Healthy Oil Alternatives for Cooking
How can you replace the oils in food? Suggest some alternatives.
Healthy Alternatives to Oils
After my post last week about replacing eggs, I received a lot of questions about how I could change the oil. While vegetable oil is based on plants, I do not use it when cooking or baking. I made 2 posts last year by replacing the oil when I was cooking and baking again.
Oil is widely used in the stove to make salads with onions and fried foods. I mainly use water (sometimes vegetable broth) for sauteing. Start with a small amount of liquid, about 1/4 cup, in a pan over high heat until the ingredients are cooked and most of the liquid has risen. You may need to add more water when cooking to prevent sticking and heat before cooking.
As for frying, I have found that I can bake a lot of things and have them fried, but not oily. Baked Onion rings in HHC (page 176) are a good example of this. By changing the existing recipe from the beginning to baking, preheat the oven to 350F. Show the cookie sheet on parchment paper and bake the food for 10 minutes, flip, and bake for another 10 minutes. Continue this cycle until the food is cooked and you have a nice outer crust.
Baking is another area where oil can get in, whether it be in fish, slices of bread, or cookies. My usual way of replacing appleauce is good for cakes and muffins, but it’s only good for soft cookie recipes. My favorite place is a canned pumpkin. While this may leave a slight hint of pumpkin and orange color on muffins or cake, sometimes this is very similar to Chocolate Zucchini Muffins.
There are, of course, other types of oils other than the oil that comes from baking or cooking, such as heavy cream, avocado, or coconut, for example, which you may want to change. Here are two useful pdfs on how to change fats – such as oil, butter, or cream – when cooking and baking.
– Written By Shivani Thakkar
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