Kitchen Heroes: Rapeseed Oil

A finishing touch..

An exciting new series begins this week, with the first of ‘kitchen heroes’.  Adding to my best kept secrets, recipes and restaurant reviews, ‘kitchen heroes’ will highlight every day ingredients that can make the world of difference to your cooking in some of the simplest ways.

There is no better place to start for me than rapeseed oil.  A mellow flavoured, yet sunset yellow oil that can finish off a soup or sauce wonderfully with a splash or swirl.  It is becoming quite the trend, with infused varieties from garlic, chilli and even smoked.  A few drops of smoked rapeseed oil in your favourite mashed spuds is next level stuff, trust me.

Any readers that exclusively watch TV celebrity chefs as their inspiration for cooking would be forgiven for thinking that there is any other cooking oil than the olive variety.  And as smashing as olive oil is, for dressing a salad or kicking off a risotto alongside a knob of butter – it has a relatively low burning point.  That means you are never going to get anywhere near crispy enough potato wedges, or roasted vegetables.  It allows roasting tray ‘on the hob’ cooking before transferring to an oven and is wonderfully light and low in saturated fat.

So grab yourself some cold pressed rapeseed oil and toss generously with par boiled potatoes cut into wedges – throw into a pre-heated roasting tray with some fresh rosemary and garlic.  Crank up and roast at 210c and you will not be disappointed with the results.

Have a browse of the Stainswick Farm site and see if there are any that take your fancy:-

http://www.stainswickfarm.co.uk/index.asp?m=1&t=Home