Canola Oil is Better Than Olive Oil

It sits, cowering, on a back shelf, usually in a stout, hulking oil tanker of a container. Its bottle is plain, never prettily adorned with the flowering vines that olive oil gets. And unlike butter, it is never used to finish a steak, melting alluringly as the beef sizzles away. No, canola oil is the Peggy to olive oil’s Joan. The Louis C.K. to Paul Rudd’s butter.

In short, it gets no respect.

It’s a Cheap Way to Fry

When I'm frying, whether it's Andy Ricker's wings or Molly Wizenberg's wonderful French toast from her book A Homemade Life, I'm using canola.

Even Bobby Flay admits that “ninety-eight percent of the time, I cook with canola oil.” He loves that it has a higher smoke point (the temperature when the oil starts smoking and becomes more likely to give your food a scorched flavor) than, say, olive oil.

It’s Neutral

Sometimes you want an oil that doesn’t add a thing: Butter is buttery. Extra-virgin olive oil is fruity, green, or olive-y. Canola’s generally neutral taste is part of its charm.

It’s Relatively Good for You

Canola clocks in lowest for saturated fat out of 16 oils, at only 6 percent—as opposed to olive oil’s 14 percent, grapeseed’s 13 percent, and coconut oil’s daunting 89 percent—which is why you’ll sometimes see it flaunting a cute little heart icon at the grocery store.

It’s Not That Pricey

Because it doesn’t have the foxy reputation of olive oil or butter, canola is still relatively easy to snag on the cheap, which is great if you’re going to fry something in two full inches of oil.

It’s Not Always Packed With GMOs

As this blog post notes, canola oil “comes from a specifically bred variety of rapeseed, which is part of the mustard family along with kale, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts.” (In fact, it was called “rapeseed oil” until some wise Canadians changed its name.) So although some articles declaim canola oil as being packed with genetically modified organisms, organic canola shouldn’t have them, and one can buy verified non-GMO canola oil.