It sits, cowering, on a back shelf, usually in a stout, hulking oil tanker of a container. Its bottle is plain, never prettily adorned with the flowering vines that olive oil gets. And unlike butter, it is never used to finish a steak, melting alluringly as the beef sizzles away. No, canola oil is the Peggy to olive oilās Joan. The Louis C.K. to Paul Ruddās butter.
In short, it gets no respect. I should know. I'm one of those that disrespects it.
Until I dumped the last of it into a pot to fry a big, fat batch of wings the other weekend, it was occupying the non-prime real estate in the cabinets a few feet above my stove. It was sticky, and it had probably aged past its prime. (And I know better.)
But after thinking about all the money I spend on fancy butters and olive oils, I started to dig around for reasons to use canola oil more often. They were surprisingly easy to find.
When I'm frying, whether it's Andy Ricker's wings or Molly Wizenberg's wonderful French toast from her book A Homemade Life, I'm using canola. (I've tried her recipe with butter; it's not as good. And, good grief, olive oil French toast? Let's be real here.) Even Bobby Flay admits that āninety-eight percent of the time, I cook with canola oil.ā He loves that it has a higher smoke point (the temperature when the oil starts smoking and becomes more likely to give your food a scorched flavor) than, say, olive oil.
Sometimes you want an oil that doesnāt add a thing: Butter is buttery. Extra-virgin olive oil is fruity, green, or olive-y. Canolaās generally neutral taste is part of its charm. Flay likes this aspect of the stuff, too: If he needs showy flavor, heāll drizzle a dish with olive oil to finish it.
Canola clocks in lowest for saturated fat out of 16 oils, at only 6 percentāas opposed to olive oilās 14 percent, grapeseedās 13 percent, and coconut oilās daunting 89 percentāwhich is why youāll sometimes see it flaunting a cute little heart icon at the grocery store.
Because it doesnāt have the foxy reputation of olive oil or butter, canola is still relatively easy to snag on the cheap, which is great if youāre going to fry something in two full inches of oil.
As this Whole Foods myth-busting blog post notes, canola oil ācomes from a specifically bred variety of rapeseed, which is part of the mustard family along with kale, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts.ā (In fact, it was called ārapeseed oilā until some wise Canadians changed its name.) So although some articles declaim canola oil as being packed with genetically modified organisms, organic canola shouldnāt have them, and one can buy verified non-GMO canola oil.
Once you snag your canola, store it in a cool, dark placeāthe fridge if you don't have such a thing in your kitchen. Be sure the cap is always screwed on tightly. Replace it after a year or so if it has a weird smell. And don't worry about showcasing it alongside your pretty olive oils. That's another nice thing about canola oilāit's totally okay not being the star.
