Curry Recipes Online
Curry Chat => Lets Talk Curry => Topic started by: meggeth on January 30, 2013, 01:10 PM
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Been doing a bit of reading, and if I have the correct thoughts, veggy oil isn't particularly good for you - not that I suppose any oil is really. But....surely there must be healthier options for cooking curries? Obviously, a strong tasting oil would probably be no good - apparently nut type oils are better for you, but do have a stronger taste. Sunflower oil seems good, as does canola oil.
Has anybody regularly used any of these without any detrimental effects on your end curry? What are the cost comparisons? Or do you still use cheap veg oil?
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Hi
Leaving veg ghee out of the equation...
I personally use Sunflower oil and all my curry's are splendid :) - Sunflower oil IMHO is a very reasonable decision.
Thanks
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Been doing a bit of reading, and if I have the correct thoughts, veggy oil isn't particularly good for you - not that I suppose any oil is really. But....surely there must be healthier options for cooking curries? Obviously, a strong tasting oil would probably be no good - apparently nut type oils are better for you, but do have a stronger taste. Sunflower oil seems good, as does canola oil.
I think there is a misconception here, as I have commented before. It is simply not possible to compare "vegetable oil" with (e.g.,) rapeseed ("canola") oil because the former is generic and the latter specific. My bottle of Tesco "vegetable oil" is, in fact, rapeseed ("canola") oil; one just needs to read the (not very) small print to learn that. Other so-called "vegetable oils" may have a different composition : by labelling something "vegetable oil" the manufacturer is granting himself licence to make it from whatever is both vegetable in origin and low-priced at the time, unless (as with Tesco) he also states exactly of what it consists. To the best of my belief, most UK-sourced vegetable oils today are made of rapeseed ("canola"), because of the ubiquity and cost-effectiveness of the crop, but there may well be exceptions. So, to paraphrase Mrs Beeton", "first know your oil" before deciding whether it is healthy or otherwise.
** Phil.
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I use Filippo Berio Mild & Light Olive Oil from Sainsburys.
It costs about
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I've used exclusively sunflower oil in curries for about 6 months now. Works well, costs the same as veg oil.
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Hi Meggeth,
I believe cottonseed oil is one of the better oils to use, but like Paul, I use Olive Oil for everything (except deep frying).
Cheers,
Malc.
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Ok guys. Thanks for all the replies. It looks like the economical way to go is sunflower oil then.
Light olive oil seems expensive - are the benefits that much greater that you don't mind spending around 3-4 times the cost?
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You have to make up your own mind given what evidence is out there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil#Health_effects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil#Health_effects)
But I will say, there is so much anti-fat stuff circulated in society it is easy to forget that you would die if you didn't eat any oil/fat.
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Sunflower oil for me. For curries anyway.
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Hi meggeth
It depends upon your cooking style too!
Please use your favourite search engine for research on this subject - however it is believed there is the chance some of the properties of olive oil can turn carcinogenic under high heat.
Because I like to give it some 'welly' on the gas when I cook curry - I personally steer clear of olive oil for this purpose as it always starts smoking and I worry about the possible implications :(
Cheers
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Virgin and extra virgin olive oil are sensitive to heat and should not be used for frying at high temperatures. The stuff I use is tasteless, odourless and heat stable.
Paul
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Just to underline the apparent consensus appears on this thread. I use bog standard "veg" oil from either ASDA or Lidl and certainly in the latter store that is, as Phil says, rapeseed oil. if that wasn't available I'd use sunflower oil. Groundnut oil is, I understand, good for frying at very high temperatures and I have used this is wok cooking (Chinese) with good results.
Did I use the word consensus? - that must be a new concept on this forum :o ;)
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If you mean healthy as in trying to lose weight/reduce calories my understanding is all oils are the same in that department so it really is down to your preferred oil for cooking the dish.
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If you mean healthy as in trying to lose weight/reduce calories my understanding is all oils are the same in that department so it really is down to your preferred oil for cooking the dish.
