Smoke point of cooking oils | Hacker News Reader

Smoke point of cooking oils

en.wikipedia.org

125 pointsbookofjoe167 comments

It really matters HOW an oil is produced.

"Good" olive oil enjoys a really healthy process, as opposed to most "new" oils available commercially only in recent years.

However, there is a lot of "fake" or altered olive oil in circulation. Be well aware of this. [0] [1]

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2016/02/10/the...

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Extra-Virginity-Sublime-Scandalous-Wo...

I once left a cast iron skillet on the stove about 1/2 full of canola oil for about 10 minutes on high heat. I was heating it up to deep fry something (don’t do this) and got distracted. I started picking up the pan to move it to another burner when the oil burst into flame.

Everything turned out okay in the end but the fire department got called out (building smoke detector went off) and I had to repaint the kitchen.

All that to say smoke point is serious business

This is why you always want to know where your salt is, and your fire extinguisher too.

I had a room mate do the same thing once. The flame must have been at least 4-5ft tall, hitting the ceiling. She grabbed a box of salt and started pouring it on the oil. This killed the fire rather quickly, before even a smoke detector went off or it created any damage.

Would salt work better than baking soda?

Whatever cools off the oil the quickest will work the best.

And isn't water.

I once tried to put away an oil fire with water, and I can attest it is not a good idea. The flames were impressive, though.

I've used both for grease fires, they work about the same.

Cast iron skillets are heavy and one should avoid for deep frying. For deep frying you need something that retains less heat so it responds quickly when you turn the gas to low.

The beauty of frying in cast iron is that it doesn't respond quickly to sticking cold meat in it.

Also to add, you should add oil _after_ the pan is heated (for a non-coated pan such as your skillet). You don't want to break down the fat before adding your food.

Non-stick pans should have a small amount of oil while heating up.

this doesn't apply to deep frying, as OP was doing

Wait, why "don't do this" ? I have done that many times, though I have never had anything burst into flames.

I think it's the leaving it unattended part that's ill advised.

If you're there, you can put a lid on the pan to smother the fire and it's not a big deal. And yeah, that means you need to have the lid ready.

> I think it's the leaving it unattended part that's ill advised.

It burst into flame when it was moved, not when unattended.

Hot oil smokes before it ignites, in my experience. If you don't leave it unattended, you can address it before it ignites.

I've never understood what I'm supposed to do with this information. My stove gives me heat information in low to very high or in numbers from 1 to 6. How does that translate into a temperature? I have no idea how hot my frying pan ever is in Celsius.

Edit: no idea what I'm being downvoted for, okay

In addition to just using a thermometer, many recipes tell you to heat the oil until it starts smoking. So now you know roughly what temperature that is based on the oil used.

If you need to find a substitute for a cooking oil, smoke point is probably the most important factor with which you compare oils, followed by neutrality of flavor.

Aside from using a thermometer, you could also look at the relative temperatures to decide which oil to pick. Olive oil started smoking last time? Try Canola oil or clarified butter for high-temp searing next time. I specifically look at it for picking a suitable choice for seasoning my cast iron pans.

All your stove can tell you is how much heat it's producing. It can't tell you how fast your pan heats up, how long your pan has been on the stove, and whether you just tossed in a half pound of ground pork.

What you can do with this information is see relative smoke points. Unrefined versions of oils have lower smoke points than refined, extra-virgin olive oil has a lower smoke point than peanut oil and canola oil. If you buy an oil at the store that you've never used before, you can check whether its smoke point is higher or lower than the oil you're accustomed to using. If you're in the middle of cooking realize you've run out of everything except the flaxseed oil you've been using for salad dressing, you can look at this chart and realize you should probably run to the store rather than try to cook with it.

Use a thermometer to measure the temp of your pan and/or oil.

Get an IR thermo and make sure you can set the emissivity so that it gives accurate readings for the surface.

Its quick, easy and after some time you will learn to intuit what the temps are without it.

Well, for example, searing meat generally requires temperatures in excess of 350F, so we can immediately conclude that butter and EVOO may not be ideal choices for searing.

I recently switched to using safflower oil for most things. It's completely changed how my steaks come out on the grill. Previously I've used peanut, corn, olive, avocado, canola, and vegetable. And so far safflower has given me the cleanest flavor. Also works great for simple stuff like scrambled eggs. I still use olive oil a lot for the flavor it gives for things like roasting vegetables in the oven. But safflower is my knew favorite

I am partial to grape seed oil for anything grilled.

What is your application of oil for grilling? Just to keep the grates seasoned?

You didn't mention Coconut oil the best tasting oil.

