Your choice of cooking fat
(45 posts) (25 voices)-
maba
MemberI'd like to know what your choice of cooking fat is? I've always used olive oil but I read it's best consumed cold. This morning for the first time I used only butter as the cooking medium. I found it very hard to use as much as I did (thanks to CW), but I took a deep breath and did it anyway :) Oh, and the food tasted great. How about coconut oil for cooking?
Posted 9 months ago # -
madMUHHH
MemberHands down, coconut oil may be a bit more expensive, but it's pretty much the best cooking oil you can get.
I pretty much only use coconut oil and butter, olive oil only on rare occasions.
Lard is supposed to be very, very good, but I haven't tried that one yet.Posted 9 months ago # -
Nick
MemberAvocado oil has the same poly/mono/sat breakdown as olive oil, but it's got a much higher smoke point and fewer fragile things in it to get damaged. I use it when I want something that is liquid immediately.
I also have coconut oil. I use butter sometimes, but I try to ease up on the dairy. I also have ghee (mostly for Indian food).For breakfast, my standard protocol is to cook 4-5 strips of bacon fairly slowly, until they're browned but still pliable, and a lot of the bacon grease has rendered out, and then I cook the eggs in that. It's not quite as delicious as eggs made with butter, but wasting bacon grease is a sin.
Posted 9 months ago # -
Richard Nikoley - freetheanimal.com
MemberCoconut oil, lard, bacon drippings (bacon flavored lard), ghee (clarified butter), unsalted butter, and duck fat.
I'll use a little toasted sesame oil right at the very end of a stir fry, for flavor.
I almost never cook with olive oil, but use it on salads all the time (usually with some comb of lemon or lime, dijon mustard, balsamic, or apple cider vinegar).
Good lard (leaf lard) is pure white and has no pork flavor at all. Rendered duck fat is amazingly delicious.
The one I've not yet tried is tallow.
Posted 9 months ago # -
maba
MemberThank you all so much! I'm thrilled to know Coconut oil is good for cooking. My parents in India have access to plenty of coconuts and can have fresh oil made from "oil mills". I'm trying to get them to adopt the primal lifestyle.
Darn, the more I read here, the more I realize this is how my grandmother used to cook and eat (only exception being grains) until we started subscribing to the new fangled dietary recommendations. May be I should start a Primal Indian recipe section. Any Indian food fans here?
Posted 9 months ago # -
SerialSinner
MemberI just had a big piece of chicken deep fried in the lard I rendered a couple of days ago (I have a lot of it, so deep frying is going to be a hobby of mine for the next month or so).
The chicken was extremely tasty. No trace of pork taste or smell, very crispy. No smoke. Simply delicious.
Posted 9 months ago # -
Nick
MemberSome Indian food is pretty easy to make primal. Curry with similar modifications to Thai curries: just lose the potatoes, if any. Carrots, onions, other veggies okay. You can use yogurt in an Indian curry, but coconut milk can work too. I usually end up doing Thai curries. It's a delicious way to get a bunch of coconut fat into your system.
Also, Chicken Tikka Saag. The way I make it, it's basically just chicken, spinach, and ghee as the bulk ingredients, and garlic, ginger, and dry spices as well. It's low carb as long as you're okay with a huge amount of spinach. If I eat a lot I might down 10oz of spinach, which is just 10g carbs, 6g fiber, 1g sugar. I make my own ghee so I'm not shy about adding a lot to get the right taste/texture.Posted 9 months ago # -
Miriam
MemberMaba, bring it on, I would love some primal Indian recipes, one of my girlfriends who is currently out of the country is Indian and I love inviting myself over for dinner as her family eats lots of meat, meat and more meat (and a bit of dhal on the side).
I use coconut oil for chicken and butter for steak/lamb, though the steak I buy is Wagyu so has marbling through it so doesn’t need too much but a good pat of butter once cooked never goes astray.
Posted 9 months ago # -
Goose fat! Special occasions though.
Avocado oil is my fave. Then it goes, butter, coco oil and bacon grease/lard. Mmmmmm.
Posted 9 months ago # -
coma
MemberCoconut oil, I usually get it in bulk since it lasts ages and I'll definitely use it. I use butter ghee (not the veg kind!) or butter occasionally.
Curries are excellent food, it's a lunchtime staple for me. This is especially true once I got the basics down for creating my own pastes. Add in some tomatoes or coconut milk plus onions and some veg and I'll be sorted for a few days.
Another indian favourite of mine is saag paneer, this replaced my pre-bedtime cottage cheese I was eating, mostly because I love the taste!
Posted 9 months ago # -
Coconut oil. Or if I am having bacon, I make it first then cook whatever else in the bacon grease. I wish I could render some lard, but my living situation doesn't permit me to stink up the kitchen like that. (Does it really make your kitchen smell that awful?)
I don't really trust the local butcher to get lard...last time I asked if he sold grass-fed beef, he laughed at me and said that it doesn't exist since, "cows don't get fat on grass." He then asked me if I like yellow steak fat, since grass would make the steak fat yellow. Always curious, I asked if this was due to the cow consuming a lot of chlorophyll in grass; I had never even heard of such a thing related to grass-fed beef. I think I thoroughly disappointed him when I didn't react with horror to the idea of yellow steak fat. Would I have been better off asking for "pasture-fed" cattle?
