Peanut Oil is as the name suggests and is oil that we can have from peanuts. The peanut oil is essentially great in terms of having the nutrients and can be used for frying, adding the strong peanut flavour to any desserts that you might be baking or cooking and a lot more. The roasted peanut oil has a pungent aroma of peanuts and the taste is stronger than most of the other oils you can possibly get as well.
However, deriving the peanut oil is not an easy task and takes a lot of effort and precision to get it done right, otherwise, you will have to face some problems with the peanut oil that you wouldn’t want. One such problem is having cloudy peanut oil. Generally, the oil is crystal clear and has a yellowish-gold shade on it. But, if you feel like you are getting cloudy peanut oil, there must be something that you are doing wrong and you will have to fix it. A few such things that you will need to take care of in order to get it done right. A few things to know about the peanut oil turning cloudy are:
Cloudy Peanut Oil
Is it Safe?
The first thing that you will need to know is, if the peanut oil that has turned cloudy is safe to be consumed, or if you are going to face some issues or problems with it. There are multiple factors that you will need to keep in perspective if you are trying to get the answer to this question.
To start with, you will need to figure out, if the peanut oil was clear earlier, and it has turned cloudy after some time of storage. If that is the case, you need to discard the peanut oil.
After some time of storage, your peanut oil can start making foam on the top, or the texture can turn cloudy. That would mean, the peanut oil is starting to go bad, and if it won’t cause you any immediate problems, there are certainly some issues that you will have to face in the longer run.
However, if the peanut oil has turned cloudy while you were deriving it, that is whole another scenario. There can be several reasons for your peanut oil to turn cloudy, and here are a few of them. It is safe to consume such peanut oil that has been cloudy since you derived it.
Impurities/Salted peanuts
While you are using the peanuts to derive oil from them, you will need to be particularly careful about any impurities that might be on them. That is why you will need to follow the process properly and ensure that you are washing the peanuts thoroughly. Especially, if the peanuts are roasted or salted earlier, you need to wash them multiple times to take care of any sort of impurities that might be there them.
Afterwards, you can let them dry under the sun for any moisture to eliminate too. That should be enough to ensure you that your peanuts don’t have any other impurity on them that might be causing your peanut oil to turn cloudy and you can use these peanuts for deriving the oil.
Temperature
Temperature also plays an important role in deriving peanut oil. It is a slow process and that needs a lot of effort and patience. For that reason, you cannot afford to make the slightest mistake during the process if you are looking to enjoy the perfect quality, aroma and taste of the peanut oil that you would be deriving.
The temperature is of critical importance and it needs to be kept at a higher level to enjoy the right experience of your peanut oil. The temperature needs to be constantly high during the whole process, and if the temperature drops, the fats in the oil can solidify.
Those solidifying fats will have a whiter texture on them and they will cause your peanut oil to be turned cloudy. It will slightly affect the taste and aroma of your peanut oil, but it should be safe for you to consume if you know that the fats were solidified during the derivation process and that is causing you to have the oil cloudy.