palm kernel oil

Cooking With Dende Oil
oils

Know Your Ingredients: Dende Oil

In an age when grocery shelves are stocked with everything from toasted sesame oil to coconut oil, here's a relative unknown that you may have never heard of: dendê oil.
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In an age when grocery shelves are stocked with everything from toasted sesame oil to coconut oil, here's a relative unknown that you may have never heard of: dendê oil.

This oil, which has a distinctive orangey-red color and a thick, somewhat opaque consistency, is a recurring ingredient in the cuisines of Southeast Asia, West Africa, and Bahia, a northeastern region in Brazil. There, the very rich, nutty flavor of dendê oil, or azeite de dendê, as Brazilians call it, is used to flavor fritters, sauces, and stews.

The ingredient is derived from the fleshy fruit pulp of the dendê palm tree and shouldn't be confused with palm kernel oil, which is extracted from the fruit's pit. Although it's high in saturated fat, dendê is prized for its antioxidants and fatty acids, and maintains a long shelf life. Have you ever cooked with red palm oil?

Fractionated Palm Kernel Oil Explained
Food

Label Able: Fractionated Palm Kernel Oil

Recently, while reading the ingredients of an energy bar, I came across the term "fractionated" and it was modifying an oil – palm kernel oil to be exact.
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Recently, while reading the ingredients of an energy bar, I came across the term "fractionated" and it was modifying an oil – palm kernel oil to be exact. Well, I know that palm kernel is 86 percent saturated fat, that is the bad kind of fat, and I wondered if this "fractionating" process was akin to hydrogenating. Since deciphering a nutrition label can be so tricky these days, I wanted to make sure no one was pulling the wool over my eyes or that there were no new code words to watch out for.

It turns out I was being overly paranoid, but just a bit. Fractionating oil is not the same as hydrogenating it, but it does make the oil less healthy rather than more. The process, most commonly used on palm and palm kernel oil, involves heating then cooling the oil so it separates into fractions, hence the name. The thicker fractions have a higher melting point and are more stable, making them perfect for keeping chocolate coatings from melting. Fractionated palm kernel oil contains a higher concentration of saturated fat than regular palm kernel oil, which would be the reason you want to avoid fractionated oil. It is commonly found in energy bars, especially those coated with chocolate or flavored icing.

The ranking of palm oils healthiest to least, goes like this:

  1. Palm oil
  2. Palm kernel oil
  3. Fractionated palm oil of either variety
Palm Fruit Oil vs. Palm Kernel Oil
Food

Palm Fruit Oil vs. Palm Kernel Oil

I was food shopping the other day, reading labels as usual, and I came upon the ingredient palm fruit oil.
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I was food shopping the other day, reading labels as usual, and I came upon the ingredient palm fruit oil. I kind of assumed that it was the same as palm kernel oil, but I was wrong. Palm fruit oil (also called palm oil) is extracted from the fruit of the oil palm tree while palm kernel oil comes from the palm seed found inside the fruit. Eighty-six percent of the fat in palm kernel oil is saturated (the not so healthy fat), while only 50 percent of the fat from palm fruit oil is saturated, which makes it a healthier choice for your arteries. Even though it's high in saturated fat, some research suggests that the fatty acids in palm oil can actually raise HDL (good) cholesterol levels in your body. I haven't found any substantial medical evidence to prove this though.

So when you're checking labels, be on the lookout for these oils since they're found in margarines and many processed foods. If the saturated fat content is high, you may want to skip out on certain products, especially if you have issues with high cholesterol or your heart.

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