What a great bottle!

Butter is fine to use for baking or cooking but it is best not to use it to fry anything.

Extra Light olive oil is my favorite to use- it is pretty universal for the top of the stove dishes.

Canola oil is good for frying/deep frying.

For shelf life- store oils in a cool/dark area. The olive oil can go in the fridge- it will get cloudy or distorted- just set it out at room temp it will return to normal. Butter should not be left out either- light/heat can cause it to become rancid.

For safety- NEVER store oil/cooking spray/butter near the stove. One small stove fire can turn into a disaster with a small bottle of oil added to it unintentionally- as a side note from Smokey Bear- never store your fire extinguisher under/above/near your stove.

So I love the bottle but I think it would be better to use for soap.

First question ... how do you fry with water, lol?

Olive oils vary widely in taste. Some have a strong, peppery flavor, others are mild, almost buttery. My preference is the latter, especially when I use it for salad dressings. For general cooking I like Bertolli's Extra Virgin, but for uncooked uses my choice is Santa Chiara or Antica Italia.

The only other oil I use (except for occasionally sesame) is peanut oil. And since I live in Louisiana that means LouAna.

The bottle is pretty, but I think it's better to keep oil in a dark bottle or in the cabinet where it's not exposed to light.

Just coming back to this real quick before heading out the door.......

Frying with water.. lol Ok maybe I said that wrong. Boil probably is the word I'm looking for. Example I've thrown chicken or fish in a pot/pan whatever and put some water in and cooked it. Yep boil is probably the word! Ha guess that just prooves I'm not a cook!!

Grape Seed is a great neutral oil. I use that and/or sesame oil for my high heat stuff, olive oil for pretty much everything else. (With occasional indulgence in bacon fat for certain things.) My everyday oil sits on a trivet within reach of my stove. I want to get a pretty bottle for it but haven't found one I like yet. The rest are down in a pull out cabinet beside the stove.

Alton Brown is recognized as an expert in the chemistry and physics of cooking (although I have reservations about some of his recipes).

If you click on 'heating points', in the article I have linked, you will see them, top to bottom.

I love different kinds of oils, from olive to nut and avocado. Sesame is a great one, too (use very sparingly). Each one makes a special addition to a dish.

Here is a link that might be useful: Oils

You might ask on the Cooking Forum--I'm always surprised how little over-lap of Forum regulars exists. Cooking has amazing people who participate, answer questions, track down ingredients, and they seem to do a lot of F2Fs, too.

LOVE the decanter!!!

I'm not a foodie either but this is what I do.

First and foremost, do NOT mix water with butter or Crisco oil.

For all my frying, like potatoes (which I can't eat anymore), Fish, shrimp, chicken, etc., I only use Crisco Oil, the regular.

Now, for butter frying, I make some mean paper thin sweet potatoe and white potatoe. I melt butter in a skillet and layer thin sliced potatoes and cook them until crisp. YUM.

I am SO late to the Olive Oil game, my dh uses it, but I have no clue when to use it myself. What I do know is that both OO and butter get really smoky and hot on high heat.

Oh, I also use Crisco Oil for baking when a recipe calls for oil.

For gravy, I only use Crisco lard.

gg, I have a butter keeper that keeps butter soft at room temperature for a few days. In the winter, it can stay in there almost a week and it will be fine. In the summer I have to change it out every few days.

I love these butter keepers, they're worth the money if you like soft butter. We use butter for everything now instead of margerine. Can't beat it on a grilled cheese sandwich!

Here is a link that might be useful: Butter Keeper

I use olive oil to make salad dressings, mixed with a little balsamic vinegar and dijon mustard; you can also use it to dip bread in, yummy. I buy only
extra virgin olive oil, evoo, and qualities vary, so does the taste.

they seem to do a lot of F2Fs, too

What's that?

I just keep my butter in a ramekin a cupboard. It stays soft and I don't have any problem with it spoiling. We usually use a couple of sticks of butter a week.

Cindy, I am sure she means Face to Face.
If you are not a cook, don't buy more than a tiny bottle of oil at a time....it will go rancid and taste nasty.
also butter and oil are very good mixed together for frying. The oil raises the smoke point of the butter and makes it healthier...the butter gives flavor.
Don't worry about what kind of oil if you are a beginner....buy one kind...like a small bottle of Extra virgin Olive and use it up....won't keep well in that bottle for more than about 5 weeks, unless you keep it in the refrig....but wasn't the point of the bottle it's nifty design?
I would keep my green Palmolive detergent in that bottle and look for a much smaller one for oil.
Linda C

The decanter is cute but it is a very bad way to store oil if you don't use it quickly, especially in warm weather and doubly so right next to the stove like that. A little bit of oil in a large clear bottle is going to oxidize very quickly, and oxidization means rancidity. Air, light, and warmth are enemies of all food oils. Rancid oils not only taste downright wretched, but are unhealthy to consume. IMO only the amount of oil that you're going to use within a couple of weeks should be stored at room temperature in such a way that it will be exposed to air and light. Food oils should be stored in the dark (or in a dark bottle), at cool temperatures (the refrigerator is ideal), and with a minimum of air space in the bottle.

I use mainly grapeseed oil when a recipe calls for "vegetable oil" or "salad oil". I prefer grapeseed for general use because I think it just tastes better and has a nicer texture than other neutral oils like canola and safflower, and it's cheaper than apricot kernel or avocado. Although the unit price is higher I purchase smaller containers so I have a fresher supply - it's not a good value if half the jug goes rancid - since we do not use a great deal of oil in cooking, an average meal for the two of us might use two tablespoons of oil assuming we're not splurging on something like pesto!

I absolutely loathe olives too, but we do use quite a bit of olive oil - many olive oils on the market taste nothing at all like olives, thank goodness. Look for the ones labeled "extra light"; that term has nothing to do with calories, it's a description of its color and flavor. Even some of the extra virgin olive oils we've tried don't taste like olives, they have very different flavors ranging from buttery to peppery. A couple of the fancy-pants food stores around me have olive oil tastings from time to time and that's a good way to try different ones out. (Never buy "pomace" olive oil. It's not fit for human food IMO and doesn't even really make particularly good soap.)

Cold-pressed or expeller-pressed oils are the way to go whenever possible; the solvents and high-heat processing used to produce cheap oils break down the oil and are not good for you to consume as well as just plain trashing the flavor.

We also like to use some of the many unrefined vegetable oils out there because they taste so good, but they must be stored carefully (refrigerator) and the shelf life is still comparatively short. Unrefined corn oil is one of our favorites, sweet and buttery, and especially good for baking. I think I have five or six different oils in the fridge now, because they all taste distinctly different. Spectrum is one of my favorite brands for a wide range of good quality oils and is comparatively easy to find.

I find clouding and thickening under refrigeration to be a minor problem and primarily an issue with heavier-bodied and unfiltered unrefined oils like higher-end olive oils. The oil still pours, albeit more slowly, and it cooks just the same. If I'm making a salad dressing or something like that and need the oil completely liquid right this moment, I pour it into a small bowl and set that into a larger bowl of very hot tap water. I never leave the entire bottle out to warm up, but rather pour out what I need and return the rest to the fridge.

When I want a butter flavor for sauteeing fish or veggies, I use half butter and half a neutral oil to improve the smoke point of the butter (since I'm too lazy to make clarified butter), and toss in some broth or wine to assist further cooking and boost flavor without using a ton of fat. I almost never cook savory foods with plain water, except for boiling pasta - why throw away that opportunity to augment flavors? We don't use up butter very quickly (DH has gotten me spoiled on Kerrygold butter from Ireland which comes in a half-pound block instead of the usual 1/4-pound sticks, but it can take us weeks to go through a block!) so it does turn in warm weather if left at room temperature. I won't have margarine in my house though, foul stuff... there are two things DH and I will not give up no matter what, we'll rearrange other dietary components to accomodate them but real butter and real mayonnaise are sacrosanct.

Oh, here's a trick if your butter is rock-hard and you need it to soften to a malleable texture quickly without risking melting (as often happens if you try to soften it in the microwave or the oven)... grate it on the coarse holes of a hand grater and spread it out on a plate. Set the plate in a warm, but not hot, place.

oakleyok, what the heck is "Crisco lard"? Crisco does not manufacture lard (meaning rendered pork fat, and lemmetellya it is dang hard to find unhydrogenated lard!). Do you mean solid vegetable shortening?

LOL, jm, yeah, I mean the solid shortening. The white stuff. I couldn't think what it was called so I just wrote "lard." :)

I do remember cooking salmon in half OO and butter, and it was really good.

"Frying with water.. lol Ok maybe I said that wrong. Boil probably is the word I'm looking for. Example I've thrown chicken or fish in a pot/pan whatever and put some water in and cooked it."

Actually, that is called poaching:

"Definition of Poaching: Cooking food either partially or completely covered by a liquid which is brought to, and maintained at a temperature just below boiling point.

Poaching is an effective way of cooking foods for both hot or cold service, not only does it produce healthy food but it enhances flavour. It can however require considerable skill and judgement particularly with complex shallow poached fish dishes. Some dishes described as poach are strictly speaking a mixture of boiling & poaching for example a whole poached salmon.

