Best Oils to Use for High Heat Wok Cooking

As a wok cooking teacher, I’m constantly asked what are the best oils to use for high heat wok cooking.  The topic of best oils has changed over the years, we find more and more how vegetable and seed oils are highly processed and are NOT good for your health. Let’s discuss Smoke Points, Flavors and why and how they affect your health! 

CHART FOR OILS, SMOKE POINT, FLAVOR

BEST OILS FOR HIGH HEAT WOK COOKING

HEALTH

Vegetable oils which everyone thinks is so nutritious is actually highly processed and full of Omega 6 fatty acids which is inflammatory and has terrible health consequences. 

Here’s a functional doctor I highly respect who started off as a traditional family practitioner, Dr. Hyman.  It’s best you get the history about the complete switcheroo from vegetable and seed oils to saturated fats. This short video explains it really well.

HOW TO KEEP OILS

I know Costco stocks huge bottles of Avocado and Olive Oil but it’s best to buy smaller quantities because they can go rancid. Keep these oils in a dry, cool, dark place.  Never put oil bottles close to hot cooking areas which makes them spoil even faster. And close the lid quickly because oxygen contributes to rancidity, eww. 

SMOKE POINT

Smoke Point basically means at what temperature the oil reaches before it breaks down and degrades its flavor, smell and nutrition. 

I have also lowered the temperature of my stir frying. I start HIGH at 500 on my Nuwave and HIGHEST on my Iwatani gas stove. OK, sorry I’m introducing yet another angle to stir frying but ever since I started using the GLAZING TECHNIQUE which involves stock or water for vegetables, the smoke point doesn’t come into effect so much. I’ll work on a GLAZING blog post next. 

Coconut oil is not that high and gets very smoky, so I’ve backed off using it for my stir fries. 

FLAVOR

Only Avocado oil has a neutral flavor.  For me personally, I love the flavor of ghee in my food, it makes everything look very glazed, taste delicious and has a creamy texture. My husband as you all know is the Omelet Master only uses ghee now.

Coconut oil also imparts a strong flavor. Extra Virgin Olive oil (EVOO) makes everything taste Italian? Just joking but it does have a strong flavor and is expensive, I use it for mostly dressing.  All this boils down to is depending on your personal flavor preference. 

As mentioned, I will share the Glazing technique. In the meantime, Try this Stir Fry for Cooking Flavorful Vegetables so you’ll love them and so will your partner and the kids! In this post, I used a similar technique but less ratio of oil and liquid.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, please ELIMINATE using any highly processed vegetable or seed oils like tea seed oil, canola oil, grape seed oil, safflower oil. If you see mentions of those oils in my old blog posts, PLEASE remember to replace with avocado oil, ghee, coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil. 

PS whenever I go out to dine, I get terrible bloating and takes a week to get back to normal. I’m trying to start a campaign to get chefs to NOT use those dreaded highly processed vegetable or seed oils. I was so thrilled to hear Los Felix and sister restaurant right next door Krus Kitchen in Coconut Grove do NOT use seed oils, yay. 

Ask me any questions in comments and I’ll try to answer as best I can.