I think the OP was talking about health as opposed to calories, which as you say are the same for all fats and oils.
Paul
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Latest advice is that oils high in monounsaturates such as Olive oil are better for you than polyunsaturates, hence the Mediterranean Diet etc. They have a marked influence on reducing low density cholesterol and increasing the good high density.
An excellent oil with very high smoke point and very high in mono is Rice Bran Oil. Becoming very popular in Australia (it mostly comes from Thailand and is favoured by most Thai restaurants, who established the import "channel" for the stuff initially) and this is my major cooking oil nowadays.
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At the risk of sounding totally boring, what oil do BIRs use?
Oil, it seems to me, is becoming (has become) prohibitively expensive (for whatever reason).
It also seems to me that, like many other things, the debate on "which oil is healthiest for you?" (read "least unhealthy") goes around and around.
It also seems to me that things like rice bran oil and peanut oil are very prohibitively expensive (at least twice as much as simple vegetable oil).
So, why not stick to what BIRs generally use (i.e. simple vegetable oil or, for the posh and health conscious ones, sunflower oil)?....if you wish to reproduce their results...health risks and all?
It seems to me that these sorts of changes are amongst the very reasons why BIR curries are apparently very different from (and not as good as) those of yesteryear.
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An excellent oil with very high smoke point and very high in mono is Rice Bran Oil.
Funny you mention this as I bought some yesterday, it has a smoke point of 250c and virtually tasteless. Cooked our dinner last night with it to great effect.
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An excellent oil with very high smoke point and very high in mono is Rice Bran Oil. Becoming very popular in Australia (it mostly comes from Thailand and is favoured by most Thai restaurants, who established the import "channel" for the stuff initially) and this is my major cooking oil nowadays.
Readily available (and not expensive) in Waitrose, comes in a nice screw-top bottle rather than the modern, minuscule, flip-top caps with initial sealing strip that are a complete disaster if one has the misfortune to drop a bottle. I like it and use it, but for curries am happy to stick with generic rapeseed oil.
** Phil.
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Readily available (and not expensive) in Waitrose...
You live in a different world Phil, you really do.
Waitrose 500mL rice bran oil costs 1.99 pounds. Veg oil from Lidl, 65p for 500mL.
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Our local t/a use Pride Rapeseed Oil in 20ltr drums. :)
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KTC Veg oil says "Produced from genetically modified soya", no mention of rapeseed. Also no one has mentioned Corn Oil in this thread yet, isn't that marketed to have health benefits?
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KTC Veg oil says "Produced from genetically modified soya", no mention of rapeseed. Also no one has mentioned Corn Oil in this thread yet, isn't that marketed to have health benefits?
Lunch (working lunch : project deadline looms) was a sandwich consisting of six slices of streaky bacon (rind-on) + 4 slices of Clonakilty black pudding and one slice of buffalo mozeralla, all fried in beef dripping. I don't think there's a lot of point my worrying about which oil I use :)
** Phil.
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Has anybody regularly used any of these without any detrimental effects on your end curry? What are the cost comparisons? Or do you still use cheap veg oil?
A lot depends on how you want to define 'healthier'. As far as curry cooking oils go, they're all about as bad as each other health wise. I generally tend to use Sunflower oil which is a step up from your bog standard generic vegetable oil (for most read Canola, as others have said) in terms of quality but underneath the more expensive nut oils.
In terms of taste I don't think there's any (or I've never detected any) difference between Veg, Sunflower and nut oils.
The healthiest oil to use is Extra Virgin Olive Oil from the first olive pressing but it's not at all suitable for cooking curries in for two reasons: 1/ the low smoke point and 2/ the taste, it's too strongly flavoured for curries.
The healthiest option therefore is undoubtedly, use less oil! But that's almost an anathema to BIR style cooking which needs a lot of oil to carry those spice flavours. There's a very good reason many BIR take-away curries have oil floating in them - they use a lot of oil to cook them in and as moisture/water gets removed from the gravy/sauce the oil separates from it.
