11. Fats and Oils

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Fat is one of the most important ingredients in cooking, and it’s one of the few things, along with salt, that you’ll use nearly every time you cook.

Fats serve a few essential roles in cooking. The first is flavor— different types of fat each have their own flavor, and they also amplify and carry other flavors. For example, if you saute some garlic in olive oil and then add that to a pasta, the flavor of the garlic will infuse into the oil and carry that throughout the dish.

Fats also contribute a lot to texture. They help us get crispy textures in fried foods, browning and crust on seared meats, creaminess in sauces, and they prevent foods from drying out and help to retain moisture.

Finally, fats serve as heat conductors. They form a layer that acts as a barrier between your food and the cookware that you’re using. This helps to distribute heat evenly, develop certain textures and flavors, and prevent sticking.

Different fats taste and perform differently. The key to using fats properly is simply knowing which ones to use at which times. There are two core considerations here:

• The cooking technique(s) you’re using and the associated heat levels.
• The flavor profile you’re seeking.

In this lesson I’ll cover which fats work best with different techniques and heat levels, as well as which fats work best with different flavor profiles. I’ll talk about how to select the right oils, give an overview of the ones I use most often, and provide some brand recommendations.

Let’s dive in.

Recently, especially in the health world, there’s been a big push away from industrial seed oils (also known as vegetable oils). It’s outside the scope of this lesson to explain why they’re so bad for your health, but Jeff Nobbs does a good job of explaining why in this blog post.

The vast majority of food that’s cooked today, especially in restaurants, is cooked in industrial seed oils. These oils aren’t meant for human consumption— they were originally manufactured as industrial lubricants and later pawned off onto consumers because they’re so cheap to make. That’s why, in my opinion, it’s even more important than ever to seek out and use high quality, real oils at home. I avoid industrial seed oils because I care about my health, but I also avoid them because, as a chef, I think they’re inferior for cooking.

You’ll often find that modern recipes call for a “neutral” oil, meaning an oil that doesn’t itself impart any flavor. In most cases, they’re referring to vegetable oils like canola, sunflower, or grapeseed oil. I personally don’t believe in the concept of neutral oils in cooking, since neutral oils don’t actually occur in nature. All naturally occurring fats have existing flavors, and that’s a good thing! Neutral vegetable oils, on the other hand, are a modern invention. They’re really only possible with industrial processes that bleach and deodorize the oil. The vast majority of cooking that’s been done throughout history has been done with naturally occurring oils that have flavor. This is a beautiful thing, and you can leverage this to your advantage.

The idea that fat should be a flavorless component of food is silly. Fat is a major category and should be a core consideration as you plan out a dish. You should seek out the right oil for what you’re cooking and incorporate its flavor into the dish. Occasionally you may want to highlight other flavors more, and there are options for that. But you shouldn’t be scared of the natural flavors in oils! The only “neutral” oil I sometimes use is refined avocado oil, which is minimally processed if sourced well. But I still prefer other oils for 95% of my cooking.

The first consideration when you’re deciding which oil to use is heat level. Certain oils stand up better to heat and are thus more suited to certain high-heat cooking techniques like searing, pan frying, and deep frying.

The term “smoke point” refers to the temperature at which an oil begins to break down and start producing smoke. When this happens, the oil starts to turn rancid, which negatively affects the flavor and also produces unhealthy compounds. The smoke point of different oils gives us a good barometer to understand which ones are best suited to high-heat cooking.

Here it’s important to note that true high-heat cooking mostly refers to searing. When you sear something, the pan is usually upwards of 400°F, and thus you want to use ghee, beef tallow, or refined avocado oil. A lot of other techniques that might seem like they use super high heat actually take place at lower temperatures. Pan-frying and deep frying, for example, usually take place between 325°F to 375°F. Sautéing is usually done around 325°F to 400°F. You can fry and sauté in refined avocado oil, ghee, beef tallow, or even extra virgin olive oil.

There’s a pervasive myth about olive oil specifically that you can’t cook with it at high temperatures. While I avoid using olive oil for searing, I regularly sauté, fry and roast with it. It’s quite delicious. Not only is olive oil’s smoke point quite high (higher than the temperatures you’d usually use for these techniques), but good olive oil is also full of antioxidants, which help protect the oil from oxidizing when it’s heated. So if you buy good olive oil, it’s totally safe to cook with high heat.

Generally speaking, you should always keep at least one oil in your pantry for high-heat cooking (and searing specifically). Some of the most important textures and flavors are created this way, so you want to have at least one oil on hand that will allow you to do those things without turning the oil rancid. My favorite options are ghee beef tallow, and refined avocado oil. You should avoid searing with anything other than these three.

For roasting at high temperatures, those three oils and/or olive oil work great. For any lower-heat type of cooking, you have a lot more flexibility and can use pretty much anything. You just need to be careful with butter, since it burns most easily (and creates really awful flavors) if it’s heated too high. Other than that, you really don’t need to overthink it.

The other core consideration when selecting which oil to use is flavor.

People often ask me which oils to use for specific dishes, techniques, or cuisines, but the truth is that these things are highly versatile and there are no set rules. You could cook most things most ways with any of the oils I’ve mentioned and be okay.