OMG can't stand it.

Go refined then, has basically no flavour but a healthy oil with a high smoke point.

gotta be careful if you use refined coconut oil, some of them contain partially-hydrogenated fats which are rather unhealthy.

Good call, wasn't aware of that so I'll keep an eye out.

I have a teflon pan with which I can use butter in to make omelettes and I have a stainless pan that I generally use lard (bacon drippings) because the omelette will stick if I use butter. I am obviously vegawarian at best.

What do vegetarians use for omelette in a steel pan?

It’s perfectly possible to fry eggs in a stainless steel pan with butter, but it requires a bit of technique. Preheat the pan over high heat (assuming a home style gas range) for a least a minute, it should be almost hot enough to brown the butter. Then add a tablespoon (or more) of butter and swirl it around to coat the pan. Gently add the eggs (one is easier than two) and let them sit for 20 seconds. The idea is that with enough hot enough butter the egg protein on the bottom will set before it touches the metal, ie a very shallow deep fry. Done right the egg will be free to slide around the pan.

The next thing to practice is flipping the egg without utensils. Maneuver the egg to the rear of the pan and tug the handle sharply forwards. Practice and confidence help, but the failures are still tasty so long as they land somewhere you don’t mind eating off of.

I suspect most people don’t get the pan hot enough which will let the egg stick. Sometimes you get a fragile egg that breaks up and sticks anyway. Omelettes work the same way except the eggs are mixed up first. The basics of really hot pan and plenty of butter and the flipping technique all apply.

Just for reference vegetarians are generally "allowed" to eat butter, it's vegans who disavow all animal products.

As neither I personally only ever make eggs with bacon, and bacon goes first and renders down providing plenty of oil :)

The eggs are sticking because the pan isn't hot enough before adding the ingredients. You want at least 320F to reach the leidenfrost effect, then add any fat you want, then the eggs (or try with a super hot pan and no fat).

You could also use different omelette methods, like the french omelette, which is basically microscopically scrambled eggs that are stuck together at the end. Most Americans go for the diner omlette, which I find requires a certain "thickness" to manage the flipping with all the extra ingredients. You can also do more crepe-style omelettes a la Julia Child, but I find these to be the most problematic.

Also, I recommend switching from teflon to anodized aluminum. Besides the fact that the former is toxic, the latter is more durable, can be oven safe up to 325F, and I think it heats up quicker and is slightly more non-stick.

Just never put the anodized aluminum in the dishwasher. We were told that about Teflon because it slowly erodes the nonstick coating but it’s a different reason altogether for the anodized aluminum. They’re great at resisting acidic exposure, unlike seasoned cast iron, but they’ll turn horribly textured all over the exterior and permanently discolored if you stick them in the dishwasher just once as they can’t handle the extremely alkali dishwasher soap, especially at high temperatures.

Teflon/PTFE is not toxic. It's even used for surgical implants.

It can emit toxic fumes if you heat it to very high temperatures, but at room temperature and during normal cooking use it is definitely not toxic.

Thanks for the correction! It looks like PFOA, an additive in pans pre-2015, is considered toxic (though apparently "negligible" according to FDA) and is no longer used since 2015.

Obviously the right answer here is to replace both with cast iron.

Cast irons aren't really convenient for everyday use, i can stick my non-stick in the dishwasher. My cast irons i have to water wash it, dry it, then re-coat with oil, then stick it back on the stove to get it polymerize otherwise the oil will go rancid after a while. Who wants to do that everyday for breakfast?

Once a cast iron pan is properly seasoned 'broken in' (this can take some weeks/months of usage) it shouldn't need to be re-seasoned after every use. My years-old skillet gets a scrub with hot water after a normal use; if I've cooked something smelly (e.g. fish) I might use some detergent (and even then it usually doesn't need re-seasoning as long as I haven't soaked it). Only if I've cooked something acidic (tomato sauce) do I need to re-season after cleaning.

I don't fry every day for breakfast, but if I did, cleaning my skillet would take about the same time as it would to stack it into the dishwasher.

> Once a cast iron pan is properly seasoned 'broken in' (this can take some weeks/months of usage)

Only if you don't season it properly initially.

Despite seasoning it properly the first time, I've definitely found it takes on a different quality (more resilient surface) over a longer period of time.

In general, I find non-stick to be more maintenance than cast-iron. If you're using it every day just wipe it out when you're done.

Most non-stick pans discourage using the dish washer--I see mentions of high-heat [1] and aggressive detergents [2] degrading the coating. Limiting yourself to plastic utensils and even with hand-washing you have to replace it ever few years. I tend to only use non-stick for certain egg dishes and fish.

[1] https://blog.williams-sonoma.com/how-to-clean-nonstick-cookw...

[2] https://www.thespruce.com/nonstick-pans-care-1908563

You shouldn't have to do that often. Certainly not every time.

If you're polymerizing it, using a vegetable oil, and wiping it down before storage (so no pooled oil/fat), you shouldn't have to reseason... well, really unless you need to scour the pan.

More frequent, med-high (e.g. standard breakfast) use also helps.

Think "everyday use" over "everyday clean"

> Who wants to do that everyday for breakfast?

My go-to breakfast (literally, maybe once or twice a month I'll do something different) is an egg sandwich, with a slice of taylor ham cooked in a small cast iron skillet, then an egg fried in an egg ring in that same skillet (while that's going on, toast an english muffin, then toast the top half again, this time with a chunk of fresh mozzarella on top). Once I assemble the sandwich I give the skillet a quick rinse with a non-abrasive scouring pad, then set it back on the range (which is off, but still hot).

Without exaggeration, I've made this meal several hundred times, and that skillet is far and away the the best of my cast irons when it comes to the quality of the seasoning, with no more care than what I just described.

You really shouldn't have to reseason cast iron after every use (in most use cases, the seasoning should improve with use).

> My cast irons i have to water wash it, dry it, then re-coat with oil, then stick it back on the stove to get it polymerize otherwise the oil will go rancid after a while. Who wants to do that everyday for breakfast?

No one, and absolutely no guide to cast iron care would recommend that process.

You can invent an unnecessarily complicated maintenance routine for any kind of cookware to make it seem impractical.

For my beloved carbon steel pan, I just wipe it out with some paper[1]. If there are burnt-on bits, I use a bit of salt and oil, and a sponge, half a potato or a wooden spatula to scrape it off.

Then a quick wash it with hot water, no soap is needed. I've never had to reseason my pan once the initial seasoning (using the oil+salt+potato peel method) was done properly.

[1] And put the paper+grease in a empty milk carton or something, and then in the trash when it has cooled. Never dump grease down the drain!

Get a $8 chainmail scrubber and use only water to clean with. Cleaning my cast iron takes the same amount of time as my non sticks, with the exception that I take more care to dry it. Definitely an every day staple cooking utensil in our household.

The pilot episode of The French Chef, Julia Child's show, in 1962 was making an omelette with butter in a steel pan.

But why not use non-stick? After that original 1962 show, she uses a nonstick pan in all the other videos I've seen. I think we have a tendency to assume the hard way produces the best results, but in this case I don't think there's any reason to think so.

Julia Child 1962, steel (PBS paywall): https://www.pbs.org/video/the-french-omlette-llslnf/

Julia Child 1980, nonstick (she specifically says you should use a nonstick pan): https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/13-1980-julia-child-cooks-o...

Jacques Pepin, nonstick (says nonstick is "ideal") : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1XoCQm5JSQz

Avoidance of non-stick is usually more about the health concerns of Teflon.

Yes, we think it's safe as long as you never overheat it and never scratch it and never let it get to old and always ventilate your kitchen and...

Far simpler to just avoid it, and it turns out few things really require non-stick anyway. (eggs are one)

Eggs don't require a nonstick pan. They require a well-seasoned pan and proper heat control over both pan and fat.

A nonstick pan is a shortcut, which can become a crutch that lets you get away with very sloppy technique. And they wear out quickly, losing their nonstick properties.

This is just inventing difficulties. You need better technique splitting wood with a shovel than an axe, better technique writing web services in C than in Go, better technique storing your data in files instead of Postgres. Good nonstick pans last for years of daily use, unless you're in a restaurant kitchen making a hundred omelettes per day. And even restaurants use nonstick pans for some things, though they use them as little as possible because for efficiency they prefer equipment that can take a lot of abuse.

A home cook making a couple of meals per day and not abusing their equipment should never have to buy a second nonstick pan. (Hence the never-ending attempts to persuade you that there's something superior to upgrade to. You're lost to them as a consumer if you realize that what you have will adequately express your cooking skills for the rest of your life.)

Everything useful becomes a crutch, and except as fodder for micro-mastery, there's no reason to do something the hard way for the same results.

I've never had a nonstick pan last more than 2 years at the most. They were the good Tefal pans, and I only ever used wood and plastic utensils in them. Even cleaning them by hand, they would lose their slippery nature and eventually the coating started flaking off.

In contrast, my carbon steel pan was less expensive, has so far held up to over a decade of use and is nonstick enough that any difference is negligible.

