Advice wanted on canola oil.

I still like olive oil for flavor, but canola oil is purported to have a number of advanages for cooking purposes: lower in saturated fat, free from any dominating or conflicting flavors, and the least expensive of all vegetable oils.

Any views?

Thanks, Bob

[Robin Garr]

Bob, a lot of the chefs on FoodTV including Ming Tsai and Alton Brown use it a lot.

I gave it one try and found that, for me, it went rancid easily and didn't taste all that good. I'm sticking with olive oil in moderation (except peanut oil for Asian dishes) and hoping its purported benefits will pay off.

Under some high heat conditions, it can smell like fish. I made the mistake of making popcorn with it once. Ack.

It's fine, though, for most uses, such as salad dressings, etc.

I keep olive, peanut and canola oil around for different purposes. As you say, canola has advantages although it is not nearly as cheap as it used to be, now being favored for biodiesel. I've used canola for a long time and never run into the rancidity issues that Robin mentioned but I can definitely verify the "fishy" flavor issue Larry wrote about. Canola is a good neutral oil where it isn't exposed to high heat - salad dressing, as Larry also mentioned, or in baking, as examples. But I'd concur that olive and peanut are much preferable for frying.

Me too. When I see someone on TV or in a book recommending canola for frying, I wince. Horrible dead fish odor.

I've never experienced the dead fish smell in Canola Oil....I buy a small amount and use it up. I use it for frying corn tortillas and other dishes calling for a neutral oil. EVOO is my main cooking oil and for use in salad dressings. Peanut oil is on hand for Asian dishes. I have used Saffola and Corn oils in the past. I did hear some bad things about Canola oil, and stopped using it for a long time. I just picked up another small bottle of it the other day.....think it was on sale.

I've never experienced the dead fish smell in Canola Oil...

Either you're just insensitive to this particular odor or you've just not gotten the oil warm enough. The stench when I've made the mistake of using the stuff was just awful. To my nose, that is. If, as Robin says, Ming Tsai and Alton Brown use canola for frying, I guess we can conclude that sensitivity to this compound must vary between individuals. I'm not sure I'd want either Ming or Alton judging the freshness of seafood for me.

I've never experienced the dead fish smell in Canola Oil...

Either you're just insensitive to this particular odor or you've just not gotten the oil warm enough. The stench when I've made the mistake of using the stuff was just awful. To my nose, that is. If, as Robin says, Ming Tsai and Alton Brown use canola for frying, I guess we can conclude that sensitivity to this compound must vary between individuals. I'm not sure I'd want either Ming or Alton judging the freshness of seafood for me.

Another, less alarmist, view might be that not all canola oils are created equal. Canola is a deodorized rapeseed oil, derived from plants of the mustard family. Canola is still high in sulfur, and that creates problems with stink, but your comparison to a fishy odor sounds like a biogenic amine, which is a weird thing to get from a vegetable oil. Canola oil is 63% oleic and 20% lineolic acids, both of which are components of olive oil, so it is the impurities that are likely responsible for the smell. It could be that different processing of rapeseed oil results in different impurities.

Mark Lipton

Mark is correct. When canola first became popular, that was one of the main knocks on it, that it produced a fishy odor at high temps.

There are now many frying shortenings on the market, made of canola oil which has been genetically engineered to have a longer, more stable fry life, and no fishy odor. I am not a chemist, but it has to do with some acid, the name of which I can't pronounce, and the fact that it is much lower in these manipulated oils.

The key is to use the kind made for frying, and not Canola salad oil.

[quote="Stuart Yaniger"] Me too. When I see someone on TV or in a book recommending canola for frying, I wince. Horrible dead fish odor.[/q]

Stuart, do you know off hand whether canola oil is kosher? Kosher for passover?

I've seen statements both ways on both questions, but nothing definitive.

I can research the question based on an advertising claim a client made years ago for both citric acid and a product made from the cob of corn, and know the answer is not always simple. But if you know, I would be grateful not to re-plough that fraught and in my case only theoretical area.

Best, Bob

Robin, any idea why the quote function doesn't seem to work here? Bob

Robin, any idea why the quote function doesn't seem to work here? Bob

Bob, looks like you somehow cut off the "uote" in /quote .

[Robin Garr]

Robin, any idea why the quote function doesn't seem to work here? Bob

Bob, it appears that you closed the quote with "/q" rather than "/quote".

Bob,

I use Canola oil quite a bit...especially for my son who is allergic to most foods that are high in Omega-3 (eggs, dairy, nuts. He only just started eating fish). I add canola oil to his soy yogurt in the morning and also use it in salad dressings, marinades and when I make cakes and muffins. Canola oil is a good source of Omega-3...Olive oil is higher in Omega-6.

First, canola oil contains monounsaturated fatty acids (just like olive oil) and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids like the ones found in flax seed oil.

See full article here... http://nutrition.about.com/od/askyournutritionist/f/canola.htm

I definitely get the fishy smell when I fry with it. However, the food that's fried in it doesn't smell or taste fishy to me, so I still use it to fry. When I fry fish in it, there is no problem there...LOL!

Make popcorn with it and you might change your mind.

Bob, it is, or can be, kosher (anything that has no animal derivation, other than wine, is kosher and parve as long as it's handled in a kosher facility), but I don't know about the Passover part- it wasn't around when I was a kid and learning about this stuff.

Robin, any idea why the quote function doesn't seem to work here? Bob

Bob, it appears that you closed the quote with "/q" rather than "/quote".

Strange. Somehow it got lopped off -- I used the icon. Many thanks, Bob

The key is to use the kind made for frying, and not Canola salad oil.

Maybe that's it. What I do know is you don't want to grab a bottle of canola oil at the store and stir fry with it. Of course, there are fishy smells and there are fishy smells. As Stuart said, hot canola oil (of the sort they sell in grocery stores, anyway) smells not like fish but like *dead* fish. Growing up in the Sacramento area, the lower American River used to be littered with the carcasses of spawning salmon. Hot canola oil takes me right back. In context, the smell wasn't as bad as it sounds but it's not what you want in your kitchen when you're stir frying vegetables.

Another, less alarmist, view might be that not all canola oils are created equal. Canola is a deodorized rapeseed oil, derived from plants of the mustard family. Canola is still high in sulfur, and that creates problems with stink, but your comparison to a fishy odor sounds like a biogenic amine, which is a weird thing to get from a vegetable oil. Canola oil is 63% oleic and 20% lineolic acids, both of which are components of olive oil, so it is the impurities that are likely responsible for the smell. It could be that different processing of rapeseed oil results in different impurities.

Mark, a little quick Googling seems to indicate that it's lineolic acid that is the culprit behind canola oil's fishy odor problems, at least most of the work in bioengineering appears to have been directed at minimizing it. I've read that lineolic acid is far more prevalent in seed oils, so while it's true that olive oil has some, it's minimal at between 0 and 1.5%. It appears that the fishy odor comes with the canola oil package, the genetic engineering to which John refers is targeted towards reducing lineolic acid. Here's an article about a patented canola variety that deals with the fishy odor issue by reducing lineolic acid to near-olive oil proportions at 1.6% http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6270828/description.html Just search within the article on "fishy"

[Jenise]

Me too. When I see someone on TV or in a book recommending canola for frying, I wince. Horrible dead fish odor.

Ditto, and like Robin I've found it goes rancid fairly quickly. I tend to use almost nothing but olive oil including a 'light' version for times when neutral flavor is a must.

Me too. When I see someone on TV or in a book recommending canola for frying, I wince. Horrible dead fish odor.

In absolute agreement. It is nasty, nasty stuff.

I still like olive oil for flavor, but canola oil is purported to have a number of advanages for cooking purposes: lower in saturated fat, free from any dominating or conflicting flavors, and the least expensive of all vegetable oils.

Any views?

Thanks, Bob

Bob, I just don't like it at all. I cook with olive oil (about 11% saturated fat) and peanut oil (about 14%.) They're both monounsaturated fats - the best for us.

According to the Drs Eades M.D. in Protein Power Canola Oil is highest in Alpha Linolenic Acid (ALA). This produces "Bad Eiconoids" which in turn causes aging, stress, and other problems.

Therefore like Robin and the Chef we stick with OO and Peanut Oil. The latter for very hot cooking only.

Does it seem that the fishy odour/taste might be one of those things that some people are sensitive to and some not?

I also get the smell in some brands of eggs. I think maybe the chickens were fed canola meal. My husband eats the same eggs without noticing anything, I had to spit them in the sink.