Can you Mix Oils when Deep Frying?
Frying is the least prescribed style of preparing food in today’s health-conscious setting. People have increasingly started to shift to other healthy culinary choices, such as baking, with health authorities advising us time and again to avoid fried foods. Still, the essence of living is variation, and we should not resort to baked goods all the time.
Yeah, when taken frequently in cafes or street vendors, fried foods can also damage us due to the threat of oil re-use. As long as you cook in your kitchen, enjoying fried food once in a while is ideal. While we are on the topic of deep frying food at home, let us talk about mixing oils. I am sure that many of you out there might have experienced this.
You may not have enough vegetable oil to fill your deep fryer, so instead of going to the supermarket, you might want to add some canola oil. Can you relate? But, you might be intrigued to learn that cooking oils are blended all the time. Regardless of the cause, under the proper conditions, you could blend oils while deep frying. But keep in mind that we can not mix all kinds of them.
The easiest way to move forward is to use a mix of cooking oils to extract the full perks from fatty acids in these oils. The controversy about the healthiest cooking oil continues with numerous scientific trials already being carried out. It is safer to use a mixture of two or three kinds of oil, according to researchers, or swap the ones that we use for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Why One Should Be Cautious While Mixing Oils for Deep Frying
In general, when industries produce oils, they are often blended and refined in several ways. In reality, before it even reaches the market, vegetable oil is usually a combination of many oils. These oils are, nevertheless, inspected on a plethora of scales.
In combining oils, most people do not know all they should. These include the chemical compatibility of the two oils, the end flavor, and smoke points. The truth of the matter is, unless you are an oil specialist, you will not be able to attempt to blend oils on your terms.
Why Do People Mix Deep Frying Oils
Have you ever heard of mixing oils when deep-frying and thought about the reason why? Here are some of the reasons why we could blend oils. Firstly, you can decide to blend oils to fill your fryer if you do not have ample of one type of oil to fill your deep fryer. To try to optimize health benefits, individuals blend oils. Some oils can be very delicious yet pricey, so blending oils can help lower costs while also serving some of your favorite tastes.
How Do Mixed Oils Taste
Have you ever wondered how mixing oils while deep frying impacts the taste of the food? A neutral taste is present in many common oils used for deep frying. It is such that the natural tasting of food does not influence the oil. Generally, you’re quite likely to get a neutral-tasting outcome if you’re trying to blend two neutral-tasting oils. Oh, no big deal.
Let us assume, though, that you have coconut oil mixed with a lightly sweet one. It is known to give a somewhat sweet flavor. Then, what happens when you try to blend the sour with the sweet? The findings could not be that nice. Thus, before running out and combining various oils, you should address the flavors.
Mixing Oils and Smoke Points
Have you ever heard of the term smoke point before? The smoke point of each oil is the most important thing to remember when combining them. An oil’s smoke point is the point when an oil begins to smoke or cause fires. Deep fryers have a maximum heating temperature of 375 degrees Fahrenheit. I would suggest that oil with at least a smoking point of 400 degrees Fahrenheit is probably safer to have.
So what do you do here? I would recommend that you should take the lowest smoke point of the oils when combining them. Use that at your reference point. For instance, if one oil has 350 degrees Fahrenheit smoke point, and the second one has 400 degrees Fahrenheit smoke point, you need to maintain the temps below 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Do not bump your oil heat to 375 degrees Fahrenheit even though you blend the oils at a 50:50 scale.
Mixing Vegetable Oil and Canola Oil
Canola oil is an exceptionally stable oil with 400 degrees Fahrenheit high smoke point. The oil would not smoke or break down at high heat due to a high smoke point, which works well for deep-frying, searing, and sautéing. I think that canola oil is suitable for Indian food, which requires a lot of deep-frying and a large quantity of seasoning and masala mix.
Canola oil is odorless and neutral, very mild in texture, and, thus, does not feel oily and, without messing with its flavor, acts like miracles in dishes. When you fry food, vegetable oil is also good enough, specifically as a deep frying oil with a natural flavor. Since frying happens at extreme temps, it is safer to use an oil with a high smoke point that does not break down quickly.
Both canola and vegetable oils will suit your budget as well. Vegetable oil, as it is, is also a mixture of various types of vegetable oils. Since canola oil comes from rapeseed or a canola plant, combining the two at all doesn’t sound absurd. They can both also have a smoke point of about 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Mixing Butter and Vegetable Oil
You need to be vigilant when combining oil with butter, whether vegetable, peanut, olive, canola, or some other kind. The smoke point for butter is even smaller than for other frying oils. The smoke point for butter is at 300 degrees Fahrenheit. It may be sufficient for pan-frying over a stove, but most deep frying temperatures may not be handled by butter.
Mixing Peanut Oil with Canola Oil
Peanut oil might have a faint taste, but it should not have enough flavor to influence your final dish. Canola oil has a temperature of about 400 degrees Fahrenheit at a lower smoke point, so you will want to make sure you do not get too close to it. Finally, with peanut oil, there are conflicting opinions on whether people with peanut allergies are okay.
Mixing Olive and Canola Oils
Along with adding flavor, olive oil is full of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. What is little understood is that we can deep fry using olive oil. The smoke point of olive oil is not significantly smaller than that of canola oil, unlike popular theory.
The maximum smoking point of light olive oil is 410 degrees Fahrenheit. It is certainly hot enough for deep frying. It is not essential to add canola oil to the mix, but it can save you dollars without cutting back on taste, provided that olive oil is slightly more expensive.
In conclusion, there is a lot to remember while mixing oils when deep-frying. We use deep fryers at extreme temps. It is essential to get the smoke points of each oil balanced. Although it is not necessarily necessary to blend oils, it may allow for many advantages. All in all, after you have heard more about the oils and their characteristics, combining oil is more suitable.
References
https://thecookingexpert.com/can-you-mix-oils-when-deep-frying
https://www.livestrong.com/article/476520-how-to-deep-fry-with-a-mix-of-olive-canola-oils/
https://www.boldsky.com/health/diet-fitness/2018/is-it-ok-mix-canola-oil-vegetable-oil-while-cooking-121196.html