That being said, there are a few general rules of thumb I mostly follow:

If you’re following a recipe and that recipe calls for vegetable oil, you can always replace it with one of the oils listed below. If you're stuck, a good heuristic is to think about the ancestral oils that would have been used where the dish originated. Those flavor profiles tend to combine well.

When in doubt, I usually default to olive oil or beef tallow— almost anything can be cooked with those.

This course focuses on kitchen minimalism, and that applies here as well. If you’re just getting started, I recommend keeping just three core fats on hand:

• Beef Tallow, Ghee, or Refined Avocado Oil
• Olive Oil
• Butter

That will cover 99% of your use cases. Below I dive a little bit more into all of the different types of oil I use regularly, their use cases, and the brands I like best. Be sure to check out the brand discounts section of the course, since many of these brands are listed there.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Olive oil is probably the most used oil in my home kitchen. When you’re shopping for olive oil, there are a few key things to look for.

• Always buy extra virgin olive oil. That’s the bare minimum bar for quality. Avoid refined olive oil, virgin olive oil, or “light” olive oil.
• Try to buy organic olive oil, if possible. Olive trees soak up whatever is in the soil, and those compounds (which are often fat-soluble) end up in the final product. If the olive trees are sprayed with a bunch of pesticides, that can be a problem. Buying organic whenever possible is the best way to avoid this.
• Buy olive oil that has a harvest date listed on the bottle. Olive oil is a fresh product, and it does not get better with age. Aim to buy fresh oil that was harvested and bottled within the last year.
• Buy olive oil in dark glass bottles, unless you’re getting something really fresh. Olive oil degrades with heat and light, and dark bottles protect against that. And glass is a much safer option than plastic.

How I use it: dressings and sauces, roasting vegetables, frying eggs, drizzling over finished dishes, infusions, pan frying

Brands I like:

• Oliva Dorado
• Zimms Organics
• Bona Furtuna
• Kosterina

Beef Tallow

Beef fat, aka beef tallow, is one of the most underrated cooking oils out there. It’s pretty neutral in flavor (though it adds a nice hearty richness to whatever cooks in it), nutrient-dense, versatile, and works amazingly well for high-heat cooking. It’s great for searing things, but it’s also my preferred oil for any kind of deep frying.

Seek out beef tallow from 100% grass-fed and grass-finished cows. There are a few good brands that are available online, and you can also usually find good stuff at a local farmer’s market or butcher.

How I use it: searing meats, deep frying/pan frying, flour tortillas, roasting potatoes, roasting vegetables, pie crusts

Brands I like:

• Lineage Provisions
• FOND
• White Oak Pastures

Ghee

Ghee is clarified butter, which means butter that’s had the milk solids strained out, leaving just the oils. This means that it can take much higher heat than butter can (since there are no milk solids to burn). It’s got a nice buttery, somewhat neutral flavor that’s very versatile.

I often switch between ghee and tallow as my high-heat cooking option. I love both. With ghee you should also look for something that’s sourced from grass-fed cows.

How I use it: searing meats, cooking eggs, pan frying, stir frying, sautéing

Brands I like:

• 4th & Heart
• Ancient Organics

Avocado Oil

Avocado oil is another option that’s great for high-heat cooking. Fresh-pressed avocado oil is dark green, has a really strong flavor, and doesn’t respond well to high heat. Refined avocado oil, however, is a mostly neutral oil that can withstand very high heat (including temperatures needed for searing).

The one issue with avocado oil is that there are widespread problems within the industry, leading to a lot of outright fraud (rancid oils, or avocado oil being mixed with other low-quality oils). Make sure you’re getting it from a very high-quality source like Chosen Foods.

How I use it: searing meats, deep frying/pan frying, dressings and sauces, mayonnaise and other emulsions

Brands I like:

• Chosen Foods

Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is delicious and versatile, but it does tend to impart a strong coconut flavor. I tend to only use it when I’m really seeking out that flavor, which usually means I’m cooking Southeast Asian, Caribbean, or Latin American food.

How I use it: curries, soups and stews, pan frying/deep frying (it’s great for plantains, potatoes, and even fried chicken)

Brands I like:

• Dr. Bronner’s

Other Animal Fats

While beef tallow is my animal fat of choice, I also occasionally use duck fat or pork fat (aka lard). Both are delicious, rich, unctuous, and great for any kind of high-heat cooking due to their natural stability.

How I use it: pan frying/deep frying, roasting vegetables, making confit

Brands I like:

• FOND
• Epic Provisions
• Fatworks

Butter

My kitchen would not be complete without butter. It’s rich, delicious, and so versatile. I always keep high-quality, grass-fed butter in my fridge for all kinds of uses.

My suggestion for butter is to seek out the highest-quality option you can find locally, either at a grocery store, butcher, or farmer’s market.

How I use it: sautéing, cooking eggs, pan sauces, basting meats, making a roux, caramelizing onions, making compound (flavored) butters

Brands I like:

• Maple Hill Creamery
• Strauss
• Vital Farms
• Kerrygold

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