Janice Newell Bissex, MS, RD and Liz Weiss, MS, RD, Co-authors, The Moms' Guide to Meal Makeovers
The Meal Makeover Moms have created a series of online videos featuring cooking demonstrations and mealtime/pantry tips. Discover easy ways to improve your family's diet by watching more of their how-to videos.
Walk down the cooking oil aisle in the supermarket and it’s downright overwhelming. There are so many choices. To choose the best of the bunch, we take a few things into account: nutrition, flavor, and heat tolerance (some oils smoke and burn if heated too high).
Here’s our Meal Makeover Mom favorites:
• Canola Oil: Nutritionally, this is your #1 choice. It’s the lowest in saturated fat and high in heart-healthy monounsaturated and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats. It has a smoke point similar to peanut oil and can therefore tolerate high heat. It’s great for that wok! It’s also ideal for baking. You can use it instead of a solid fat such as butter or shortening. And, it has a mild flavor.
• Olive Oil: Extra virgin olive oil has a distinctive flavor and it’s also high in heart-healthy monounsaturated fat. We love to dip our bread in it and to drizzle it over steamed vegetables to add flavor. It’s also nice in some salad dressings. It doesn’t do well under high heat so when you’re sautéing or stir frying, stick with canola oil.
• Peanut Oil: This is another great culinary oil, high in those heart-healthy monounsaturated fats. It also does well under high heat so you’ll see it in places like Chinese restaurants where there’s a lot of wok cooking going on. It has a nice nutty flavor too.
• Sesame Oil: This is great for Asian cooking and marinades. It has a very strong flavor so a little bit goes a long way.