So if you're really looking for a healthier option, use less oil (which won't get you the same taste) or eat less curries!
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Warning - longish post!
I thought I'd bring this up again as I've spent years in my spare time on the internet trying to find some answers and the way lipid (fat) research seems to be going is quite surprising.
Most of you will have heard of the 3 categories of oil or fat: Monounsaturated, Polyunsaturated and the devil's stuff itself, Saturated oil or fat.
A little bit of history:
Up to about the 1950s nobody ate industrial seed-based oil such as soya, sunflower, rapeseed oil, cotton seed oil etc. etc. These products were used to make oil paints, varnish and were used as industrial lubricants. In those days people ate olive oil, lard, butter, beef tallow, palm oil and coconut oil.
At this time it was discovered that it was cheaper to use petroleum oil products to manufacture paints, varnish and lubricants. This left a big problem for the agriculture business as to what to do with these industrial seed oils. To cut a long story short, due to some appalling science we ended up eating these oils at the advice of our governments because they told us these oils were heart healthy, unlike the old fashioned saturated fats we used to eat.
The most recent research paints an entirely different picture. Polyunsaturated oils are becoming the "bad boy". Most of the poly oils we eat are classed as Omega 6. Too much of this stuff is implicated with heart disease, cancer and slow metabolism (that's not a good thing by the way).
Many scientists now agree that we need a ratio of omega6 to omega3 of between 4:1 and 1:1.
The standard American diet creates a ratio of at least 50:1 omega6 to omega3 poly oils, and a UK diet is hardly different.
On top of this, we are only talking about a recommended quantity of polyunsaturated oil in the region of about 6 grams daily in total.
The problem with excess polyunsaturated fats is of oxidation. These oils are highly unstable and oxidise in the body very easily. This causes inflammation in the body hence the links to cancer and heart disease.
More research seems to be debunking the bad science of knocking saturated fats and how they will cause heart disease. This link has never been proven.
The facts are, the body converts excess sugars to saturated fat. Out bodily fat make up is similar to lard, i.e. about 50% monounsaturated and 50% saturated, very little polyunsaturates in the human body.
If these statements turn out to be true we should be wary of eating sunflower oil, rapeseed oil or any industrial vegetable seed oil that is high in polyunsaturated fats.
I switched recently to making curries with light olive oil that only contains 10% polyunsaturates.
That is the oil I now use for most frying.
I've also switched to 100% butter instead of a 70/30 butter/veg oil mix.
I use butter ghee for my dals. (Highly saturated)
I also use virgin coconut oil for some curries. (Highly saturated)
I'm planning to return to lard and beef tallow for making home made chips. Actually easier said than done as supply exceeds demand for quality lard and beef tallow.
I take an omega 3 fish oil supplement and I actively avoid anything that may contain omega 6 poly oils.
Bring on the old school sat fats!
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Interesting stuff Paul but as I'm sure you know you have to be careful researching things on the Internet due to the frequent vested interest of activists and groups promoting one theory over another. You haven't mentioned your sources so I'm having a hard time assessing how seriously I should take your conclusions. However I appreciate you have the best of intentions in sharing your thoughts so thank you for making the effort to make such a long post.
Ps why is it hard to use lard of supply exceeds demand.? Or did you mean the other way around?
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Hi NJ,
Yes that was the wrong way around!
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(selective snip)
I've also switched to 100% butter instead of a 70/30 butter/veg oil mix. I use butter ghee for my dals. (Highly saturated). I'm planning to return to lard and beef tallow for making home made chips. Actually easier said than done as supply exceeds demand for quality lard and beef tallow. Bring on the old school sat fats!
For some of us, they never went away. I have never forsaken butter for a butter/oil mixture; I continue to cook pancakes in lard, and virtually everything else in dripping. But for my curries I generally use rapeseed oil for the same reason that I use it to fry chips : I use it in quantity, it is cheap, and it contributes no unpleasant (or even unwanted) overtones.
