The Muscle Cooks Cooking Corner: Choosing The Right Oils
The oils in which you cook your food can have a major impact on your health as well as body composition.
Using the right oil is going to be vital for helping to enhance the flavor and texture, while also allowing you to get the nutrition that you desire.
Cooking oils come in many different varieties and each one offers its own unique benefits.
Let’s have a closer look at the main points that you need to remember as you select the perfect oil.
The Ones To Avoid
First let’s go over which cooking oils you should be choosing to avoid at all times. While some cooking oils are definitely considered healthy and will produce a great recipe, others will do anything but.
The main ones that you want to avoid are butter, margarine, as well as lard. These are high in saturated fat and will not produce a crisp texture to the foods you’re preparing. While butter may work great if you choose to fry your foods, frying is not a cooking method that those seeking a lean body composition should be making use of.
The Best Ones To Use
Some of the best cooking oils on the other hand that you should be looking at include olive oil when preparing food at medium heat temperatures, coconut oil for high temperature cooking and a unique taste, as well as pam cooking spray.
For those who are watching their fat intake and calorie count to stay as lean as possible while eating muscle building foods, pam works as a great alternative to oil and will provide just a fraction of the fat and calories. But be sure not to completely substitute real oils for it. We definitely want the benefits of those.
The Benefits Of The ‘Good Oils’
What are the benefits that you’ll get from using ‘good oils’? First, the good oils will be much healthier on the body. Olive oil is one of the healthiest fats you can eat to promote good overall heart health and coconut oil is ideal for those who need more energy.
Coconut oil is composed of medium chain triglycerides, which act slightly differently in the body and get utilized as a fuel source immediately rather than taking a long time to convert to usable energy.
Good oils are going to improve your cholesterol profile, support improved insulin sensitivity, and help enhance brain and nervous system functioning.
In addition to that, good oils will also help keep your hormones where they need to be, which is especially important as you go about your muscle building efforts.
Foods That Cook Well With Each
So which foods work best with which oils?
Let’s have a look.
Olive oil is going to work best for foods that require lower heat to cook, so this includes stir-fry dishes, heating vegetables, and it’s also great when used to prepare your own healthy salad dressings.
Coconut oil has a much higher smoke point, so will be ideal for cooking
Finally, non-stick cooking spray can be used when preparing egg white omelettes, lightly stir-frying vegetables, or when cooking a chicken breast. Note that you won’t have as much moisture in the dish when using non-stick cooking spray and it may burn more quickly, so make sure that you’re continually flipping the meat to prevent this.
So there you have everything to note about choosing the perfect oils to use as you prepare your muscle building foods. Make sure you aren’t overlooking any of these points.
What cooking oils do you use? Let us know right below