The only thing it can't do well is simmering acidic sauces, but for those I've got stainless steel pots and an enameled cast iron pan.

You have two options: get a carbon steel pan, which will give you close to the nonstick ability of Teflon once properly seasoned, and they're typically a better pan than stainless (closer to cast iron).

Another trick for fried eggs is to not flip them, but put a lid on the pan while cooking. The bottom fries properly, while the yolk cooks from the trapped steam.

Do you add the butter right away, or do you wait until the pan is hot?

I tend to get the best results if I let the pan heat up and then add butter. That said, I use “earth balance”, which is really oil and not butter.

I cook eggs almost exclusively on my stainless steel pan.

I know how it sounds coming from a stranger on the internet but you're doing yourself a disservice using seed/vegetable oils instead of butter.

Here[1]'s a visual and accompanying article that explains it in more detail. And here[2]'s a 5 minute video that does it in less.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Repeatedly-heated-cookin...

[2] https://youtu.be/8aXTuBYb5-c

The article you link about repeatedly heated oils, specifically reusing oil when deep frying. That doesn't seem relevant to the use described above.

Whoops. I tried to google something (besides a video) to sum up fats discussed in a book[1] and came to that. Didn't notice it was referring specifically to RCO.

The points from the video[2] (and book) still stand though.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451624425

[2] https://youtu.be/8aXTuBYb5-c

I use butter in my steel pans and it’s possible not to get the eggs to stick.

If I’m feeling lazy, I’ll add sunflower oil to the butter to raise the smoke point

This doesn’t raise the smoke point. The solids in the butter will still burn at the same temperature regardless of what it’s mixed with.

> The solids in the butter will still burn at the same temperature regardless of what it’s mixed with.

The higher the fat to solid ratio, the less of the solids will be exposed to air (down to potentially none at all), and so long as they aren't exposed to the air they won't burn irrespective of the temperature (eventually, you’ll reach the smoke point of the data, and as well as burning themselves, they'll also stop protecting the solids.)

Coating other things to allow them to be heated while preventing surface reactions that would otherwise occur when they are heated is one of the main uses of fat in cooking.

Butter is already about 1%–2% percent milk solids and 80%–82% fat. Adding extra fat to this equation is not going to have much of an additional protective effect.

The other comment is true, but also worth considering is that sunflower oil has a lower smoke point than the fats in butter (230°C vs 250°C) so you'd actually be lowering the smoke point by adding it.

This is only relevant if you're using clarified butter though.

You can season stainless steel pans to a degree by bringing oil up to its smoke point. YouTube has some tutorials.

Have you had good success? To me it’s still a grab bag with this method. So much so that I still keep a non-coated anodized aluminum nonstick pan around just for eggs. Everything else into the stainless or enameled cast iron.

I recently switched fully to a non coated iron pan and can't be happier. The trick for the right oil-coating is to apply oil with low smoking point and then to remove it almost completely with a cloth. When the pan looks dry again, briefly put it on the stove over high heat and after 3 minutes it is perfectly burnt in. Let it cool and repeat 3-5 times.

Pan will end up fully black. I had a previous attempt where I used too much oil (then the coating ends up sticky and it smokes during the heating) the pan must really be dry again. There will still be enough oil in the surface. Used flaxseed oil.

I tried it according to many of the video tutorials and it doesn't really work. It just smelled up my kitchen with oil smoke, and made my pan look amber-ish but not non-stick. Also whatever coating that created, it gets ruined by cooking.

Just use some oil and high heat before putting things in. And use a Teflon pan for more delicate things that don't need to be seared.

The coating needs to be very thin. I think of it more as filling in little scratches and then polymerizing to create a smoother surface. I still use oil/fat when it's time to cook.

I use avocado oil for my omelettes, and everything else for that matter.

Coconut oil

Vegetarians use butter, but if you're smart you use a well seasoned high carbon steel pan, or cast iron.

The best seasoning for a pan is done with flaxseed oil, as far as I understand, as it has a low smoke point so the oil will polymerize and turn into a glassy surface.

The flaxseed thing comes from a 2010 blog article [1], which purports to be a scientific approach to seasoning pans. As people have found out, it's unfortunately not a good idea.

Aside from the fact that flaxseed is ridiculously expensive compared to the traditional alternatives, it creates a brittle surface and flakes off after a while. It also requires a ridiculous number of coatings to get to the right level of smoothness. It's just not worth it compared to something cheap like canola or soy.

A lot of people have looked into it. Here [2] is a good Reddit post from /r/castiron.

