Top five British oil producers
by Charlotte Morgan | 20 September 2012 | 
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Let us leave olive oil to the Italians, and instead embrace the beauty of British oils! From Kentish cobnut to Northumberland rapeseed, here are our five favourite producers.
The Groovy Food Company
The Groovy Food Company promises to sell only healthy food, including a range of nutritional oils. Their cold-pressed ‘virgin coconut oil’, which comes in a shoe polish-esque tub and smells divine, is bursting with natural goodness and can be used in everything from stir-fries to homemade curries. Plus coconut is good for your heart, fights off germs, and adds lustre to hair and skin.
There’s also ‘omega cool oil’, a clever organic blend of Omega 3, 6 and 9 which is pressed from flax, hemp, pumpkin and evening primrose seed oils. Drizzle over salads, blend into smoothies, or just dip your bread into it. There’s a ‘high five cooking oil’ too, which is a healthier alternative to other cooking fats, made as it is from a fusion of five cold pressed virgin seed oils.
£5.99 for a 500ml bottle of ‘high five cooking oil’.
Yellow Fields
The rapeseed trend is still going strong, and it’s no surprise considering how healthy the stuff is (less saturated fat, and more of both omega 3 and 6 than olive oil). Yellow Fields, who make theirs from oilseed rape fields in Northumberland, pride themselves on the distinctive earthy and nutty flavour of their oil.
Yellow Fields sticks to simplicity when it comes to making their oils... they just squeeze the seeds (only once) and bottle the oil. There are no chemicals used, and the oil isn’t bleached, so whatever colour the crop is, that’s the colour the oil will be (the harvest last year, for example, gave a slightly greenish oil, but now they’re back to a rich golden yellow colour).
The softness of the rapeseed when mixed with balsamic vinegar makes a great salad dressing, and it can be used in cooking too – rapeseed oil arguably makes better roast potatoes than goose fat does. Check out the recipe section of their website for more ideas on what to do with your bottle.
£6.70 for a 500ml bottle, including postage.
Cotswold Gold
Another outstanding rapeseed oil company, which was awarded a gold star at the Great Taste Awards in 2010 for their cold pressed rapeseed, and one more gold a year later for their rapeseed infused with dill.
Cotswold Gold is run by two young lads, Charlie and Lawrence, and is made solely from oilseed rape grown on their farm in the Cotswolds. It’s an extra virgin rapeseed oil, making it low in cholesterol, a good source of omega 3, and GM free. It also has less than half the saturated fat of olive oil.
They do an infusions range too, including basil, chilli, garlic, rosemary and smoked rapeseed oils. There’s also truffle oil, and a brand new selection of ‘drizzle’ dressings, available in red pepper, raspberry and tomato and basil flavours.
£4.95 for a 500ml bottle of extra virgin cold pressed rapeseed oil.
Kentish Cobnut Oil
Roasted Kentish Cobnut Oil, made by Hurstwood Farm in Sevenoaks, won a whopping three gold stars in the 2012 Great Taste Awards, and was awarded the Supreme Champion mark too. Here's what the judge had to say about it: "A phenomenal aroma with massive cobnut flavours. Very aromatic. One of the best oils we've ever tasted." We've tasted it too, and would add: "The most awesome aroma of any oil we've ever tried, smelling as it does of Ferrero Rocher chocolates".
It’s solely cobnuts, a valuable source of nutrients, which are used to make their roasted cobnut oil, and their cold-pressed cobnut oil (the first oil they ever produced). It’s a labour-intensive product, as each nut is hand-picked before going through the process of drying, shelling and then pressing. It takes over a kilo of picked nuts to produce each 250ml bottle of oil.
As well as having all the usual health properties that come from eating nuts, cobnut oil is also secretly good for the skin and apparently has anti-ageing properties. Plus because it’s a light oil with a fine texture, it’s easily absorbed by the body.
It takes twice as many cobnuts to produce a bottle of roasted cobnut oil than it does regular cobnut oil, creating an indulgent oil which is deemed too good for cooking with. There's also a walnut oil available and you can buy all three via their online shop here.
£9.95 for a 250ml bottle of Cobnut Oil.
GOOD OIL, Hemp
Oil made from hemp seed hasn’t quite taken off to the same extent as rapeseed; but we wouldn’t be surprised if it does in the not-too-distant future. GOOD OIL (who only use hemp grown in Devon) has a higher content of Omega 3, 6 and 9 than any other culinary oil, and just one tablespoon contains 94% of your omega 3 RDA.