Posted 9 months ago # -
Hmm, thanks, Tarlach. I'll have to give it a whirl sometime when I can open the windows just in case there are any objections. (I was reading your directions in another thread--thanks for posting those as well.)
So if yellow fat is common in older grass-fed cattle, what of the butcher's insistence that cattle don't fatten up on grass? (I was going to point out the incongruity of his statements, but then considered it best not to contradict a large surly man with a very sharp knife in a bloodstained apron.) Is there really an issue with cattle not getting "fat" enough on grass alone? Isn't hay considered grass, albeit cut and dried?
Posted 9 months ago # -
Tarlach
MemberCows grow on grass. It's what they are meant to eat. Until quite recently, all cows were grass fed.
Cows get FAT on grains and this is done to make them heavier (to sell for more money), grow faster and make the meat more tender. The average Joe in a blind taste test will prefer the taste of the tender grain fed beef. Hence the reasons why it is done.
The market asks for it.
* I think the old yellow fat beef might be from milk cows? A cow can't survive much past 140 days on grains before the acid and infection kills them. Milking cows probably still eat grass/hay...
Posted 9 months ago # -
That was exactly what I wanted to say in response to the butcher, that cows have survived on grass for millenia before modern cattle farming. He made it sound like any cow that is forced to survive solely on grass is severly malnourished and basically inedible. In reality it sounds like his wallet is the only thing in danger of being malnourished by cows living on grass.
Disheartened by the attitude at the local butcher shop, I found a ranch about an hour away that sells "Wild Type Ranch Natural Angus Beef" which is touted as "local and natural: No hormone implants, pasture-raised, born and raised locally." Does "pasture-raised" really just mean grass-fed initially and then grain-finished?
They also have "Wild Type Ranch Organic Beef: 100% Grass-fed, Organically raised." What is the difference between the two? Organic grass?
Sorry to hijack this cooking fat thread into a Q&A about grassfed beef.
Posted 9 months ago # -
maba
Member"Sorry to hijack this cooking fat thread into a Q&A about grassfed beef."
@Shine: NO BEEF FOR YOU (intoned like the Soup Nazi)
Just kidding. This morning, I didn't have time to make breakfast and decided to get eggs at the office cafeteria. They also had bacon that I wanted to buy. So I asked the cafeteria guy where they got their bacon from and he looked puzzled and said,"From the store"! And later added, "It comes in a box". That answered my question. I should have know the answer even before asking. Oh well!Posted 9 months ago # -
TaydaTot
MemberIs light olive oil better to cook/roast with than extra virgin, virgin or regular olive oil? I thought it was supposed to have a higher smoke point. I ask because I like to roast vegetables in the oven with light olive oil because it isn't really possible/convenient to coat vegetables in solid fat before roasting.
Posted 9 months ago # -
maba
Member@TaydaTot: I roasted broccoli in the oven with butter yesterday. I spread the florets on the tray, topped it with slices of butter and stuck it in the oven for about a minute. Then took the tray out and tossed the broccoli to get it coated evenly with the melted butter. And then roasted it.
Posted 9 months ago # -
Like most here, I use primarily coconut oil and lard for cooking. I use EV olive oil for salads and have been known to incorporate it into smoothies.
I used to do just about all of my cooking with olive oil, but I have been migrating to fats more suited to the heat.
Posted 9 months ago # -
LabRat
MemberButter both clarified and not, lard, bacon fat, sometimes olive oil, need to try coconut oil and avocado oil. Is the latter expensive?
On yellow beef fat- I'm pretty sure that's a good sign. I know that omega-3 enhanced eggs and the eggs of chickens that are allowed to forage for insects as well as their normal feed (which means more omega-3s) range from more intensely yellow to bright orange yolks. Grass-fed butter is also yellow with no dye needed, though I recall the color being attributed to beta-carotene more than omega 3s. Either way it seems the yellower, the better...
Posted 9 months ago # -
Nick
MemberI have seen one of the employees from this company post in a forum that their "Avocado Oil, Refined" for $27.72 for a 7lb bottle is food grade (otherwise a Loriva brand bottle of 20oz or or some such is $10 at the grocery store, i.e. expensive): http://www.soaperschoice.com/cgi-soaperschoice/Web_store/web_store.cgi?query_price_low_range=0&cart_id=
You might call them and make sure it's actually food grade. I need to do that and ask them what else on their list is food grade, because I'd love to be able to get a cheaper coconut oil, or cocoa butter, etc.
I have a small quantity, and I find it to be helpful when I want something with a very high smoke point and no phytocompounds or what not to get damaged by the heat like olive oil. Also, avocado oil is arguably more primal since olives were not edible pre-agriculture (they require fermentation; or at least a gigantic stone wheel to press the oil).
I use butter, ghee (make my own 4-5lbs at a time, it's easy), olive oil, lard, bacon fat, tallow (grass fed, rendered myself), coconut oil, avocado oil. Would like to get my hands on some goose or duck fat, leaf lard instead of just lard, and cocoa butter and palm kernel oil.
Also, when I cook for other people who don't care about their diets, I use up my stores of peanut oil and interesterified butter-flavor Crisco.Posted 9 months ago #
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