But among all of the technical discussions about seasoning it's easy to forget that a pan generally only needs to be seasoned once, and most pans you can buy are well pre-seasoned, and using the pan for cooking is also a form of seasoning.

[1] http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-te...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/castiron/comments/5owtnm/why_i_dont...

In my experience, you’ll eventually cook something in the cast iron that sticks really hard, and the only easy ways to get the burnt-on gunk out end up stripping the seasoning, so re-seasoning ends up being a roughly semiannual process in my house. Would love to know how to avoid this.

I usually heat up the pan directly after cooking and wash it under the hot water. Just heat enough so it makes a bit of steam when it hits the water, scrub with a wooden spatula.

Or while cooking, add water if it fits whatever you cook. Make a sauce out of what is left after the sunday steak is out of the pan.

Scrub out any gunk with salt and oil and either a sponge or half a potato, depending on what you have. Then rinse with super hot water and dry well.

It has worked amazingly well for years for my carbon steel pan.

Boiling water in the pan helps sometimes. Scrape a bit with a wooden spoon while it boils.

The best seasoning method I've found for cast iron and carbon steel is the method advised by Matfer-Bourgeat, which is the brand of my favorite carbon steel pan.

Clean the pan well, to get rid of the shipping wax if it's a new pan, or scrub it well with salt as an abrasive if it has substandard seasoning already.

Then saute the peels of two potatoes in a a generous (at least ½ cup each) amount of salt and oil, while moving the mixture around and using the peels to really rub the oil and salt on the metal, for around 15 minutes until completely crisp and dark. Clean out the pan and repeat the sauteeing steps, clean out the pan again with just hot water and dry it well.

No other method has come even close, and it just gets better with more use. My fried eggs just slip and slide around like a hockey puck. If gunk does get burned on, scrub it out with salt and a bit of oil, there's no need to soak or use soap.

The theory is that flaxseed oil (also known as linseed oil) is a polymerizing oil, which is supposed to help with the quality of the surface. Other polymerizing oils (eg Tung oil) aren't food safe.

I notice from the table that unrefined canola has a similar smoke point to unrefined flaxseed oil, so that would make an interesting comparison

Flax seed oil polymerizes to a very slick surface, but it’s relatively brittle, and there are reports of it flaking off of cast iron.

Really the best thing you can do is get a hundred year old skillet, because they literally don’t make ‘em Like they used to.

I keep my eyes open for old pans, but I was busy filling my kitchen with smoke with my modern cheap lodge pan while I wrote the previous comment and it works very well for me.

How could the quality be lower? Isn’t it just a cast piece of iron?

The pores are so much smaller and the skillets weigh noticeably less. I’m not surprised you can’t season a modern cast iron skillet, the surface is so horribly rough nothing can bridge it. I fought for years with seasoning skillets and did the flaxseed and the anodizing baths and everything between then gave up and bought a Griswold dating to just before the turn of the century - never had to do a thing after cleaning and oiling it the first time, it’s probably been five years or more.

That is part of the reason why I bought a good carbon steel pan instead of a cast iron one.

The way they're produced (stamped from sheet steel rather than cast) ensures they have a perfectly smooth surface, rather than the pitted uneven surface of a modern cast iron pan.

Professional chefs have been using carbon steel pans for decades for a reason. In my view, they have all of the upsides of cast iron, with none of the downsides. And they're surprisingly inexpensive at kitchen supply stores.

> I’m not surprised you can’t season a modern cast iron skillet, the surface is so horribly rough nothing can bridge it.

Many sources recommend sanding before seasoning, and note that manufacturers that preseason don't usually do that.

Outside of some fairly intense misuse, I've honestly never had to do reseason after even boring old canola/soy seasoning without sanding, so I've never bothered.

> gave up bought a Griswold dating to just before the turn of the century

So under 20 years old?

I also gave up with my new pan. I took the sander to it and now it's nicely smooth and seasoned :-)

For people wondering _what_ the smoke point is here is the full wiki page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point

Non-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point

The article fails to mention why the smoke point matters. Is it something you want to avoid?

It's the point at which the oil burns. Thus, if you need to cook higher than that temperature, you're gonna end up with burnt oil.

If you’re seasoning cast iron or a wok, you do want to get a thin layer of oil smoking. This creates the season (and nonstick) on the pan. Over time, it’s really pretty cool.

But if you’re cooking, burned oil is going to introduce some weird flavors you probably don’t want. Steak is the only food I know of where you want the pan close to that hot.

I’ve always heard that canola has a much higher smoke point than olive, but the page suggests they’re near the same (depending on the olive oil).

Thoughts?

