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Best oil to cook french fries in?

B

brink

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Joined
Oct 9, 2014
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128
And don't tell me fried potatoes aren't healthy, lol. I recall something about the browning of potatoes which isn't good... it's been a while. In all seriousness, feel free to shed some light on that.

I use coconut oil to cook eggs with usually (over easy). Olive oil for other things. What about the taste with potatoes? Trying to avoid high PUFA oils and oils which oxidize easily.

Many folks probably don't know the deal with Canola oil being derived from rape plants. Being that they're about as resilient as weeds, some crafty Canadians found a way to cross breed and mitigate the human toxicity. Yeah, rapeseed oil is naturally toxic, which is generally why the plants are so resistant to insects.
"Rapeseed oil naturally contains a high percentage (30-60%) of erucic acid, a substance associated with heart lesions in laboratory animals. For this reason rapeseed oil was not used for consumption in the United States prior to 1974 - Read more at http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/canola.asp#KFZlWSOpkBpcX8JU.99 "

Back on track, I want some french fries! Olive oil? Cost isn't a big deal.
 
Canola is also a 'new' name for GMO rape oil.

Aside from that, olive oil is what I mostly use. I go by the fact that after deep frying stuff, when it cools, almost all the olive oil is still liquid not white congealed stuff. Throw out the white congealed stuff - it is no longer good for you.

There are better oils spruiked for deep frying but that has to do with the breakdown temperatures - unless you plan to use the olive oil over and over for deep frying, they aren't worth bothering with... and even if you DO use OO over and over, if you only use the part that stays fluid you're still OK.

Oh... and if you're deep frying you don't really care about the sex life of Olive. Cold pressed is good but that whole 'extra virgin' isn't worth the money - it's good for salads but as soon as you cook nobody can pick the difference.
 
They say olive oil is one of the most sensitive oils. Nice job, guys, expressing such an interest in things like oxidation and canola's hybridization, and then you go and speak of deep frying in olive oil!
 
Wrt canola, the plant is never called "rape", except by chain-email authors with no sense of decency using shock value to sound authoritative. Rapeseed or rapa, generally. However, it tastes bad.

The highest smoke points are palm oil (450) and ghee (490), with special mention for avocado (410) or hazelnut (410) oil. If you're deep-frying, palm oil is ideal because it's so cheap. Coconut oil's smoke point is actually rather low (350).

If you can get nothing else, there's a refined grade of olive oil: "extra light olive oil" -- this stuff has a very high smoke point and is refined specifically to be used in frying. Extra virgin oil is intended as a flavoring and they say you should never cook with it.
 
Thanks guys, nice information!

atara said:
Wrt canola, the plant is never called "rape", except by chain-email authors with no sense of decency using shock value to sound authoritative. Rapeseed or rapa, generally. However, it tastes bad.

The highest smoke points are palm oil (450) and ghee (490), with special mention for avocado (410) or hazelnut (410) oil. If you're deep-frying, palm oil is ideal because it's so cheap. Coconut oil's smoke point is actually rather low (350).

If you can get nothing else, there's a refined grade of olive oil: "extra light olive oil" -- this stuff has a very high smoke point and is refined specifically to be used in frying. Extra virgin oil is intended as a flavoring and they say you should never cook with it.
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Glad for this clarification - will have to check out palm oil. Low in omega-6, so that's a plus.

Looked up the smoke points of grapeseed oil (420F) and beef drippings (410F), just to see. That's really interesting about ghee being so high, and especially considering butter is rated lowly at 350F. Grapeseed and safflower are high in omega-6. Oh well.
 
atara said:
Wrt canola, the plant is never called "rape", except by chain-email authors with no sense of decency using shock value to sound authoritative.
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No, a co-op in California had short descriptions for bulk products, which included canola oil in a large plastic dispenser. I remember, the description began, "The rape plant..."

