Cooking Oil

TheCurseofDolkite

I know you're supposed to take into account cooking oil, but should it be the same amount? Not all of that tablespoon of olive oil ends up going into my body.

I don't usually make fried food, but this week, I'm making orange chicken with a recipe requiring the use of like a cup of cooking oil. It would be ludicrous to add all of this to a calorie counter.

janejellyroll

If you're truly frying, just measure the oil going in and then measure the oil that remains when you're done frying. The difference should give you a good idea of what was absorbed by the food.

But that tablespoon for pan-frying? I would log that because you probably are eating most of it.

livingleanlivingclean

No idea what the recipe entails, but if you're frying the chicken, you could weigh the oil in the pan before and after cooking. The difference would be how much had been absorbed during cooking....

RuNaRoUnDaFiEld

Just a tip that if you wait until the oil is fully heated then the food absorbs less of it.

zyxst

I count all of it because I'm too lazy to measure the oil before and after cooking in it.

TheCurseofDolkite

A cup of canola oil is about the equivalent of a day's worth of calories for most people. The recipe I am going to make has THREE cups of canola oil. Some of that will be absorbed, but not all of it.

Re-measuring the oil sounds like a pain, but I'll do it because I cook with oil a lot.

pinuplove

TheCurseofDolkite wrote: »

A cup of canola oil is about the equivalent of a day's worth of calories for most people. The recipe I am going to make has THREE cups of canola oil. Some of that will be absorbed, but not all of it.

Re-measuring the oil sounds like a pain, but I'll do it because I cook with oil a lot.

Not really. Just weigh/measure before cooking (which you should be doing anyway) and again after. You can even dump the unused oil back into the same measuring vessel you first used. No need to dirty up another dish!

cmtigger

TheCurseofDolkite wrote: »

A cup of canola oil is about the equivalent of a day's worth of calories for most people. The recipe I am going to make has THREE cups of canola oil. Some of that will be absorbed, but not all of it.

Re-measuring the oil sounds like a pain, but I'll do it because I cook with oil a lot.

Once you've done it a couple times you will get an idea and know what it takes in that recipe so you don't have to measure it again.

lynn_glenmont

pinuplove wrote: »

TheCurseofDolkite wrote: »

A cup of canola oil is about the equivalent of a day's worth of calories for most people. The recipe I am going to make has THREE cups of canola oil. Some of that will be absorbed, but not all of it.

Re-measuring the oil sounds like a pain, but I'll do it because I cook with oil a lot.

Not really. Just weigh/measure before cooking (which you should be doing anyway) and again after. You can even dump the unused oil back into the same measuring vessel you first used. No need to dirty up another dish!

Plus, hopefully you're able to use the cooking oil more than once (my mother always did for deep-frying, reusing it until it started to get dark -- well, technically she used hydrogenated vegetable shortening for deep frying, way back in the day, but same concept), or you could be spending a significant amount of your food budget on oil you're not even eating at three cups a meal. If you're going to save it, I'd recommend using a separate container to store it, not pouring it back into the original bottle, unless you used all the oil in the bottle for cooking.

So if you're pouring it back into the container to save for next time (or even if you're pouring it back into the container for disposal, because you don't want to be pouring it down your drain unless you like paying plumbers), I don't really see how much of a pain it is to put the container on the scale.