But there's one thing that annoys me, and it's not George's many and varied cliches on Masterchef! When a TV chef offers advice on cooking fats, my blood boils.
Some chefs happen also to be knowledgable in nutrition, like Dominique Rizzo, and I think she's fabulous. She offers great advice when she cooks on TV. During a recent Masterclass, however, in a segment on which oils to cook with, some advice was given which I strongly disagreed with, and which I'd like to take the time to correct.
The presenters essentially offered a few types of oils to use. They offered "good" olive oil, "ordinary" olive oil, grapeseed oil and sesame oil. There are so many more options than this!!
Olive oil:
To my mind there is only one kind, the "good" stuff. Extra virgin, cold pressed and organic. But I wouldn't put it in a hot pan, it would quickly become a bad fat and damaging to health. I drizzle it on a plate after serving food, or use it in salads.
Grapeseed:
The brand shown on the show was in a clear glass bottle. Any oil in clear glass or clear plastic is HYDROGENATED. This is an industrially processed oil, one step before margerine, which has been superheated and mixed with petrochemicals to give shelf life. All the beneficial properties that oil had have been destroyed and replaced by health wrecking properties. Pretend these don't exist.
Sesame oil:
This is a great oil for flash frying or stir frying, as are peanut, virgin coconut and virgin palm oils.
The fats I use most in the kitchen are butter, ghee and coconut oil. These are high in saturated fats and therefore have the advantage of being stable to temperature. This means that when you stick them in a hot pan they don't become poison. Bonus! I use ghee for Indian style cooking (obviously), coconut for Thai and Malay style food, and butter for European food. When I'm making Italian food I just drizzle olive oil over the plate after I've served it, as Matt Moran described, to give the flavor and the full benefits of the oil. Easy.
Using fats correctly, and libberally, is integral to good health. A high fat diet is a good diet, another fact TV chefs seem ignorant to. Fats are a food group essential to vitality. If we minimise fats such as nuts, avocado, egg yolks, fish, meats, butter and oils, we will have imbalanced hormones, blood sugar imbalance leading to weight gain, poor concentration, skin problems and even cholesterol problems.
I'm often asked about the cholesterol paradox. It's simple; it's just biochemically impossible for a high fat diet to cause high cholesterol. I'm not talking about damaged fats, by all means avoid those! The overwhelming evidence today shows that a diet high in refined foods is the culprit for all chronic illness, including cholesterol.
So if this information is news to you, restock your pantry with the good oils, ignore the bad and live healthily ever after! And never take nutrition advice from people without formal training!
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