Of all the cooking oils in the supermarket, which is the best for cooking curries?
You can probably guess that there is no “correct” answer.
I’ll give you a few basic details for you to think about but you should remember that I’m not a doctor, nutritionist or chemist – I just make curries.
There are 4 main types of oil – polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, saturated and trans fats. Of these types, saturated oils and trans fats are bad for you because they have a bad effect your cholesterol levels (either raising your LDL levels or lowering your HDL levels).
Ignoring saturated and trans fat oils leaves polyunsaturated and monounsaturated oils to choose from.
One problem is that a cooking oil is not completely polyunsaturated or monounsaturated or even saturated free. Oil is a mixture of all of the types of fat.
You need to look at the percentage of the good types in cooking oils.
The following table shows the 5 oils with the least amount of bad fat, along with old favorites such as butter, ghee and lard.
| Oil or Fat | Saturated Fat | Unsaturated Fat |
| Canola | 6% | 94% |
| Safflower | 10% | 90% |
| Sunflower | 11% | 89% |
| Grape Seed | 12% | 82% |
| Corn | 13% | 87% |
| Olive | 14% | 86% |
| Sesame | 14% | 86% |
| Soft margarine | 20% | 80% |
| Lard | 41% | 59% |
| Ghee | 65% | 35% |
| Butter | 66% | 34% |
| Hard margarine | 80% | 20% |
The first thing to notice from the table is that the old favorites (butter, lard, ghee and margarine) are to be avoided, no matter how good they taste.
So I’ll drop the bad fats from the table and show the amount of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat in the oils. Why do you need to know this? Generally speaking, monounsaturated oil is better than polyunsaturated oil.
| Oil or Fat | Saturated | Mono Unsaturated | Poly Unsaturated |
| Canola | 6% | 62% | 32% |
| Safflower | 10% | 13% | 77% |
| Sunflower | 11% | 20% | 69% |
| Grape Seed | 12% | 17% | 71% |
| Corn | 13% | 25% | 62% |
| Olive | 14% | 73% | 11% |
| Sesame | 14% | 43% | 43% |
Looking at the above table, it appears that you need to decide between canola oil (which has only 6% of saturated fat) and olive oil (which has 73% of monounsaturated fat).
I use canola oil because, in my opinion, there is little to choose between canola oil and olive oil and also because canola oil is a lot cheaper than olive oil.
There is a lot of information on the Internet about cooking oils and some are easier to understand than others.
But whatever oil you choose to use, make sure you continue to enjoy cooking.