Cooking food with oil is a common cooking method. Many savory recipes begin with the onions, meat, and spices being first fried in oil or butter before the other ingredients are added.
The oil helps to brown and caramelize the ingredients, giving them a delicious umami flavor. Most of the time, people don’t struggle with bad flavors when cooking with oil, but it does happen sometimes that the food tastes or smells too oily.
If you are struggling with this issue, we are sharing some easy tricks with you to get rid of it and also prevent the same problem from occurring in the future!
How to Get Rid of Oil Taste in Food?
- Add Other Flavors
When it comes to fixing a bad taste in food, nothing works better than masking the taste with other strongly flavored ingredients. Of course, what you can add to the food will depend on what you are cooking.
For instance, you can add lemon juice and/or vinegar to counteract the oily taste. In addition to disguising the oily flavor, it also helps balance out the oil’s texture. Other options are garlic, onions, spices, or herbs.
- Remove Some Oil
In the majority of cases, if the food has a distinctive taste of oil, it is because you used too much oil. To fix it, you can try to remove some. There are several methods for doing this and the one you use depends on the type of food you have.
If you can see excess oil floating on top, simply skim it off with a shallow spoon. You could also use a wad of absorbent paper towel to remove it. Another way is to cool the pot of food then chill it.
The oil or fat will solidify, making it easy to remove from the surface of the food. To prevent this problem in the future, always measure the oil with a spoon before adding it to the saucepan for cooking. Never pour it directly into the pot from the bottle.
If you have cooked something like fried chips, fried fish or chicken and an oily taste is a problem, drain these well using paper towels to absorb all the excess oil. After that, season with a little lemon juice or vinegar to cut through the oily taste.
- Use Alcohol
Of course, this method depends on what you have cooked. However, most casseroles, stews, soups, or similar dishes can benefit from the addition of a little alcohol. If you prefer not to consume alcohol, you could add a little vinegar.
Remember though that cooking does remove the alcohol itself, leaving the flavor to balance the dish. Options include red wine, white wine, brandy, or sherry. Start with a small amount, like a tablespoonful, then add a little more if necessary.
- Use an Acidic Ingredient
Acids balance out oily flavors in food. We have already mentioned adding vinegar, lemon juice, or wine but what if these acidic ingredients don’t compliment your dish?
Think about other acidic ingredients you could add such as tomatoes, pineapple, grated green apples, dill pickles, buttermilk, or yogurt. If using the last two, be sure to get fat-free or low-fat varieties so that you don’t add even more fat to the dish.
Prevention:
- Use alternate fats
Sometimes a strong oily flavor comes from the type of oil you’re using. Oils like extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, and sesame oil have very strong flavors. If you find them overpowering, switch to sunflower or canola oils.
Also, think about dry-frying your ingredients with the use of baking sprays or non-stick cookware.
- Use fresh oils only
Cooking oil develops a strong, unpleasant taste when it turns rancid so be sure yours is fresh. Store your oils in a dark place to keep them fresh – never on a kitchen windowsill. Oil also turns bad after it has been used for frying too many times.
If you deep fry foods and tend to reuse the oil, make sure you filter it after use to remove any food particles. When frying breaded or battered foods, only reuse the oil three or four times.
However, if you are frying foods like chips that don’t release too much debris, you can use the oil up to seven times. If it turns a darker color or starts smelling strange, throw it away as it will give your food a bad oily taste.
To Conclude
We hope our tips will help you to get rid of the unpleasant oily taste in your food. Do let us know which ones you tried and if they worked for you. Good luck!