From what I know, the main problem with canola oil is the heavy processing that it undergoes (see below). This falls under the same topic of this thread: concern about oil stability when cooking. Allegedly, canola oil is already thoroughly cooked:


The oil is removed by a combination of high temperature mechanical pressing and solvent extraction. Traces of the solvent (usually hexane) remain in the oil, even after considerable refining. Like all modern vegetable oils, canola oil goes through the process of caustic refining, bleaching and degumming--all of which involve high temperatures or chemicals of questionable safety. And because canola oil is high in omega-3 fatty acids, which easily become rancid and foul-smelling when subjected to oxygen and high temperatures, it must be deodorized. The standard deodorization process removes a large portion of the omega-3 fatty acids by turning them into trans fatty acids. Although the Canadian government lists the trans content of canola at a minimal 0.2 percent, research at the University of Florida at Gainesville, found trans levels as high as 4.6 percent in commercial liquid oil.24

24. S O'Keefe and others. Levels of Trans Geometrical Isomers of Essential Fatty Acids in Some Unhydrogenated US Vegetable Oils. Journal of Food Lipids 1994;1:165-176.

download


Source: Fallon, Sally, and Mary Enig, "The Great Con-nola." The Weston A. Price Foundation. 28 July 2002. http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/the-great-con-ola
 
I generally use peanut oil. High smoke point and neutral taste.

@brink The process of making ghee removes all of the milk solids, leaving only the fat behind. It's essentially the Indian version of clarified butter. It's great stuff with a nice nutty flavor, I always have a jar on hand for when I cook indian food as the flavor is a necessary component for me.
 
I was always amused at the term 'clarified butter.' It's like an abstract way to say 'purified butter.' Is it British or something?
 
red22 said:
I was always amused at the term 'clarified butter.' It's like an abstract way to say 'purified butter.' Is it British or something?
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The name has to do with how it looks after the process. Regular butter is cloudy when melted, Clarified butter is not :)
 
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LuGoJ said:
I generally use peanut oil. High smoke point and neutral taste.

@brink The process of making ghee removes all of the milk solids, leaving only the fat behind. It's essentially the Indian version of clarified butter. It's great stuff with a nice nutty flavor, I always have a jar on hand for when I cook indian food as the flavor is a necessary component for me.
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The only turn off for peanut is the higher omega 6 content. Some fried food chains use peanut oil, and I sure can't complain about taste or oil price.

Ghee is intriguing... love Indian food.



So, a popular concern with frying up potatoes is increasing acrylamide levels. There doesn't appear to be a ton of data regarding its carcinogenicity in humans - mainly some rat studies and limited human research. May as well ban everything that tastes good, if that's a big deal. Lol
 
Love the taste of chicken fried in peanut oil but haven't tried it on french fries. Usually go to Mickey D's for them.
 
Well I brought some Russet potatoes today because the guy said they are the ones for fries. Question one, can you cook them in a regular pan because I had a fire that was getting away from me. Two, do you cook them at high on electric burner. Three, when they are floating and brown are they done if you don't cut them equally because I don't think so. I have to clean the burn hood above the burners. Back to Mc Donalds I guess. I think I hate fire.
 
atara said:
Wrt canola, the plant is never called "rape", except by chain-email authors with no sense of decency using shock value to sound authoritative. Rapeseed or rapa, generally. However, it tastes bad.
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Not sure where you got this from but Britannica tends to disagree... :D
Rape, also called colza, (species Brassica napus), plant of the mustard family (Brassicaceae), native to Europe.

Rape is an annual, 30 cm (1 foot) or more tall, with a long, usually thin taproot. Its leaves are smooth, bluish green, and deeply scalloped, and the bases of the upper leaves clasp the stem. Rape bears four-petaled, yellow flowers in spikes. Each round, elongated pod has a short beak and contains many seeds.

These seeds, known as rapeseeds, yield an oil—rapeseed oil, or canola—that is variously treated for use in cooking, as an ingredient in soap and margarine, and as a lamp fuel (colza oil).

The use of the oil in cooking (frying and baking) increased in the late 20th century because it is the lowest in saturated fat of any edible oil. The esterified form of rapeseed oil is used as a lubricant for jet engines. The seeds are used as bird feed, and the seed residue after oil extraction is used for fodder.
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Olive oil is totally unsuitable for deep frying.

Honestly, you're eating fries stop worrying about the oil they are cooked in. Just make them nice and eat them in a sensible way as part of a balanced diet.

How potatoes colour has more to do with their sugar and starch content than anything else and isn't really relevant.
 
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