Like rapeseed oil, it also has half the saturated fat of olive oil and it can contribute to the health of hair and skin, as well as improving cholesterol, the immune system, and joints. It also contains zero trans fats, and has been known to treat ADHD, cardiovascular disease, and rheumatoid arthritis.
It’s nutty in flavour and you can cook with hemp oil as you would with olive oil. It’s also great for dressings, and GOOD OIL claim that it’s the best oil to use for roast potatoes (you can view all of their recipe ideas here).
GOOD OIL makes an ‘original’ and ‘mild and light’ bottle, both of which are available in 250ml and 500ml bottles. They also do a range of other hemp products, including hemp milk and flavoured seeds. You can buy online and find your nearest stockist here.
£4.49 for a 250ml bottle of GOOD OIL original.
And one more for luck... Mr Hugh's cold-pressed rapeseed oil
Another 100% British rapeseed oil, this time from the fields of Norfolk. It comes in two versions: Mr Hugh's Extra Virgin Rapeseed Oil (rich in vitamin E and omega 3, 6 and 9, and used for roasting, sautéing, drizzling and as a substitute for butter in bread, cakes and mashed potato), or Mr Hugh's Gourmet, which '...features a unique nutritional profile to create a distinctive light taste' and is perfect for creative cuisine, dipping and dressings. We found it refreshing, subtle and versatile in the kitchen, and used it for everything from roasting veg to salad dressings and stir-fries. It also has a smoke point of over 245C, the highest of all popular culinary oils, meaning it can be heated to extremely high temperatures without degrading or losing any of its anti-oxidants, colour or flavour.
The Mason family, who make the oil, have been farming in Norfolk for over 200 years. Hugh took over the running of the business from his father, Maurice, when he was 22 and even the combine harvesters and tractors are considered part of the family. Check out some of Mr Hugh's rapeseed oil recipes here.
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Comments
by davidinnotts | on 26 September 2012
There's such a lot of tripe talked about oils!
First, refined oils are a huge cut below raw oils - EV olive, cold-pressed rapeseed, etc. All the oils in this article are the best kind, though Aldi sell cold-pressed rapeseed oil at £2 per 500ml about twice a year - I wait and buy in bulk!
Refined oils use inferior ingredients (including the waste from cold-pressing). The makers extract at high temperatures, spoiling the flavours, and often use chemicals, such as dry-cleaning fluid, for solvent extraction (which are supposed to be removed, but rarely are, completely). They then need to bleach the oil to get out the nasty taste, giving an almost flavourless result. Of course, these oils are a lot cheaper, but so are £1-a-kilo junk sausages compared with those recently reviewed here, which are made from prime meat.
Then there's the Omega fatty acid hype. All oils and fats are a blend of fatty acids, hooked up into 'triglycerides', the fat or oil. Whether we call them fats or oils depends on their melting temperature - nothing else. Three facts, then:
1) Omega 7/9 (monounsaturates) is in virtually all fats and oils. It's not an advantage or disadvantage to eat it - it's health neutral except for the calories (all oils are calorie-rich). Health claims about 'getting enough' are nonsense. RDA (government-Recommended Daily Amount - a minimun intake) has no practical value, and in any case, we can make as much as we need in our own bodies, as we can with saturated fatty acids..
2) Omega 6 is ubiquitous; in fact anyone who is not living a primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle in Borneo is probably overdosing on it! A health claim about this should recommend a serious reduction in intake (like avoiding sunflower, safflower, corn, peanut and several other oils). You'll already be getting a hundred times your RDA!
3) Omega 3 is hard to get and most people need to seek it out to get enough. Yet strangely, our Borneo primitive would have plenty! Also, it is hard for our bodies to extract it for repair and cell functions if we overdose on Omega 6 - and we do. You'll also note that lumping Omega 6 with Omega 3 as 'polyunsaturates' is stupid - they are both vital, but we are awash with one, preventing us using what little we get of the other. Not getting the RDA of Omega 3 is one of the UK's commonest deficiencies and may be the prime cause of arthritis, let alone cardo-vascular disease.
