WHY cook with COCONUT OIL?!
WHY cook with COCONUT OIL?
I was wondering - because I heard it was the best? But don't really know why. I use olive oil mostly now.
Answers:
The incorrect common knowledge that coconut oil is bad for you came about because the coconut oil that was tested was trans-fat laden partially-hydrogenated coconut oil!
Extra virgin (or virgin) coconut oil is *very* healthy for you. It's a good saturated fat that is made up of short and medium chain oils that lower LDL (the bad) cholesterol for one thing. These oils assist in removing fatty plaques from your blood system. Even in 'clean' blood systems several studies have shown that EVCO can reduce blood pressure.
Those same oils are also used by the body to build and repair damage to the nervous system, that's why coconut oil has been used in the formula fed to premature infants for decades. There's evidence that consumption of EVCO does the same thing in adults also.
There's (at least) anecdotal evidence that replacing polyunsaturated oils with EVCO assists in weight loss. It seems that when your body sees a decent amount of short and medium chain saturated fats coming in it decides that there's no reason to store fat (at least that's the (as yet) unproven theory(it's currently being researched)).
As to cooking with it? It makes baked goods moist for one thing, since it's a solid at 70 degrees you can also use it to make flaky pie crust<g>. BTW; it goes fully liquid around 80 degrees (in other words its melting point is similar to butter or ghee (hint hint)).
If you want homemade popcorn that's as good as movie theater popcorn the only way to do it is use coconut oil (they do<g>)!
You CAN fry with coconut oil and it's a great way to get a good crust on food without making it greasy. If you've been frying with olive oil you'll do fine with coconut oil since it has a higher smoke point (approx 320 for EVOO, 360 for EVCO). There's a sneaky trick you can do when frying with EVCO, if you hold it's temperature at around 300 for a few minutes all the aromatics evaporate, then the smoke point raises to well above 400! That same trick also lets you control how much coconut flavor you get when cooking with EVCO, if you start the food frying in cool EVCO you get a hint of coconut in the cooked food, add the food to hot EVCO and no coconut taste.
Because coconut oil is a saturated fat it has a MUCH longer shelf life than polyunsaturated and monounsaturated oils (in other words it takes a long time to go rancid).
If you don't want to worry about coconut flavor you can look for a brand like Spectrum since they sell a refined non-hydrogenated version. Nutiva is the brand of EVCO I usually buy since they do cold fresh processing, that's also why it smells like coconut<g>.