Does Cooking Oil Freeze in Cold Weather?

Since winter, many people have seen dizziness, crystallization and even freezing of edible oils, which were originally clear and transparent. This cannot help but raise a question, can such oils still be eaten? What should we do when cooking oil is frozen?

The crystallization and freezing of edible oil in winter is a natural physical phenomenon. Generally speaking, there are two main reasons for the change of edible oil from clarity and transparency to dizziness, crystallization and even freezing. First of all, edible oil is a mixture of triglycerides with different melting points. Some triglycerides with higher melting points are easy to crystallize at low temperatures, which makes clear and transparent liquid oil appear haze, crystallization and even freezing. This is a normal physical phenomenon for most oils and does not affect the nutritional value of oils.

Secondly, edible oils usually contain some trace high melting point components, such as wax, oryzanol, phytosterol, monoglyceride, etc. These components will crystallize slowly at lower temperatures and make oils dim. In addition to the higher melting point of wax and lower human absorption rate, other vegetable oils such as oryzanol and phytosterol are beneficial nutrients of a single variety of vegetable oils at temperature. The difficulty of dizziness or freezing at low temperature is related to the variety of oil and its environmental temperature and storage time.Palm oil, peanut oil and cottonseed oil will crystallize or freeze completely in winter. For edible vegetable blend oil, if there are vegetable oils with higher freezing point in the formulation, such as peanut oil, palm oil and cottonseed oil, then the blend oil will be liable to haze, crystallize or freeze at lower temperature.

What should we do if there is a freeze? Crystallization does not affect the mouthfeel and quality of the cooking oil. Simply put it in a warm room and it will return to its original state of clarity. If you want to speed up the thawing of the oil, place it in an air-conditioned room or in a warm place with moderate shaking. Experts suggest that in low-temperature weather, the edible oil can be stored in a warm indoors, and when purchasing edible oil, it is necessary to go to the regular store and choose brand products for purchase. In addition, some oil bottle labels will also be marked with crystallization, you can pay attention to the outer packaging label when buying cooking oil.