Coconut Oil--Why It's One of the Best All-Around Oils for Food Storage

Coconut oil is the like the duct tape of food storage and alternative medicine.  Coconut oil does it all.  If you google the uses of coconut oil, hundreds of links pop up, for uses in cooking, health, and beauty.  Health and medicinal uses will be covered in another post; beauty uses are best left to someone ... else.

Coconut oil is a saturated fat.  As such, whole hosts of alphabet agencies and health organizations here and abroad advise against using it in the diet.  Of course, these are the same people that told us butter is bad and margarine is good, so if you're really concerned, you'll have to do your own research on the matter.  I'm the kind of person who has always felt that there's no point to storing food if I can't have butter, because life won't be worth living.  Canning butter, like I did ten years ago, gave me false hope.  Canning butter is a very bad idea, as I wrote about here.  Dehydrated butter momentarily restored that lost hope.  Unfortunately, it's 66% powdered milk, doesn't work well, and is pretty expensive.  Coconut oil to the rescue.  It is, honestly, just about perfect.

Because coconut oil is a saturated fat, it is slower to oxidize, meaning that it is slower to go rancid than unsaturated oils or less saturated oils.  Coconut oil also has natural antimicrobial properties to it that also make it last longer before deteriorating.  So that makes it perfect from a longer-term storage point of view.  If you vacuum-seal it in glass and store it in a cool, dark place, it should be good for a few years. 

Coconut oil is the oil that is closest to butter.  Unrefined coconut oil has more of a coconut odor and flavor to it, and a smoke point of 350 degrees.  Refined coconut oil does not have any hint of coconut odor or flavor and has a smoke point of 400 degrees.  Virgin coconut oil produced by a wet-milling process (yeah, you're going to have to read the labels for that) has the longest shelf life because it retains more of the antioxidants.  It's also going to be a bit more expensive.  With its high smoke point, it's a great oil for frying, even at high temperatures.  And it's what movie theaters used for making popcorn until it became the whipping boy for all our health problems.

If you are substituting coconut oil in your baked goods, here's how to get the best results.  If you are using it in place of shortening or butter, use coconut oil in its solid state.  If you are using it in place of a liquid oil or melted butter, then melt the coconut oil first.  And make sure that your ingredients are at room temperature.  If the ingredients are cold, the coconut oil will clump up pretty quickly and you may not be so happy with your results.

When substituting coconut oil for butter in cookies, the cookies generally come out a little crispier.  This is because butter is 16 percent water, while coconut oil is pure fat.  To approximate butter even more closely in baking cookies, from each cup of coconut oil, replace two tablespoons of oil with milk.  This works best in cookies like chocolate chip or peanut butter.  For shortbread-type cookies, stick with real butter.

For baked goods like yeast breads, quick breads, muffins, and cornbread, coconut oil works perfectly.  No one in my family noticed any difference.

Where coconut oil doesn't work so well is in pie crusts.  To make a flaky pie crust, you need an oil/fat that has a higher melt point so that the fat can create layers in the pie crust.  It's these layers that make it flaky.  So that's why you use lard (higher melt point) and ice water to make a flaky pie crust.  Now sometimes people want a non-flaky pie crust, especially for fruit pies because apparently a non-flaky crust doesn't become as soggy.  I'm not sold on that.  I like a flaky crust, even with a fruit pie.

Now, you're probably wondering, what about brownies?  And I'm not talking about cake-like brownies.  We've never liked cake-like brownies here.  I've tried making brownies from scratch a few times over the years.  And each time the family has pronounced them an epic fail.  And, truth be told, they weren't exaggerating.  But I really do believe that it is somehow possible to make good brownies without a box, so I tried again, with coconut oil.  And lo and behold, we have a winner.

Coconut Oil Brownies
1/2 cup coconut oil
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons hot water
1 cup flour
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips

In a large saucepan over low heat, melt the coconut oil and chocolate chips and stir until smooth.  Remove from heat and stir in cocoa powder, sugar, milk, and water.  Then stir in the flour.  Pour into a greased 8-9" square pan.  Sprinkle mini chocolate chips on top.  Bake in oven preheated to 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

The Queen of the Picky Eaters said these brownies were not sweet enough for her tastes, but otherwise were very good.  Everyone else said they were fine.  They do not taste like they came out of a box.  I'm not quite sure what it is about them, but there doesn't seem to be the risk of eating the whole pan all by yourself.  You can eat one and be satisfied.  That's probably a good thing, actually.  Anyway, we'll definitely make these again.  They do the job and it's all food storage.  What's not to love?

Finally, I'm just going to list recipes that I've used coconut oil in and our evaluation of the results.

Cornbread:  Perfect.  When I asked the kids if they noticed anything different about the cornbread, they got that look of shame on their faces:  "She put some kind of food storage in here and we couldn't even tell?!?!"

Chocolate chip cookies:  Excellent, littlest bit oily.  Cookie dough lacks a tiny bit of butter flavor to it, but the texture and sweetness are spot on.

Popcorn, using coconut oil to make it on the stove:  Tastes great.  Not buttery, like with real butter, but still a good flavor.

Toast:  Spreads really well.  No buttery taste to it, but with jam or cinnamon and sugar the lack of butter is not noticeable.

Magic Mix:  Makes great cream of chicken soup, better chocolate pudding than butter (according to Ellie).

Links to related posts:
Emergency Baby Formula   
Alternative Medicine--Coconut Oil   
Basic Food Storage--Oils 

Magic Mix