Interesting stuff Paul but as I'm sure you know you have to be careful researching things on the Internet due to the frequent vested interest of activists and groups promoting one theory over another. You haven't mentioned your sources so I'm having a hard time assessing how seriously I should take your conclusions.
I've copied it to a friend who is a professor of nutrition for her expert comments; I will report back if she replies.
** Phil.
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PaulP
Very interesting post.
It's hard to know what to believe any more, they seem to keep changing their minds about what's bad and what isn't. If they were wrong once before, what makes anyone want to believe they're right this time?
Personally I'm extremely sceptical of pretty much anything I read these days with regards to what's good and what's bad as I believe many of the people putting out this information have either their own or a government agenda to follow. Cynical I know, but I know just how much and how often our government at worst lies and at best misrepresents information it puts to the general public to not believe very much at all about what it says any more.
The bottom line here as always as far as I'm concerned is that pretty much all fats are unhealthy in some way or another, particularly in the quantities your average person generally consumes. The answer is of course to try and eat a balanced diet that doesn't contain too much fat, salt or sugar and particularly too much processed food. Processed food as far as I'm concerned is the real evil.
And as natterjack mentioned, I assume you mean demand outstrips supply for lard and beef tallow.
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Yes Spicey, I meant demand exceeding supply re: Lard.
I'll post some links when I have time which may not be this evening.
Paul
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Here are a few links:
Natural news Article
http://www.naturalnews.com/029194_cancer_risk_fats.html (http://www.naturalnews.com/029194_cancer_risk_fats.html)
The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics
http://www.thincs.org/ (http://www.thincs.org/)
Unsaturated Vegetable Oils Toxic
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml (http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml)
http://thehealthyadvocate.com/2011/11/07/polyunsaturated-fat-linked-to-tumor-growth-and-greater-cancer-risk/ (http://thehealthyadvocate.com/2011/11/07/polyunsaturated-fat-linked-to-tumor-growth-and-greater-cancer-risk/)
http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/good-fats-bad-fats-separating-fact-from-fiction (http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/good-fats-bad-fats-separating-fact-from-fiction)
I don't want to bore people with this or even get into pointless arguments. I just find it interesting and It's enough for me to modify my diet accordingly.
I don't expect any government to echo these concerns to the public anytime soon.
You can't escape the fact that over the last 50 years people have been persuaded to abandon saturated fat and butter etc. to improve their health.
In fact the opposite is true and heart disease and cancer and obesity have never been so high despite people abandoning the old fats.
Two things have changed: Large intake of polyunsaturated vegetable seed oils and a massive increase in sugar intake, particularly fructose which is bad news in itself.
Paul
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Paul, with all due respect, unless you can cite articles from Nature or from any recognised and peer-reviewed journal concerned with nutrition (Journal of Nutrition, British Journal of Nutrition, European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, etc.), I am afraid that I cannot take the material you cite seriously. Sorry.
** Phil.
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What is wrong with the veg oil, it has a high burn point and so does not burn (so not creating carcinogens). Also once the spices have infused with the oil the oil separates and puddles on top of the curry, spoon this off and put in a clean jar to use as your oil for next time (more flavour). I see no reason at all to stop using veg oil.
But what ever you do DO NOT use Olive oil, not only does it ruin the taste but it burns as a lower temp and can be worse for you than veg oil.
Graham
http://heeraspices.com (http://heeraspices.com)
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Here are a few links:
Paul thank you for following up with those links.
I've read some of them and they contain interesting information. I'm not sure I agree with everything they say, but I don't disagree with them either. I think they provide a very good start point for further investigation.
At the end of the day people have to believe what they want to believe as there is so much conflicting information out there.
The bottom line as usual is that all fats are not particularly healthy for you particularly in the kind of quantities your average person consumes and should be consumed as part of a healthy varied diet.
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But what ever you do DO NOT use Olive oil, not only does it ruin the taste but it burns as a lower temp and can be worse for you than veg oil.aspices.com[/url]
Utter nonsense, if you want to spam at least get your facts right! >:(