Claims on the bottle about a 'balanced omega content' are fine - if the oil making the claim, such as hemp oil, is the ONLY oil you eat. But that's very unlikely, isn't it? You need to look at all oil sources in your diet to get a balance. So, my third point is to introduce you to flax (linseed) oil. This is the only easily-available oil which has much Omega-3. Refined rapeseed oil is the only cheap oil with any (7%) and so is the best cheap cooking oil. Hempseed oil has more, but is expensive. So you might as well overturn that negative balance with Omega 6 by eating flax oil (also expensive), which is 65% Omega 3. IF you keep your Omega 6 intake low, a few tablespoons of flax oil a day will be almost a curative medicine for most people. And yes, eat wild-caught, sub-Arctic oily fish twice a week to get the derivative Omega 3; humans are not good at the conversion, and worse on today's treat-filled diets.
Finally, to answer KSF. Your first points must have come from a corrupted source: the most common cooking oils are PUFA! And hemp oil is no different to the commonest cooking oils in also being polyunsaturate-rich. But there's far more Omega-3 and less Omega-6 in hemp oil than the rest. Cook with confidence. All the health-freak pundits mention degradation with getting the oil hot, etc; but it's a minor point compared with the health advantages of Omega 3-rich oil. Anyway, turn a true food-freak pundit over and you'll find a raw food fanatic who wouldn't dream of frying anything! So their comment that PUFAs (polyunsaturates) shouldn't be over 5% of your DIET (not oil) is fine - but they correctly add that there should be NO other fats or oils in your diet at all, and the PUFAs should be in a 3:1 max. balance between Omega 6 and Omega 3. See where someone's confused you?
It's a complex subject, and the lore of even 20 years ago is now recognized as purely wrong, so here's the bottom line: fry in rapeseed (aka Canola) oil, cut down severely on other oils and fats, and eat Omega 3-rich sources several times a week - you need both vegetable (flax) and derivative oils, usually from oily fish. But don't take pills; eat the flax oil and fish, which are both a lot tastier than rancid oil capsules and far, far cheaper!
by davidinnotts | on 29 September 2012
I've just been researching 'Good Oil'. Their website is interesting:
# They claim that hempseed oil is 'Gooder' than flax oil because it's balanced better. They've been reading press reports on research which mentioned the 3:1 Omega 6-3 ratio. Unfortunately, the researchers are clear that this is the MAXIMUM of Omega 6 to Omega 3 you should have IN YOUR WHOLE DIET.
# They say "'Good Oil' is the only potent source of Omega 3". Nonsense - Flax is three times more potent.
# They ignore the proven fact that most people heavily overdose on Omega 6, mentioning it as if the more the healthier. Nonsense.
# They talk about cholesterol lowering as if the more 'Good Oil' you eat, the less cardiovascular disease you may get. Nonsense! Eating a more alkaline diet with MUCH less fat in total, MUCH less sugar, MUCH less refined starch and MUCH less protein is the answer. You should be eating mostly vegetables and fruit to be safer from these problems.
In other words, the 'Good Company', a valuable producer of a valuable oil, is doing itself no favours by misrepresentation and poor research of the facts. Though to be fair, the Kings College report they quote and link to does regard flax oil as an 'exotic oil' like evening primrose oil, whereas it's actually just as common as hempseed oil, and has been since ancient times - both hemp and flax always have been major fibre plants, for canvas and linen, respectively. It's only in modern times that their use has declined in the West - the big food oil companies didn't want to handle them (they go rancid if not looked after properly).
Having said all that, 'Good Oil' IS good for you, in small amounts, and in balance with flax oil, and INSTEAD of other oils and fats. It does contain some GLA, which people on a poor (especially a junky) diet will have problems producing - your body normally makes enough from Omega 3 ALA, but that's only if you eat enough Omega 3, of course, and most of us don't.
So, if you only eat 'Good Oil' and have no other source of oils or fats, it's just OK. Better is to have more Omega-3, up to 3:1 the other way. Flax oil has four times as much Omega 3 as Omega 6, and a couple of percent more saturates than hemp (both are very low in saturates). If you eat ANY other oils or fats at all, flax oil alone is healthier than hemp oil alone. Don't believe the pseudo-science. Get flax oil from a health store that keeps it in the fridge (proper handling) or from any online farm producer, similar to the 'Good Company'.
My main basis for the facts, by the way, is 'Fats that heal, fats that kill' by Canadian Udo Erasmus, chapters 59 and 60 and the table on page 237. This huge compendium is seminal to the modern health revolution and was the book that launched the Omega 3 campaign 20 years ago and also the war on trans-fats, now largely won. There's a BBC Radio 4 Food programme still available online that covers the issues well: Omega 3, 26th October, 2009 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ncwwm
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