It would be hard to cook without the use of oil or shortening unless of course you use a non-stick pan and keep your fingers crossed. Oil adds flavor and taste to food. Hot oil cooks food faster: consider a fry cooker. Shortening has it’s own distinguishable taste. When choosing cooking oil it can be hard to figure out exactly what Saturated or Unsaturated means. Then there’s Polyunsaturated oil. To break it down the word Poly means additional or greater than this means that you get a bonus surplus of Unsaturated oil in Polyunsaturated oil.
Oil and Shortening has to be thought of in fat form. The more fatty acids Unsaturated fats hold they will remain fluid: a pour-able liquid. They become liquid at sixty degrees a much lower melting point than Saturated Fats. This kind of oil, Unsaturated oil, is much healthier for the body. Since the body’s temperature on average remains around ninety eight point eight any oil with a lower melting point is much better absorbed by the body. It won’t linger in the stomach so long that it makes you sick. This kind of oil helps to dissolve fats already in the body instead of clogging up arteries or becoming hostile plaques or fat deposits.
The best Polyunsaturated oils are Sunflower, Corn, Soybean, Safflower, and Sesame.
Hydrogenation is the act of combining hydrogen atoms with liquid oils or fat: altering them into a hardened solid Saturated fat. This kind of fat only melts when it reaches one hundred fourteen degrees and beyond. Since solid fats take a higher temperature to melt, your body temperature would have to be one hundred fourteen degrees to insure proper digestion and prevention of clogged arteries etc. People who eat Lard might want to give it up because it’s a Saturated fat.
To get oil you have to extract it from nuts, corn, olives and so forth. To do this you can use a Solvent, in other words by chemical means, or by use of a Hydraulic or Expeller press. The Hydraulic press is the best of the three extracting methods hitting closer to being cold pressed; meaning little to no heat is used in extracting the oil. Look for Virgin Olive Oil and Sesame oil as your safest bet or you can try Crude Oil; the most natural form of oil.
Unsaturated fats cannot become Saturated fats when heated.
If you had to choose between Butter and Margarine, which one would you choose? The wiser choice would be butter. Margarines are usually Hydrogenated so they’ll keep their consistency at room temperature, but in the end its still preference that matters.
Animal fats are disgusting to me, but for those carnivores who love cooking and eating meat, be sure to cut the fat off or don’t let the fat start smoking in the pan. Smoking oils or fat will spoil the food. Think about it. When you use the same oil over and over in a deep fryer after awhile the oil makes things taste nasty or you may get sick.
