In the interest of "sharing" on SST, I just want to tell you what I cooked tonight. It's too hot outside (100F) to cook at my outside kitchen. Soo, I had a 1.25 pound prime ribeye that had been hanging around for just about enough time. I fried it, like in Spain or France. Heavy, well seasoned cast iron skillet, mixture of canola oil and butter in it. Lots of salt and black pepper on all sides of the steak. Start at high heat and sear the beast on all sides including the edges. Reduce the heat and cook until desired doneness. Result - a lovely medium rare. pl
Well . . . since neither Petrel nor anyone else has replied, I think the Committee has moved on to the newer threads. So I will make my best guess about the basis for Petrel's concern regarding Canola oil, and I will offer my best answer to what I guess that concern to be.
Traditional rapeseed oil is composed of about 50% of a fatty acid called erucic acid. Some research determined it could be bad for animals after long high-dose exposure. So various governments began to question its safety for people.
https://www.sruc.ac.uk/info/120186/novel_and_non-food_crops/173/high_erucic_acid_rapeseed
I don't know if the good old high erucic acid rapeseed oil had a bad taste or not.
Semi-recently plant breeders developed rapeseed varieties which produced oil of only 2% or so erucic acid. I think this work was done in Canada. At the time they called it LEAR oil ( Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed oil). But someone decided that "Canola" sounded tastier than "LEAR" so the name was changed to Canola oil.
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutrition/genetically-modified-foods-other-novel-foods/approved-products/low-erucic-acid-rapeseed-lear-oil-derived-canola-quality-brassica-juncea-czern-lines-97-03-pc98-44-pc98-45.html
Since the Canola oil rapeseed was developed to begin with to not have any nasty chemicals in it, I still wonder what chemicals would have to be dry-cleaned out of it, and what chemicals or processes would be involved in dry-cleaning those nasty chemicals out of it.
Unless or until I hear something specific about that, I will continue to regard Canola oil as a harmless oil, valued for its high "smoke point" and its lack of any taste or flavor of its own. I tried some once and I regard it as " the tofu of oils."
Posted by: different clue | 26 July 2019 at 12:45 AM