficult. There are too many choices from which we have to select.

In this blog, we will discuss how to choose the best cooking oil for you:

Re-heating

Reheating refined cooking oils causes them to degrade and generate free radicals that put the body under oxidative stress. Sadly, it can also cause chemical changes in the oil and create trans fats, which is something we should always want to avoid.

Flavour and aroma

Cuisine affects the oil choice. Some cuisines rely on specific flavours of oil: Asian food uses peanut oil, whereas Mediterranean cuisine uses olive oil. And unlike bland refined oils, unrefined oils have far more flavour and taste.

Watch out for marketers

There should only be oil on the ingredient list. Don’t believe the boasts on the front of the package. Consider the claim that certain vegetable oils are “cholesterol-free”—many of them make it. But since all plant-based goods are cholesterol-free, this is pointless. Cholesterol stuff is only available in animal products.

Examine the type of fat in the oil

There are several types of dietary fats in the food category: 1. saturated fats 2. unsaturated fats are of 2 types – (MUFA) monounsaturated fatty acids and (PUFA) polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Approximate Fatty Acid Composition of Edible oils (g/100g)

Oil	Saturated Fat	MUFA	PUFA
Coconut	89	7	2
Oilive	13	76	10
Groundnut	24	50	25
Mustard	8	70	22
Cotton Seed	21	25	53
Sunflower	13	27	60

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4990724/

Unsaturated fats outnumber saturated fats in healthy oil. More MUFA and less PUFA are found within the two forms of unsaturated fat. Trans fats should never be used.

Check the Smoking

Smoke points are important, but a bigger number does not necessarily indicate superior quality. Because different cooking processes require different temperatures, such as baking (180 C), frying (190 C), and sautéing (200 C), the smoke point is crucial for determining the usefulness of oil (163 C).