There is a big difference between extra-virgin olive oil (low smoke point) and refined olive oil (similar smoke point to canola).

That's probably the source of the discrepancy you report.

Interesting that the posted page actually gave two very different temperature for extra virgin olive oil: 160 vs 190. Then, two rows above, refined olive oil gets a large range: 199-243. I wonder if there are too many variables in manufacturing olive oil, that the current categorization is not that informational any more (at least for determining smoking point).

Why bother w/ olive oil if it isn’t extra virgin?

Refined/light olive oil is an excellent general cooking oil, extra-virgin is a great finishing oil (especially ultra-premium varieties) and useful for a few specialized cooking applications.

Olive oil is healthy, good to cook with, and not too strongly flavoured. Depending on where you are, it's also generally fairly cheap. As a general purpose cooking oil, it's a solid choice, and EVOO is not a particularly good replacement.

It's like asking why you'd want a screwdriver when you already have a really nice hammer; they're different tools for different purposes.

Here, in Spain, it's cheap. We nearly only use olive oil, and sometimes sunflower oil. It's really hard to find any other kind of oil.

If you care about the smoke point (i.e. you're heating to any significant degree), then to don't want extra virgin. Extra virgin is more for dressings, finishing, etc. If you're cooking with it, you want "pure".

Unfortunately, with the demand for "EVOO" it's difficult to get pure olive oil consistently. When it is available, it's generally no cheaper than extra virgin.

Costco has it by the gallon in the us. Also every single grocery store, including tiny stores like Aldi. Also Target and Walmart carry them, them being evoo, extra light tasting, and regular.

I don't know where you live, bit I've lived in many countries and on remote islands and olive oil is ubiquitous.

My takeaway is, wow, avocado oil is hardy stuff!

It’s become our main cooking oil. In addition to its high smoke point, it is a more neutral flavor when compared with olive oil.

I couldn't find Costco's usual non-stick spray 2 pack, so I got their Avocado spray instead. It has virtually no non-stick qualities from what I could tell.

Cooking spray is just oil in a spray can, usually Canola.

Cooking spray is not just oil in a spray can, because additives are necessary for it to work well in a spray can.

Yes, but it’s easier to apply without overdoing it.

Are you using extra virgin or pure? I find pure to have a very neutral flavor.

I’ve never tried pure, I’ll give that a shot.

What I think most people should take away is that ghee (clarified butter) should be used more often if you want a high smoke point with buttery flavor.

Too often, recipes have you avoid butter or cut it with some other oil because of butter's low smoke point, but you can just use ghee.

Putting butter in everything makes everything taste like butter.

If that's what you like, go nuts.

I'm just saying you can have it more often, since you often would like the flavor of butter, but choose something else because of the smoke point.

I like most things better when they don't taste of butter. But when they should, ghee is the answer.

Organic ghee is even harder to find than ghee.

Hmm they usually recommend flaxseed oil for seasoning cast iron skillets. It seems like its smoking point is very low, and recommended seasoning temp is around 400-500'F. Wouldn't something like avocado oil be better?

If you don't heat the oil above its smoke point then nothing will happen to the oil, chemically. This is not what you want when seasoning cookware. The purpose of heating the oil and cookware is to induce polymerization so that the oil becomes bonded to the surface.

As far as I know, this blog post [1] is the originator for the recommendation to use flaxseed oil specifically for seasoning cast iron. I am not a chemist, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the information.

[1] http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-te...

I've seen a number of other cooks disavow flaxseed oil after that blog post's rise in popularity. They say, anecdotally, that flaxseed oil flakes off more easily than regular vegetable oil seasoning.

That may be due to using a flaxseed oil with impurities or not using high enough temperature during the seasoning process. Cook's Illustrated [1] put the flaxseed method to the test and found it superior to vegetable oil.

[1] https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5820-the-ultimate-w...

I wish they tested different oils. I didn't see flax on the wikipedia page, but another page says 225° F [1]. This page [2] mentions flax seed oil flaking off and recommends refined grapeseed oil (which looks to have a smoke point of 400° F).

Usually, I see flaxseed oil in the refrigerated section. I don't have any experience with it, but perhaps the fickleness of storing it causes flaking in practice? Either way, it sounds like there are better alternatives to those two.

[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/heal...

[2] https://fieldcompany.com/pages/how-to-season-cast-iron-pan-s...

I've tried the flaxseed method, and while the seasoning looked good, it was very fragile.

The best method I've found over more than a decade of cooking on cast iron and carbon steel is this one, recommended by Matfer-Bourgeat (who make the best pans IMO) and America's Test Kitchen (at 2:00):

https://youtu.be/-suTmUX4Vbk

Beef tallow works well IME.

