Cooking With Oils…What’s The Best?
If you’re Paleo, you already know that many of the commercially available oils are not part of our daily diets, such as soybean oil, peanut oil, corn oil and so on. What does that leave us with?
Olive oil and coconut oil, for the most part.
When cooking a meal that is, for example, tropical in nature or perhaps that has an Asian, them, it might make sense intuitively to use coconut oil rather than olive. But is region the only thing we need to consider?
Not so much.
The other very important factor is at what temperature you’ll be cooking the recipe.
The rule of thumb is that for higher heating, use coconut, and for lower heat, use olive oil. Of course, either are great eaten raw.
In a nutshell, heating olive oil will strip it of some flavor and enzymes.
Coconut oil, on the other hand, can withstand significantly higher heat, making it a go-to for cooking methods involving higher temps, like sauteing.
Don’t forget, also, that the naturally occurring fat in many of the Paleo proteins, along with raw avocado, rounds out the balance of the best sources of fats we should be eating on a daily basis.
(This kind of ) fat is good!