Purpose:

the main reasons why foods are poached are because:

- it is a fast method of cooking tender food

- food is moved as little as possible and does not break up or fall apart

- poaching liquid can contribute to taste and make good bases for sauces

- keeps flavour of food well and does not add fats/oils" *

*Source: Cookingonline.com

Bon appetit!
Ann

Braising is a technique where meat is quickly browned in a hot pan and then a tiny bit of water added to finish cooking in a covered pan.

I have a number of different oils for different cooking purposes. Olive oil with it's low smoke point is great for breaded steaks giving browning and nice flavor. Peanut oil for wok cooking with it's higher smoke point and blander flavor. Grapeseed oil. Corn oil. Sesame oil. Coconut oil. They all have their specific uses. I would recommend peanut oil for a novice cook since it is rather 'all purpose'.

I would not store the oil by the window in the sunlight as this would hasten the degradation of the oil. If you cook infrequently you can store you oil in the fridge. Just let it come to room temp before using.

Here is a link that might be useful: Braising

Thanks for all the advice, links and opinions guys! It was very helpful!

I will be switching the bottle over for soap.

Natal - I thought poaching was only egg related! Thanks, that's good to know!

Oakley - Did you ever have problems with mold on the butter keeper? I've heard people complain of problems with that. You made me hungry for fried sweet potatoes now!

Mari - Think I'll try some grapeseed oil.
"I use half butter and half a neutral oil to improve the smoke point of the butter (since I'm too lazy to make clarified butter).."
What's the smoke point of butter? Is it when it gets all nice and brown looking? I hope not because that happens pretty regular when I cook. I'm going to have to look up clarified butter because I don't know what that is either.

After reading all this I'm temped to not keep my butter on the counter any longer! I never really thought about it. It is in the cold section when you buy it. We also use it pretty fast. Maybe I should look into some cooking classes or something. Hopefully I get more out of it than the sewing class I took awhile back!

The smoke point is when an oil begins to break down chemically, which is signaled by the oil beginning to smoke, darken, and smell nasty. Butter is especially problematic because the milk solids burn long before the actual fat begins to degrade at about 350F. Browning butter gives it a nice nutty flavor, although your pan is much too hot if it happens unintentionally. (That's a common problem with people who don't cook much, they cook everything at too high a temperature. It's especially important to turn the temperature down if you're using lightweight cookware, which is what non-cooks tend to buy even though heavy-bottomed cookware is so much more forgiving.) Browned butter, aka "beurre noisette", is normally used as a sauce or flavoring - lovely on fish and vegetables - rather than as a cooking fat because it is just too easy for it to go from brown to burnt. If you let the milk solids get too dark, it gets very bitter and nasty tasting, so making "black butter" (really a deep brown) can be quite tricky. Not something for novices.

Clarified butter is butter that has had the milk solids and water removed and so is nothing but the pure butterfat all by itself. Ghee is a clarified butter that is the staple fat in Indian cooking; sometimes it is made from lightly browned butter. Since the milk solids are not there to burn, it can be cooked at much higher temperatures than whole butter, and the shelf life is much longer. It is made by sloooowly heating butter until the water cooks off and all the solids sink to the bottom. Sometimes a foam or scum will rise to the top, which must be skimmed off. The tedious way to proceed is to ladle or very carefully pour the clear fat layer off into another container, leaving the solids in the bottom of the pot; it can also be poured through a strainer lined with dampened cheesecloth (if the cheesecloth is not damp it will suck up the butter). You can also slowly pour about two inches of very hot but not boiling water into the pot and put it right into the refrigerator. The butterfat is less dense than the water so it rises to the top and makes a yellow hockey-puck that you can lift right off the water. Dry it off well before wrapping for storage (preferably in the refrigerator). Seems counterintuitive to add water after you've spent all that time cooking the water out of the butter, but suffice to say that it works and I'll spare you the whole chemistry lesson. :-) It's actually simple to make, but a little time-consuming and as I said I'm lazy! Ghee in jars can be purchased in the ethnic foods section of many supermarkets but I don't think it's very good.

Poaching rocks for fish/seafood and chicken/turkey breast. Poaching is done at very low temperatures with enough liquid to cover or almost cover the food, though, while "water-sauteing" is done over high heat with only a small amount of water that is allowed to boil off. Nonstick cookware makes it a LOT easier! (But don't use water for poaching or water-sauteing, use a flavorful liquid of some kind! Water brings nothing to the table tastewise. Wine, broth, juices, etc. don't add that many calories and tons of flavor.)

Land O' Lakes is now packaging their butter in half-sticks inside the pound box. Nice for those who prefer to keep their butter at room temperature because it can be used up more quickly. I think Land O' Lakes is probably the best tasting of the "mainstream" national-brand butters - IME generic butter tends to have off flavors and is often stale.

"What's the smoke point of butter?"

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article/50/Smoke-Points-of-Various-Fats

Here is a link that might be useful: Smokin'