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germinalphrase

What non-seed oils do people use for moderate/high temp cooking? I

use olive for almost everything, but it’s not the best choice for high(er) temp so I go for the sunflower oil.

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For moderate to high temperature cooking I use either ghee or beef tallow. For deep frying, beef tallow is the best.

Both of them are easy to make at home and last for months in the fridge or at room temperature.

Thanks! Looks like ghee has a smoke point of 250 °C (485 °F) degrees which is quite good.

For frying, I usually use a mixture of olive oil and butter. The oil slows down the process of the butter burning. It's certainly not as good as ghee, but ghee tends to make stuff greasy.

If you put butter into a pan that is too hot and it starts burning, it can be useful to cool things down by adding some oil. But the milk solids will always burn at a given temperature. A mixture of olive oil and butter won't let you cook at a higher temperature than just butter.

Avocado Oil is supposed to be a good option too with high smoke point. Costco has a reasonably priced option.

I’ve read though that the whole fear of over-heated olive oil is overblown, so who knows. Like everything in nutritional science it is unclear.

I usually change stir fry recipes to instead simmer the food in vegetable broth. The I add olive oil after cooking.

My wife likes occasional fried food and coconut oil works fine for that.

I don’t know if peanut oil is considered a seed oil or not, but it has one of the highest smoke points. (I’m aware peanuts aren’t seeds, but not everyone is.)

Peanuts are not seeds. I don't know whether it counts (and I don't know why GP thinks seeds are to be avoided).

Maybe coconut oil?

Coconut oil varies a lot in its smoke point; unrefined its similar to butter but refined can get up past 400 F / 204 C(similar to canola oil).

I do like cooking with it despite the low heat limitation because it's good for things you can cook at lower temps like eggs and if you get good high quality oil then it will be near tasteless. Which means you can actually taste the egg instead of whatever oil / lard you fried them with.

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