Promoting a certain type of cooking oil for chefs. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
United Soybean Board farmer-leaders recently met with a group of professional chefs to promote the use of high oleic soybean oil in the restaurant and food service industries. Chuck Prellwitz is a soy checkoff leader from Wisconsin who took part in the event.
“This was an event that was started with the United Soybean Board and the Culinary Institute of America out in Napa, California. We met with chefs that were able to see what we were doing with soybean oil and how it would work in their kitchens,” he said. “The heart-healthy oil is very friendly for kitchen use. We had an hour and a half to make a meal, and we had to eat the meal afterward, and all of the chefs were using oil in everything they did. It was a very fun event. It was very informative learning how the chefs work, and they learned how we farmed and made the soybeans sustainable.”
He says they talked about why high oleic oil is a good choice for professional chefs.
“High oleic soybean oil is heart healthy, and it compares equally with olive oil. But it does not have the taste factor that olive oil can sometimes have so that works very well that way. Cooking with it, the flash point is higher, so it doesn’t flame as fast, and the oxidation is very low, so it doesn’t coat the cooking utensils and the baskets as much as the other ones if you’re doing a lot of frying with it,” he said.
Participants from across the culinary world came to the events, including Red Robin, Nestle, chefs for colleges and hospitals, and a K-12 school consultant for 30,000 students, among others.
The United Soybean Board contributed to this report.
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Sabrina Halvorson
National Correspondent / AgNet Media, Inc.
Sabrina Halvorson is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker who specializes in agriculture. She primarily reports on legislative issues and hosts The AgNet News Hour and The AgNet Weekly podcast. Sabrina is a native of California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley.