VIRGIN / REFINED?
In this post, we are explaining a few basic terminologies in cooking oil.
So how is cooking oil manufactured? And what are the different types of cooking oil?
Oil bearing crops such as Peanuts, Sunflower Seeds, Sesame etc. when crushed produce oil. This oil is called virgin oil. During extraction of oil in traditional expellers steam is used to boil the seeds and heat is generated during crushing, because of which the oil is hot ie about 80C and above. Due to this heat, the natural antioxidants present in oil gets evaporated and lost..
WHAT IS VIRGIN OIL? REFINED OIL? COLD PRESSED OIL?
Which is why we have a cold pressed process in which, the oil is crushed in a cooler temperature thereby the antioxidants are preserved in the oil. The oil extracted through this process is cold pressed oil. Cold pressed oil are expensive compared to other oils as the extraction is a little more complicated.
Virgin oils are golden coloured and they have a strong smell and taste associated with them.
The virgin oil is further processed to get refined oil. Refined oils do not have any smell or taste associated with them.
Certain oilseeds like sunflower and palm oil cannot be consumed in their virgin state and definitely needs to refined before human consumption. Certain virgin oil will also contain aflatoxin which needs to be removed by refining.