I’ve done it and that was my experience as well.

> If you don't heat the oil above its smoke point then nothing will happen to the oil, chemically.

This doesn’t sound right.

Have a read of the Oxidative Stability section of this Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point

The oxidative stability does not directly correspond to the smoke point and thus the latter cannot be used as a reference for safe and healthy cooking.

I think it's because the fatty acids in flaxseed oil polymerize into a very strong base coating - it's going to smoke regardless when you season it. I used flaxseed oil for my cast iron pans for the initial seasoning when I first got them but I use avocado oil for reseasoning after every cooking session. Works great.

I routinely cook in my iron skillet using the big bottles of avo oil from Costco. Yes, it’s great :)

That’s why they recommend it. For seasoning you want it to burn.

Makes sense. Thanks.

I've found a good way to handle the smoke point is to heat butter and mix it with a cooking oil with a higher smoke point; in my experience this raises the smoke point of the butter a lot without giving up the taste.

I was amazed to see that the smoke point of butter — 302°F — increases to 482° when clarified. How to make clarified butter: https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/08/how-to-clarify-butter.ht...

You can also just buy ghee at the grocery store. (Although I might try clarifying it myself since ghee is probably 5 times as expensive.)

Butter is an interesting product because it's made from churning the cream. When you initially get the butter solidifying, it has a lot of whey trapped in it. When you make ghee, you are getting only the fat from the butter -- so you have none of the water and none of the whey proteins. This means that your yield of ghee is often much lower weight than the original butter. You can actually buy butter with almost no water left in it -- but it's also about 5 times the price ;-). I have some cultured butter that I use sometimes and it's actually a bit frustrating because it doesn't foam like cheap butter will -- because there is no water left in the butter. Anyway, while you will probably same some money making your own ghee, you'll probably be surprised at how low the yield will be if you don't start with super expensive butter to begin with.

You should be able to get a decent idea of expected output and fat percentage by looking at the nutrition label and doing a bit of math. US butter is typically 80% fat, European ones may be 82-84% but if sold in the US might also just be using the brand name and US percentages.

A nice primer: https://www.tastecooking.com/all-about-butter/

Regarding the "always unsalted" advice in there, I've seen discussion from high level cooks in the past few years of "just get salted; it keeps better and when we actually tested recipes it made no difference."

For foaming, and to check the temperature, just flick in a little water.

I make ghee myself, very easy and tastes far superior to shop bought ghee, also smells much better - fresh and nutty. Just gently boil butter on a low heat for about 25 minutes then strain through cheese cloth. Is the best oil for frying steaks, since it withstands incredible heat, also much healthier than many vegetable oils,which become literally poisonous with high heat (coconut, olive, groundnut oils are OK though)

You gotta be careful making ghee. If you don't heat it enough, you don't get ghee with maximum smoke point. And it's also rather bland. The sediment should be at least light brown, for a nutty taste. But too dark, and you've burned it.

Not true. https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/does-mixing-oil-and-butt...

Thank you for posting this!

The "butter plus oil has a higher smoke point" theory is like building a house that's half tungsten and half wood and claiming it can't catch fire.

Maybe if you had the wood half be encased in a tungsten shell?

Well, my experience is different.

"Nuh uh!" isn't evidence.

If I'm doing steak with butter I start with avocado oil for a maximum temp initial sear, turn the heat off, and then add butter garlic and aromatics. With enough butter (always a good thing) the pan is cooled enough by the melting butter that the butter doesn't burn.

Adding butter at the start, regardless of other oils, still imparts acrid flavours.

I find it’s best to cook with the high smoke point oil, then finish with butter in the warm pan

Or just use Avocado oil which actually has a high smoke point and imparts a mild buttery flavor on what you’re searing. Science also disagrees with your anecdote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20910748

Source: I cook a lot of stuff via Sous Vide and love some of that fancy Mailard Reaction via a proper high smoke point oil and a cast iron skillet.

Our family* moved from Peanut & Sunflower oils to Rice-Bran, Mustard & Palm oils a decade ago.

Rice-Bran : cooking

Palm : frying

Mustard : taste toppings

* lower middle-class Indian

You should not use Palm oil since it is destroying rainforests.

I wish Wikipedia would allow sorting tables by column. I know Confluence has that.

They are sortable for me (Firefox). Clicking a table column header (with two triangles as "sortable" indicator) sorts by that column.

I think tables have to be specifically marked as sortable for this to work. But in case of this thread's article it definitely is.

It does. Are you by chance looking at the mobile version?

