Coconut oil too hard to work with?

(Michael ) #21

Nothing wrong with light olive oil. Good smoke point for cooking and liquid. Medium chain triglycerides in coconut oil are great but no rule that you have to use it all the time. Whether your paleo or keto:

GOOD FAT: coconut oil, olive oil, avacado oil, lard, butter
BAD: sunflower oil, canola oil, vegetable oil, soy, peanut oil. These are the nasty super processed industrial oils packed full of omega 6 that lead to inflammation. I personally stay away

I generally prefer olive oil for cooking but take mct oil to help with quick energy and ketosis. It’s having my cake and eating it too…provided it’s an oil based cake

#22

So have you used it yet? I think I need to get my hands on some, it would make recipes a lot easier. Hell, it would make BPC easier, too!
Sue

(Darlene Horsley) #23

I have! Mainly for cooking. Tonight I used it to sear steak tips with onions and green beans. I like the no flavor not interfering with the taste of what I’ve cooked. Not sure how well it would work in a fat bomb though.

(Alice Ph.) #24

coconut oil is healthy oil. I usually use Coconut oil for salad …It smell good…and the taste is yummy also. However, like your trouble…such oil is very easy to get solid…Therefore, it better to put it in heater place or use microwave to turn it to liquid…

(Allie) #25

I just stand it in a saucepan of water and gently heat the water which safely melts the oil.

(Cheryl Meyers) #26

edit: I would love to find that here in Japan, looks easy to use.

Ordinary coconut oil is always hard as a rock all winter, then softer in spring… and clear oil in the summer here in Japan. You could keep yours near a heater–but not too close or the plastic container might melt…
On thing I do is heat up a knife and then slice into the coconut oil so it separates into smaller chunks. then I cut up the chunks to the right size to make my bulletproof coffee. Easier to deal with first thing on a cold winter morning.

#27

I’m fond of Nikki’s flavored coconut butter spreads. One of the first things I do with a new jar is heat it in a pan of hot water, mix it well, and pour it into ice cube trays (the soft kind, not hard plastic). The ones I have hold about a tablespoon per cube.

I let them sit until solid. Then I pop them out and put them in the original jar and a glass mason jar. They take up more volume as chunks. Sometimes in really hot weather if the a/c can’t keep up, they melt together again but they hold their shape fine most of the year.

When i’m on carbs, i like the flavored coconut butter in smoothies. On keto, i just eat it. My partner likes it in coffee. We do the same for plain coconut oil for cooking. Any way we use it, the little cubes are easier to melt than a whole jar and conveniently pre-measured.

(Marie Dantoni) #28

Oh, nice to see a fellow soap maker !

#29

When I started I’d melt some solid fats like coconut oil or ghee and pour them into plain candy molds. Then keep them in mason jars in the refrigerator or freezer.
Measurements are more accurate this way.
All the labor is upfront.

Genius - Im borrowing this!

(Brian) #30

If what you need is liquid coconut oil, it helps to start there. Get what you need out of the container and put it into a small dish or bowl where just that can heat up. You can set it in a warm place (toaster oven?, back of stove?) and it will turn liquid. Or if you microwave it and just let it sit there in what’s melted and much warmer, the smaller bits will liquefy. It’s when we try to hurry it that it can be so frustrating.

I have a few recipes that call for “room temperature eggs”. And I know what happens when I try to use cold eggs. It usually is in a recipe that’s calling for liquid butter and mixing a bunch of stuff all together. When I use the cold out of the refrigerator eggs, the butter turns back into solid form and the whole thing clumps up like it’s not supposed to. So I’ll start out with whatever eggs the recipe needs and put them in warm water before I do anything else with the recipe. And by the time I need them, they’re just right.

I find that the longer I bake, which is where this stuff usually comes into play, the more I keep an eye towards ingredient preparation and not just the recipe.

Good luck!

:slight_smile:

(Jessica) #31

This is brilliant!!

OP: I really only use coconut oil in my coffee (and to remove my makeup, but that’s a different jar), so I just carve a chunk out in the morning. At this point I can eyeball about how much I want and it varies depending on how I feel in the morning.

(Jenn Monaghan) #32

I switched to using avocado oil…

(matt ) #33

Do not cook with MCT oil. Just keep your coconut oil somewhere a bit warmer. It’s liquid above 76F

#34

Ahhhhh, but that requires patience! Where can I buy some of that? :wink:
Sue

#35

Even in recipes? Does it alter the taste of the end product?

(Brian) #36

More planning than patience… :wink:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #37

So far I haven’t had any more trouble with coconut oil than with anything else; the real problem is getting it to stay solid enough to stay on the spatula between the container and the frying pan. This summer, I would just pour it out of the jar.

I don’t cook with olive oil, now that I know better; it has a much lower smoke point, and it’s a good idea to avoid oxidizing its polyunsaturated fatty acids. Coconut oil has a much higher smoke point. And actually, I prefer cooking with bacon fat, tallow, or lard. I think they’re even better for us than coconut oil.

(Michael ) #38

Light olive oil is higher than virgin

(Lesley) #39

Another soap maker here too. When I went keto I had a load of coconut oil . My go to soap recipe was just coconut and olive oil. I like to keep things simple. So do I eat it or wash with it!

(Marie Dantoni) #40

Wow, Lesley…How long you been making soap ?