Can you cook with cold pressed rapeseed oil?

Can you cook with cold pressed rapeseed oil? We get asked this question quite a lot, and the answer is simply YES. There is a lot of information about how some oils are only for drizzling or cooking at low temperatures and that some oils are meant for high temperature cooking, so let us explain the differences between the oils and what makes them suitable for high temperature cooking.

The way to tell if an oil is suitable for cooking with is to look at its smoke point. Smoke point is the temperature at which oil can be heated to before it starts to produce smoke. Once an oil goes above its smoke point, other than the unpleasant smoke that is created, the oil itself also starts to breakdown and the nutritional composition changes.

Different oils have different smoke points, below shows the smoke point of common cooking oils. This is a great way for you to choose the oil that you need for your cooking and which oil you may want for other uses, such as drizzling.

Smoke points of common cooking oils

Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil – 230°C

Sunflower Oil – 225°C

Extra Virgin Olive Oil – 190°C

Coconut Oil – 175°C

Butter – 120°C-150°C

Typically, when roasting in an oven, your oil will get up to 180°C, so for roasting you need to ensure you choose an oil with a smoke point above this. For pan frying, you may reach up to 220°C and deep frying is typically around 180°C.

When choosing a cooking oil, you need to ensure that the smoke point is suitable for what you want to use it for. As well as smoke point, nutritional composition and flavour are also very important.

Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil is an ideal all-round cooking oil. With a high smoke point of 230°C, you know that you can use it for all types of cooking. As well as the smoke point, our cold pressed rapeseed oil also has a lovely subtle, nutty flavour, which means it great for cooking all sorts of delicate ingredients such as fish and also adds a lovely nutty flavour when used a drizzle or pouring oil. In terms of nutrition, cold pressed rapeseed oil has half the saturated fat of olive oil and ten times less than coconut oil, it has the correct balance of Omega 3, 6 and 9 which is good for your health and it also contains Vitamin E and Vitamin K. For more information about the health benefits of cold pressed rapeseed oil, read our blog post here.

Delicious recipes to cook with cold pressed rapeseed oil

Now you know that you can cook with cold pressed rapeseed oil, here are our some of our favourite recipes to cook with cold pressed rapeseed oil that take advantage of the versatility of this brilliant oil…

Roast potatoes

By using Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil, you can create a beautifully crunchy coating with a light and fluffy centre. Follow our Roast Potato recipe here.

Stir Fry

Drizzle your oil into a hot wok and enjoy cooking a stir fry without creating lots of smoke. Find our Vegetable Stir Fry and Dipping Sauce recipe here.

Crispy Baked Chicken Goujons

Mixed with panko breadcrumbs, the oil on the outside of these goujons gets super crispy in the oven without needing to deep fry! Find the recipe here.