So you have a nice piece of fish and wish to fry it up in a pan, or you have a whole chicken and wish to roast it in the oven. You’ll need some fat to keep it from sticking, or want to impart a nice crispiness to the poultry skin. You have butter, extra virgin olive oil, corn oil, canola, Crisco, lard, the list is seemingly endless.
Very often, people consider one oil or fat is as good as another. You figure that taste is a good enough reason to select one, and often you’d be right. But cooking with oils requires a bit more considerations when it comes to heat and duration and the outcome of your dish.
Most oils have what’s called a smoke point, which is a temperature threshold where the lipids begin to break down and oxidize and the fats lose nutritional value. This will leave a burnt smell and blackened appearance to the food it’s applied to if that temperature is exceeded.
I would love to have butter or a good tasting olive oil that would survive a 500° F quick roast to add a finish to some poultry, but the fact is, butter will burn at barely above 300° and unrefined olive oil is only slightly higher at 320° F.
Deep frying is also a consideration as fragrant, light oils are also significantly more expensive, so even those flavorful oils will be quite expensive to use at a few quarts at a time.
The following chart has the smoke points of many common fats:
| Fat/Oil | In Degrees Fahrenheit |
| Avocado | 520 |
| Peanut (Refined) | 450 |
| Safflower | 450 |
| Sunflower | 440 |
| Vegetable (Refined) | 428 |
| “Cooking” Olive Oil | 410 |
| Sesame Oil (Refined) | 410 |
| Rapeseed / Canola | 410 |
| Lard | 374 |
| Corn Oil | 352 |
| Coconut oil | 350 |
| Peanut Oil (Refined) | 320 |
| Extra Virgin Olive Oil | 320 |
| Butter | 302 |
If you’re going after a short saute for a piece of fish (which often has a lower need for high temperatures), you can use a cooking olive oil that has had a refinement to remove the proteins that break down. This removes much of the aromatics of the oil, but you can get away with it if you’re gentle. That turkey would be great with butter, but as it has one of the lowest breakdown temperatures in the selection, you’re better off selecting corn, safflower, or peanut, so the browning is of the skin and not the oil conducting heat.
Lard has been seeing a resurgence in use lately, for reasons which escape me, but as most deep frying that is done with it is at 325-350° F, it’s acceptable if a frying thermometer is used and monitored continuously. And that extra virgin olive oil? Save it for the salad dressings and sauces.
