How to Choose the Best Cooking Oil for Different Uses

Question

Looking through my pantry, I've amassed a number of oils due to recipes specifying which to use, but I realize (beyond sauteing with olive oil for its taste or deep frying with peanut oil for its high smoke point) that usually I don't understand why any particular oil is called for instead of any other.
Right now I've got olive, vegetable, canola, safflower, grape seed, (refined) coconut, and avocado oil. Are there certain situations that call for one of these over all the others? Can anyone explain why? Left to my own devices I'd probably just use vegetable all in almost all non-deep frying situations -- is there any reason not to do this?
Thanks for any input!

Lynn Clark · Accepted Answer

Hi Glover - We get this question a lot and Christopher Kimball and Sara Moulton did a great breakdown on canola and vegetable oil in this link. At the end of the article there is also a link to our testing on high-heat cooking oils with surprising results. Our favorite for high-heat cooking, and the one that consistently had the highest smoke point, was grapeseed oil, which is made from grape seeds, a byproduct of wine-making. Safflower oil—made by extracting oil from the seeds of the safflower, a cousin of the sunflower—was the second-most durable. And the biggest surprise: olive oil. Though extra-virgin olive oil is ill suited for high-heat cooking (we prefer it for off-heat applications such as vinaigrettes and for a finishing drizzle of flavor), we were impressed by how hot we could get refined olive oil. Avocado and refined coconut oil would be fine for a sauté over medium heat, but I wouldn't use them for high-heat searing or sautéing. Safflower, grapeseed, vegetable and canola are all in the same basic category. We like grapeseed or safflower, since they don't produce the "off" (sometimes described as "fishy") flavors that canola and vegetable oil do. Hope that helps! Best, Lynn C.

How to Choose the Best Cooking Oil for Different Uses

Have a question for Milk Street experts?

Join the conversation