I am getting particular about my food nowadays. Solely because age really adds chronic illnesses into my life. By paying extra attention to nutrition, physical activities and lifestyle, I wish these can prolong my functional independence.
In Malaysia, the popular cooking oil would be palm oil. It is the cheapest and easily found in all stores that sell cooking oil. Of course, this is due to the fact that Malaysia produces the most palm oil globally, together with Indonesia.
When I was young, I remember my mother would cook with peanut oil. I could still remember the smell of peanut oil lingering in the air. However, nobody is selling peanut oil nowadays.
A google search shows that palm oil is quite an inferior oil as compared to other oil such as soy bean oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, olive oil, etc. Well, I don't really bother about the comments. Palm oil is cheap as compared to other oil, and as a result, market competitors are many out there to discredit it.
Anyway, here are some general rules for me
1. Use refined oil for cooking as smoke point is higher. Due to its lower smoke point, unrefined oil becomes unstable at lower temperature.
2. Do not recycle oil. After frying fish, deep fried chicken etc, discard the oil. Oil that has been used will have lower smoke point due to the impurity in it.
3. Extra virgin oil has low smoke point. Use it for dressing only.
4. Use as little oil as possible as. A person's diet should only get about 6% of calorie from fat. Basing on my daily calorie of 1800, 6% is 108 cal. Convert to fat is 12g, this is about 2 tbsp. Calorie from oil must be less than that amount because meat consumed also contains fat.
Friday, 18 December 2015
What is the smoke that comes out of my wok?
I have always wondered what is the smoke when the oil in the wok gets heated up.
Little have I known that it follows the same vaporisation principle that applies to water molecules when heated will have high enough energy to break the bonds of H2O molecules.
As for cooking oil, the much more complicated tryglyceride compounds of oil that made up of 1 molecule of glycerol and 3 molecules of fatty acid when heated will have high enough energy to break down into individual molecules, releasing toxic fumes and free radicals which are harmful to your body.
Thus, if you always cook in a bad-ventilated kitchen, you may want to look into the type of wok and oil used to reduce the kitchen hazard.
I have always been using cast iron Chinese wok. For Chinese wok fried dishes, it is a standard practice (at least for me) to heat the wok until it dries up, then pour oil into the wok, wait for it to smoke before putting in ingredients. I dislike the smoke released from the wok in my small enclosed kitchen with poor functioning cooker hood. Adding to the heat released from the gas stove, I really hate cooking time.
A few months ago, I bought for myself a Buffalo stainless steel wok and an induction cooker.
Stainless steel wok does not release much smoke, and the induction cooker does not release unnecessary heat to the kitchen. I can even turn on the table fan to blow at myself while coloking. This has definitely solve my problems of the smoke emitted from the wok and to reduce kitchen heast.
Little have I known that it follows the same vaporisation principle that applies to water molecules when heated will have high enough energy to break the bonds of H2O molecules.
As for cooking oil, the much more complicated tryglyceride compounds of oil that made up of 1 molecule of glycerol and 3 molecules of fatty acid when heated will have high enough energy to break down into individual molecules, releasing toxic fumes and free radicals which are harmful to your body.
Thus, if you always cook in a bad-ventilated kitchen, you may want to look into the type of wok and oil used to reduce the kitchen hazard.
I have always been using cast iron Chinese wok. For Chinese wok fried dishes, it is a standard practice (at least for me) to heat the wok until it dries up, then pour oil into the wok, wait for it to smoke before putting in ingredients. I dislike the smoke released from the wok in my small enclosed kitchen with poor functioning cooker hood. Adding to the heat released from the gas stove, I really hate cooking time.
A few months ago, I bought for myself a Buffalo stainless steel wok and an induction cooker.
Stainless steel wok does not release much smoke, and the induction cooker does not release unnecessary heat to the kitchen. I can even turn on the table fan to blow at myself while coloking. This has definitely solve my problems of the smoke emitted from the wok and to reduce kitchen heast.
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