Yes, You Can Stir-Fry in Olive Oil (and Other Advice for Becoming a More Improvisational Solo Cook) | America's Test Kitchen.
So many different oils, the good news is you can stick with what you know – canola is great! The best oils for stir frys are the oils with the higher smoke points. These tend to be the “thinner” oils such as peanut, grapeseed or canola.
Although stir-frying is considered a fairly healthy cooking method, adding olive oil to the mix may increase the benefit, but only slightly. Olive oil is a rich source of monounsaturated fatty acids, particularly oleic acid, which may reduce inflammation.
In summary, use olive oil when you want its flavor in a dish and for moderate-heat cooking. Choose a vegetable oil when you want a cleaner flavor and for high-heat cooking. If you find yourself out of the oil called for in your recipe, we've found these oils can be used interchangeably the majority of the time.
Bottom line: Olive oil is the best all purpose cooking oil: it has a strong fruity flavor and is good at medium temperatures. Vegetable oil has a clean, neutral flavor and is best for cooking at high heat.
This idea that it's not a good idea to cook over high heat with olive oil is fairly common. For a lot of people, the concern is one of health, specifically that olive oil, with its relatively low smoke point of 325 to 375°F (165 to 190°C), degrades more than other oils when exposed to high heat.
For wok cooking, use oils with a high smoke point and low polyunsaturated fat content. Grapeseed oil, peanut oil, etc… Sesame oil and olive oil will burn and taste bitter. Oils with high polyunsaturated fat contents like soybean oil will also turn your food texturally unpleasant.
Olive oil has a lower smoke point-the point at which an oil literally begins to smoke (olive oil's is between 365° and 420°F)-than some other oils. When you heat olive oil to its smoke point, the beneficial compounds in oil start to degrade, and potentially health-harming compounds form.
Chinese cooks normally use soybean oil, vegetable oil, or peanut oil, all of which have a high smoke point. Peanut oil usually has a pleasant nutty flavor and is suitable not only for stir-frying but also for deep-frying. Canola oil, which has a high smoke point but a neutral flavor, is also a good choice.
Refined canola oil has a higher smoke point of 400F, which makes it good for stir-fries. It is known as the best substitute for vegetable oil in stir-frying; it provides low trans-fat, less saturated fat (less than 10%) and cholesterol content. It is a rich source of unsaturated fats, which are good for health.
Corn Oil. Refined corn oil is often used in frying, thanks to its smoke point of 450°. It has a neutral flavor, and is used frequently in commercial kitchens because of its low price point.
Celebrity chefs have relied upon extra virgin olive oil for centuries in the pursuit of preparing perfect dishes. With its varied and flavourful palette, extra virgin olive oil has become a favourite among many celebrity chefs because of the layers of flavour it can provide to both simple and complex recipes.
Olive oil has long been a staple in Chinese cooking and for good reason. extra-virgin olive oil is the perfect choice for traditional Chinese recipes, due to its mild flavour and ability to stand up to high temperatures. It's great for frying, as it has a high smoke point compared to other cooking oils.
To avoid this, use oils with a high smoke point when cooking in a wok. Oils and fats like butter, extra virgin olive oil, and coconut oil should be avoided due to their low smoke point. Instead, use safflower, soybean, rice bran, or corn oil for stir-fries, which all have very high smoke points.
Don't Use Olive Oil For High-Heat Cooking.
And where there's smoke, there will soon be fire. This is why extra virgin olive oil, which has a low smoke point of 350°F to 410°F, shouldn't be used for high heat cooking, especially frying.
More and more chefs are convinced that olive oil is the best choice for frying. In fact, frying with olive oil is healthy, if you know how to do it. You read that right.
The flavor compounds in olive oil are delicate and will evaporate when heated. Heating olive oil does not damage the health benefits but it will make the olive oil lose some flavor. Some people consider this to be a good thing as they do not want their foods to taste like olive oil.
The Olive Wellness Institute team often gets asked questions about this common myth, and the answer is NO, cooking in extra virgin olive oil will NOT ruin your non-stick pans.
Nearly every Ramsay recipe, from his early days on Boiling Point to Uncharted and the current critic's darling, Scrambled starts with "just a drizzle" of his beloved EVOO. Ramsay knows that "liquid gold" packs flavor and healthy fats into every bite; he does not miss an opportunity to use it liberally.
Cooking in olive oil means you'll get the health benefits of olive oil, plus you'll absorb the healthy components. In addition, olive oil makes vegetables taste so much better than plain. I find people eat more vegetables when they use olive oil to prepare them.
But we love olive oil for a sear or shallow fry. In fact, there are some things we use it for exclusively. But before we get into that, we just have to clear something up: Yes, olive oil has a lower smoke point than most neutral oils, but it's actually not that low—around 375°F, to be precise.
Heart-healthy oils like canola, corn, olive, peanut, and sunflower oils contain monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. They help to lower harmful low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and raise healthy high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol.