It's better to use oil for high-heat searing (like steak) for its higher smoke point, preventing burning, and butter for lower-heat tasks (like eggs, pancakes) to add rich flavor, but you can get the best of both by starting with oil and finishing with butter for basting and flavor. Butter burns easily at high temperatures, while oil handles the heat better, making the choice dependent on temperature and desired flavor.
Oil has a higher smoke point than butter, so it's better for searing, frying, etc. The milk solids in butter will brown up in that oil, which adds flavor to the thing you're cooking.
This is correct. It's all about when the fat burns and ruins the dish - known as it's smoke point. Butter burns at a lower temperature than oil, and some oils burn at lower temps than other oils. So you choose your fat depending on your cook temp + and time over heat.
Short answer: butter has a low smoke point, contains water and milk solids that burn easily, and its flavor and economics make it a poor medium for high-temperature frying; the result is greasy, unevenly cooked, and often burnt fries. Below are the precise reasons and practical alternatives.
Air frying is the healthiest form of frying, using little to no oil. Compared to deep frying, air frying is a healthier substitute since hot air circulates around the food, creating a crust that does not affect nutritional value.
Oils with more monounsaturated fats, such as rapeseed and olive, are also less susceptible to heat. Rapeseed oil (often sold as generic vegetable oil) and inexpensive olive oil are therefore the best choices for cooking. All cooking fats add fat and calories to your diet.
However, if you do need to deep fry your food, our long-standing advice is that oils like corn and sunflower oils are not recommended for high temperatures. These oils are rich in polyunsaturated fats which can form undesirable compounds when heated at high temperatures.
KFC primarily uses a blend of oils, with a major shift in the U.S. to low-linolenic soybean oil to eliminate trans fats, while regions like Australia use high oleic canola oil for its stability and health profile, though specific oil types can vary by country and even franchise, sometimes incorporating palm/soybean blends, but generally favoring vegetable-based oils for flavor and consistency.
There's a lot of conflicting information about saturated fats. Should I eat them or not? The American Heart Association recommends limiting saturated fats to less than 6% of total calories. Saturated fats are found in butter, cheese, red meat, other animal-based foods and tropical oils.
It seems to be one of the go-to ingredients he reaches for to boost flavor and add moisture to a long list of dishes. For instance, when making chicken Parmesan, Ramsay tosses butter into his frying oil to give the dish rich nuttiness and to help create the perfect crust.
A good rule of thumb is to replace about 3/4 of the butter in a recipe with olive, canola, or vegetable oil. (If the recipe calls for 1 cup butter, use ¾ cup oil.)
“The study shows that high butter consumption is linked to increased cancer and total mortality, whereas plant-based oils are linked to a lower risk of overall mortality and death due to cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Healthy Cooking Oils
The unhealthiest KFC item varies, but often includes high-calorie, high-fat options like the Family Potato Salad (over 1,200 calories/serving) or the Famous Bowl (around 710 calories), while large fried chicken pieces or loaded burgers (like the Zinger Tower) also rank high for fat and sodium, though chicken skin itself has unsaturated fats, making preparation key.
Once in our kitchens, we cook them in our canola-blend oil so you can have them crispy and hot—just the way you like them. Want to hear more about our fry ingredients?
It holds the taste of light seasoning and a crispy layer. But people often remain reserved about eating them because of high cholesterol and saturated fats. A trick to cut off this additional fat is replacing vegetable oil with extra-virgin olive oil, a crucial part of Korean fried chicken.
The "555 egg method" is a popular technique for making easy-peel hard-boiled eggs in an Instant Pot or other pressure cooker, involving 5 minutes of high pressure, a 5-minute natural pressure release, and a final 5-minute ice bath to stop cooking and loosen the shell, though results can vary, with some finding it perfect and others needing adjustments.
Gordon Ramsay has a solution that's reminiscent of cooking a steak — he uses both oil and butter. In a nonstick skillet, the chef adds a generous drizzle of cooking oil (likely a neutral oil like peanut or canola, but olive oil would also work) and an even more generous amount of butter.
Olive oil isn't suitable for deep frying
Extra virgin olive oil, for example, is packed with antioxidants and beneficial compounds but its low smoke point means it is better for salad dressings or drizzling over food rather than deep frying.
The worst cooking oils for health are generally those high in saturated fats (like palm oil, coconut oil, butter) and highly processed vegetable/seed oils (like soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, cottonseed oil) which are unstable and form harmful compounds at high heat, potentially raising bad cholesterol (LDL) and contributing to inflammation or disease. Partially hydrogenated oils, containing artificial trans fats, are especially bad and should be avoided, though largely removed from products.
When choosing a cooking oil, it's best to choose an oil high in poly and/or mono-unsaturated fats, which are heart-healthy fats derived foods such as olives, seeds, nuts and vegetables. Olive oil, which is high in monounsaturated fats, is a particularly beneficial choice for heart health.