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Fats and Oils
Every time that I do a demonstration, someone invariably asks me what kind of oil I am using. I guess there must be some kind of magic oil that we chefs are supposed to use, but if there is, I still haven’t found it. Sadly, there is no magic oil, but there are a lot of different kinds out there with different uses.
I’m not going to get into a debate of the health issues of various fats. I am convinced that if you eat a well-balanced diet, including fats, in moderation, you will do just fine.
I group fats and oils into two rough groups, cooking and flavoring. Cooking fats are the ones that we use for sautéing. Flavoring fats are the ones that we add late in the cooking process to add flavor. We also use a commercial pan spray (similar to what you have at home) to make cleanup of our baking pans easier.
Bacon Grease. We don’t use a lot of bacon grease, but when we do, it is generally for the final cooking of a vegetable to which we want to impart a smoky flavor. In the restaurant, we often blanch vegetables in advance and leave the final cooking/reheating to the last minute. For example, we have done the final cooking of spinach in bacon grease, for stuffing into rainbow trout. We also have used bacon grease to brown the Brussels sprouts that we serve with our Porcini-Dusted Venison Chops.
Butter. We almost never cook with whole butter—the milk solids burn too easily. An exception is that we do use whole butter as the basis for our Pineapple OBW dessert. And, we do use a bit of whole butter to enrich certain sauces from time to time. Swirling whole butter into a sauce at the last minute thickens it slightly, gives it sheen, and makes it taste wonderful. We also make compound butters (softened butter mixed with a flavoring such as ground nuts, fresh herbs, or citrus zest) that we use to flavor a dish after it has cooked.
Clarified Butter. Clarified butter is butter that we have heated and let stand until we can decant the butter fat from the milk solids, which we discard. We then use the resulting clarified butter for cooking or as the basis for one of our flavored finishing butters. We cook our latkes twice. The first time we use grapeseed oil or pure olive oil to cook the latke. Then at service we use clarified butter to both crisp and flavor the latke. As for finishing butters, we combine clarified butter with various flavoring agents such as garlic, shallots, or orange rind. This goes over a cooked item, such as broccoli.
Duck/Foie Gras Fat. Cooking both duck and foie gras gives off a lot of fat. We save it and use it for the final cooking of certain things such as roasted potatoes. It is hard to beat a potato that you have roasted and then finished by browning all over in duck fat, the way that they do in southwest France.
Grapeseed Oil. With its high smoke point and its low saturated fat content, this is our oil of choice for general purpose cooking and sautéing, mainly because it is what our distributor carries at a reasonable price. We spend a fortune on oil every week and price matters. When prices invert, we us pure olive oil or a mix of pure olive oil and canola oil. The bottom line for home cooks is that you can use whatever is available at your grocery: pure olive, grapeseed, canola, or soybean oil.
Lard. We almost never cook in lard for the public because lard has such a bad image (again, I am not going to debate the health issues). More often, we use it for staff meals. The rich pork flavor is essential for many Mexican dishes, including carnitas and refried beans. Too bad you can’t come back in the kitchen and eat with us!
Olive Oil. We use two kinds of olive oil, pure and extra virgin. Extra virgin oil is the yield of the first cold pressing of the olives and it contains a lot of vegetable matter that will burn easily. Pure olive oil comes from treating what’s left after the first pressing with heat and chemicals and then refining that oil to yield a clear, neutral oil. We use pure olive oil in salad dressings where we do not want a lot of olive flavor. We also sauté with pure olive oil. Extra virgin we use in certain salad dressings such as the lemon vinaigrette that we use for arugula. Mainly we use extra virgin, with its pronounced flavor, as a flavoring oil. For example, we drizzle it over tomato salads or cooked vegetables for a great finish. We also use both kinds of oils as the basis for flavored oils. We infuse olive oil with rosemary, chives, basil, red peppers, annatto, etc. to finish dishes. Nothing dresses up a plate of grilled vegetables like small squirts of rosemary, basil, and red pepper oils.
Sesame Oil. Because of its very low smoke point, sesame oil is best left as a flavoring oil, added at the last minute or after the dish has cooked. We use sesame oil a lot to finish gai lan (Chinese broccoli) and nappa cabbage. More often, we use sesame oil in dressings, such as our Soy-Sesame Dressing that we use for spinach salads. There are two kinds of sesame oil on the market, light (pressed from raw seeds) and dark (pressed from roasted seeds). We only use the dark kind and we only ever use Kadoya brand.
Walnut Oil. Walnut and most tree nut oils are amazingly flavorful, very expensive, delicate, and prone to rancidity. Heating them destroys their beautiful flavors, so only use them cold. We use walnut oil in dressings for salads that contain walnuts, to reinforce the walnut flavor in a very subtle way. Nut oils can also be overpowering, so have a light touch. We never use pure walnut oil in a dressing—it would be too expensive, and more importantly, it would be far too much of a good thing. Buy nut oils in small quantities and be prepared to use them quickly—they turn rancid quickly.
Other Oils. There are a lot of other fats and oils that we seldom use. Palm oil is a marvelously flavorful, almost red oil that is terribly high in saturated fat. Still, it is indispensable when cooking authentic Brazilian food. Corn oil we never use because it gums up so badly with use. Mustard oil is required for authentic flavor when cooking many northern Indian dishes, but it needs a light touch because it is very assertive. Peanut oil is an excellent sauté oil, but it tends to be very expensive. |
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