Saturday, October 8, 2011

BETTER OIL MEANS BETTER CORNBREAD

 Duh! I suppose I shoulda took the hint from the heart smarter yogurt/olive oil version I referred to briefly in the Bacon Sauerkraut article. Changing so many things at a whack muddied the water. I knew it was sitting in the ditch when I woke up, but the whole neighborhood was new to me.

 Ok so it works good in sketti, I still know nothing about olive oils. I've had a chance to try several other cooking oils. The best was the refined canola I got to re-season a black iron skillet. Articles I read recommended the lowest hydrogen content available, and commented that this also related to smoke point. 

 The grocery store had a number of oil choices. You could tell who had the high smoke point cause they bragged about it. You could also tell they were proud of em price wise too, as they started at three times the price of regular veg-oil and went right outta sight.

 I settled on the filtered canola (450f smoke point) for my frying pan. At just under 13 bucks, it was a few cents cheaper than three times what twice as much as regular vegetable oil cost. It worked great on the frying pan, and even burning off it didn't smoke as bad as I was led to believe it would. The avocado oil was more expensive still and you got even less. I've fried with it before (550f smoke point if I remember correctly) it did taste great and didn't smoke up the apartment.

 I only used a little of the refined canola on the pan and saved the rest. I tried regular canola, (two different kinds) peanut oil, regular vegetable oil, and corn oil. Jury's still out on the peanut oil, but both the regular canola and the regular vegetable scorched pretty easy. While I was stirring in the cornmeal and preheating the pans, the oil got hot enough to fume in an unappetizing manner. If I'd been cooking eggs, I'd have stopped right then and wiped the oil out and tried again (now I know). But no! I went forward thinking, "I've seen bacon fat that looked hotter make good cornbread"(maybe).

 I've had better luck with corn oil. It doesn't seem as heat sensitave. It's delicate aroma is easy to smell before it goes sad. I could probably do better with the other oils if I was more cautious. Corn oil has made the most batches of excellent cornbread while filling the house with a wake you up in the night craving cornbread smell. On the occasions when I was out of corn oil, the high dollar canola produced a superior cornbread as well. So surprise really good oil does make really good cornbread, and though more delicate corn oil runs a close second. Hey, oils well that ends well.

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