Yes

Works for me

tl;dr: Use avocado oil. It's fairly cheap (Costco), mostly tasteless, and good for pretty much everything.

There are an awful lot of random Wikipedia articles being posted lately. Some of them are interesting and on topic, but this one? Come on.

If you do cooking at home, this is a pretty interesting topic to learn about, I think.

Fine, but... it’s just a table of numbers. There’s nothing interesting or thought-provoking about it.

Numbers that represent things, things which have important implications for human health.

This relates to nutrition, chemistry, industrial processing and more, so I'm not surprised to see it here. I found this article independently many times before today because these topics are interesting to me, and I always enjoy obscure and data-oriented Wikipedia articles.

Would suspect a very common mistake a lot of people make is using extra virgin olive oil to cook with at a medium or high temperature. Don't do it.

I've found ghee (clarified butter) to the best thing I've found for anything requiring medium or higher cooking temperatures.

I used to worry about that but it turns out that cooking (even flying) with extra virgin olive oil is totally fine. The problem with the low smoke point in evoo is a myth.

https://www.aboutoliveoil.org/olive-oil-smoke-point-measured

This is doesn't pass the burnt smell test. First of all, anyone's who's done even a little bit of cooking will notice that extra virgin olive oil smokes / burns very quickly.

Secondly, this article claims "the oil and the food did not exceed 180⁰ F" which is well below the point where Maillard reaction occurs. Maybe in their specific "we represent the olive oil industry" environment, it didn't exceed this temperature, but I'd take that with a grain of salt.

I always cook with virgin oil and NEVER I get it to burn. Even putting the fire to max.

That little snippet misses the entire point. EVOO having a "low smoke point" isn't myth, it's a scientifically measurable fact. The stupidity of that article is yes, their pan didn't go past 180 degrees but its because the moisture content of the item being cooked was removing heat from the pan. The entire problem of smoke point has to do with how you cook.

I deep fry above the temperatures given for evoo. Certainly my stir frying is also above those temperatures, though harder to measure. Certain kinds of shallow frying won't burn evoo but I have burnt it in the past and am not ready to trust the word of an olive oil industry group on this matter.

It's not a myth.

Searing scallops in EVOO produced consistently burnt-oil tasting results until I switched to avocado oil.

My Italian mother growing up would insist on using EVOO to pop popcorn and it always tasted like burnt olive oil. My results are far better using the exact same process but a higher smoke point oil like avocado oil.

I also prefer the results of seared steaks with a higher smoke point oil than EVOO. Especially when I use the iron skillet outside on an oversized bed of glowing hot coals so hot I can barely stand to be near it. I've used EVOO here in a pinch, but it immediately starts to smoke before I've even put the meat on.

That is an extremely unconvincing article.

> Not even close. We used an infrared thermometer to measure the temperature of food (here, Brussels sprouts and garlic) being sauteed in extra virgin olive oil. ... As you can see in the video below, the oil and the food did not exceed 180⁰ F.

I watched the video. Indeed, the Brussels sprouts cooking in oil did not exceed 180F. No kidding — wet food, e.g. Brussels sprouts, won’t exceed the boiling point of water until it’s quite dry. But this is entirely missing the point — the oil in the pan is considerably hotter, hence the sizzling.

There’s a bunch of articles on this site digging into the chemistry of cooking with EVOO. I haven’t dug into the references but it looks like a thorough look at exactly what heating various oils does to the chemistry of fatty acids.

https://suppversity.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-quest-for-optim...

The tradeoff of using clarified butter is taste. Butter (or oil) can really bring a dish together, much like how salt is basically essential when cooking, for taste.

Clarified butter is butter without the milk solids. Depending on what you're going for, that can impact the taste.

You can cook with EVOO. I've done breaded chicken breasts on the stove with EVOO. Just gotta keep the heat low (still hot enough for food safety standards) and leave the chicken on a little longer.

"heat the food, not the oil".. A Smoke Point is not the issue, it is well before that, when heat breaks long bonds in the whole oil into shorter, less digestable and less nutritious forms... quality oils are a secret to long life ! conversely, low-quality and "broken" oils will wear and pollute the body over time.. personally, I use water during cooking for many whole foods, and add oil at later cooking stages (which takes practice, and is not a universal recommendation)..

The Mailard reaction is the scientific description of browning food. It happens with amino acids (in virtually every oil) and sugar combined with heat. Going above roughly 180C / 355F results in a different chemical reaction known as pyrolysis aka burning.

If you're steaming food and then adding olive/avocado/walnut oil afterwards, well, that's fine, but you are not cooking with oil, exactly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com