"...wait till the oil starts to smoke..." What the hell?!

Hello.

Maybe someone can help with this.

I come from Austria and when I got more interested in food and cooking I read a lot about food and also watched a lot of german speaking celebrity chefs and their TV Shows. Basically all of them promote low temperature cooking.

So I was a bit surprised when I started to watch some other chefs around the world who put their steak for example in the pan once the oil starts smoking.

I was especially surprised when I saw in "The search for perfection" that Heston Blumenthal asks for extra virgine olive oil in a hot pan and once it smokes to put in the minced beef for his bolognese sauce.

Why in the hell use extra virgine olive oil if you completely destroy it and make it actually very unhealthy by bringing it past its smoke point.

The same goes for other oils. Once they are past its smoke point they are really unhealthy and destroyed.

Can anybody explain that to me?

Any comment is very much appreciated.

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Comments

ren_74229

I'd suppose that if you're bringing the oil to smoking, the goal is the sear that you get on your product, rather than the retention of the health and integrity of the oil.

The oil's soul must be sacrificed to feed the the savory browning gods...

In another example, my theory is that in chinese cooking, "wok hay" or breath of wok, is actually the flavor of vaporized oils...you also know it as grill flavor (separate from smoke flavor)

Johan_Edstrom_5586

I think the technically correct terms would be that you want convection in the oil, if water droplets release steam you know that you at the very least are above boiling temp in the pan. Then it also depends on what you are doing, butter you can't have that much heat, it'll burn quickly, oils can take much more heat before reaching a smoking point, what I look for is that waters steam and that the oil has convection.

I thought this was pretty descriptive - http://reluctantgourmet.com/cooking-techniques/saute/item/1155-how-hot-should-you-heat-your-pan-when-sauteing

susan_fox_33805

Johan I so appreciate your contributions here. You always have fantastic links and pieces of advice. Thanks!

Johan_Edstrom_5586

Thanks!

Harald_Illeditsch_63655

Thanks for the link Johan.

The guy from your link also says once the oil is smoking it is ruined and should not be used anymore.

So why use extra virgin olive oil and destroy it when you can use oil with a much higher smoke point like grapeseed oil.

Josep_36911

Hi everybody!

I'm new here and this is my first post.

IMHO, I think it should be better to sacrifice browning in favour of healthy food whenever possible. As Harald said, it's very unhealthy to use burnt oil to cook. Also, I've read that you should never warm oils, no matter what kind of oil, over 190 C, to avoid the destroying the oil and making it unsafe for consumption (http://www.amazon.com/Sferificaciones-y-macarrones-Claudi-Mans/dp/8434469162/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376648949&sr=8-1&keywords=Sferificaciones+y+macarrones)

What do you think about it? Improve browning or improve health?

Thanks a lot for your comments!

Johan_Edstrom_5586

@harald I completely agree with that smoking oil point, I tend to use expensive oils like that for salads.

Manfred_18311

I too have seen even ***Chefs

ridiculously heating up oil to the smoking point setting the wrong advice and

recommendation to their followers.

What

happened if Oil/fat is smoking?

If smoke is

generate something obviously is burning, in a closer look a chemical process is

instigated. In the case of smoking oil/fat, saturated and unsaturated fats are oxidizing

and braking off producing glycerin -> acrolein. Especially the high valued

unsaturated fat (olive oil) lose this value completely trough the production of

acolein causing the opposite.

Acrolein is toxic and is a strong

irritant for the skin, eyes, and important for cooking and tasting,…the nasal

passages. The odd sharp smell of burning oil/fat and yes.., it’s scientifically

proven to be cancer causing.

Noteworthy; Not only oil and fat products (butter, and Trans saturated

fast as margarine) which, once heated up to the smoking point producing

acrolein, but all fats in beef, pork, poultry and fish.

So be modest when working with a blowtorch or searing if you uses SV

cookery on a constant level.

Suggestion: To get out the best taste of your beef, pork, poultry

or fish (SV or not) and preventing at the same time the occurrence of toxic

elements transferred from the oil or fat on the product, use oil with a high

smoking point, stay clear under the smoking point <20 °C, sear your goods

quickly, observe close and turn them often to prevent any burns (charring/

carbonizing) they just taste bitter and eradicate your culinary attempts to

uselessness. No finely designed sauce can covert the bitter taste of charred

meet. Same goes for roasting and grilling products for the better taste.

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Kevin__55609

As it stands, the correct method is to wait until the perfect temperature to put the oil in the pan, let the temperature of the oil & the pan to drop briefly, then time the oil/pan temperature perfectly before put the meat/food into the pan. This sounds like a lot of fuss.

Can someone explain to me why you couldn't just put the oil into the pan before turning the heat on, then letting both the oil/pan heat up to the desired temperature (using an infrared thermometer), and then put the meat/food in?

t.stanoulis

If we are to be considerate of the health concerns, the better choices of oils to use would be clarified butter or beef tallow. Of course, lard is also a decent option. In my experience, though, the clarified butter tolerates handily higher temperatures than lard or tallow. With respect to olive oil specifically, however, there remains the notion that antioxidant compounds in the oil help to protect it from oxidation at high temperatures — but, of course, this is only temporary. Given that most meats seem to be best seared well above 200C, I find that the grill, broiler, blowtorch, and dry iron skillet can be very effective. Otherwise, for high-heat searing and final stage frying in oil, I find that measuring the temperature of clarified butter to be in the 190-210C range produces the best results.

On another vector, there is also the choice of using a reducing sugar, such as glucose, on the surface of the meat to be seared. This accelerates the generation of AGEs (which probably raises a number of alarms for health-conscious individuals) and browns rapidly the surface of the meat to provide the coveted charm from roasted, caramel-rich Maillard. Oil heated to the neighbourhood of 175C is typically sufficient for this strategy.

Kevin, provided your pan is properly maintained or seasoned, there should be no issue with this approach. Beware that not all infrared thermometers will effectively report the temperate of shiny/reflective surfaces, e.g. polished stainless.

Manfred_18311

I agree on

the use of clarified butter. Not that I have a lactate issue but almost anything

on high temperature will be fried-seared-cooked in clarified butter for a more concentered

taste and oil isn’t possible to perform browning in the same short period of

time without charring the goods. In simple words; Clarified butter is much more

forgiving than the sensible structure of vegetable oils.

Beef tallow

is a way to go depending on one’s taste and end-preference. The Belgians for instant known as the inventers

of the “French fries” cook them exclusively in beef tallow. But I can’t say yet

if Walloons or Flanders where the first to invent it, but presumably chefs claiming

to celebrate the “perfect fries” should pay attention to the fact.

Last time I

been in Brussels I can state the use as of beef tallow for potato fries as widely

spread in original small cooking places and advisable to the general kitchen,

it gives the fries simply more volume on the taste as does clarified butter in

the general meaning.

@Kevin Heating

oil with an ascending pan temperature, I really can see no problem there.

Molecules whirring once heated in an unspecific order causing frictional colliding

contact heat (no matter if its oil or steel or whatever) thus it does not matter

if you raise the heat continually with the medium (oil/fat) ore preheat the

pan without adding the medium immediately but on a later point, I would assume

the frictional heat and speed of colliding molecule movement in the latter is more

uneven than the first. Thus you might right,

a continually ascending heat adds to a more evenly heat distribution in browning

goods in the pan.

Kevin__55609

Thanks for the great insight, gentlemen. I think I have a new method of heating fat.

Raul_Modonese_Kessel_113925

The chef simply wants to add smoky flavor to his dish