Chosen Foods 100% Pure Avocado Oil

Nina started using this as her regular cooking oil, so I decided to try it, too. It's not Trader Joe's branded, but they sell it.

Its chief advantage is an unusually high smoke point (as they boast right there on the front of the label). If it adds any flavor at all to the foods cooked in it, I am unable to discern it.

My only quibble is with the bottle. It's so tall that it won't fit in any of my kitchen's upper cupboards. I have to choose between sticking it below, in one of the lower pots-and-pans cupboards, or laying it down flat in the ones above, where such things are usually kept. With the latter choice, it takes up a lot of space and I worry that it might leak.


Will I buy it again? 

Yes. Even with the annoyance of the bottle height, I think it's an excellent cooking oil. It's quite a bit more expensive than the TJ's grapeseed oil that has been my staple for four years now, but I don't use much, so the extra cost amortized over time will have no discernible effect on my total food budget.

Consumer Reports provides this handy guide to selecting a cooking oil.

Trader Joe's Organic Virgin Coconut Oil

This is Day Four of Coconut Week. 


I bought this for two reasons. (1) I needed another entry for Coconut Week. (2) It's a perennial "OMG! Look what I found!" item under the #TraderJoes hashtag on Twitter. Apparently it's in chronic short supply, so the people who love it hoard it, and sometimes TJ's outlets that get some limit sales to one or two per customer.

It has the unusual quality that its melting/freezing point is near room temperature, so if the ambient temperature in your kitchen fluctuates, you may find it solid one day, liquid the next.

Cooking with it is mostly like using any other vegetable oil, as far as I can tell. Some foods end up with a distinctive but not unpleasant coconut note, others do not.

TJ's boasts that "it stands up to relatively high heat." This does not appear to be true, at least as judged from a table of the smoke points of various oils: Coconut oil is tied with butter and sesame oil for the second-lowest smoke point at 350, just above extra-virgin olive oil at 325. I've been mostly using Trader Joe's grapeseed oil, which I was told had a high smoke point, but is listed in this table at just 390, while things like corn oil, peanut oil, and soybean oil are at 450.

It makes a decent massage oil if you don't have a dedicated product on hand, and leaves the recipient smelling delightfully tropical.

The most annoying thing about this product is the jar. I find it awkward to pour from such a wide-mouthed container, and the stuff always runs down the side afterward, necessitating cleanup.


Will I buy it again? 

Not unless somebody gives me a better reason to do so than I have found so far.

Trader Joe's Grapeseed Oil

Maybe a year ago, Nina convinced me that I should use grapeseed oil instead of canola oil as my main cooking oil because it can be raised to a higher temperature without smoking. I bought a bottle of Pompeian brand at my local supermarket, and have had no problems with it.

Some time later, I noticed that Trader Joe's had its own private-label grapeseed oil, so I bought that. For a few months now, I've been alternating between the two products when I need to brown meat or a meat substitute product, stir-fry vegetables, or whatever. I can't tell any difference between them.

So it comes down to price. The Pompeian is $6.98 for 24 ounces, or 29 cents per ounce. TJ's is $3.79 for 17 ounces, or 22 cents per ounce. Winner: Trader Joe's.

Will I buy it again? 

Yes. Until somebody gives me a good reason to use something else, this will be the cooking oil I turn to first from now on.

Nina's View

It's worth noting that there are probably also some nutritional arguments for preferring grapeseed oil to canola oil as well, although at higher temperatures they probably evaporate. So to speak.