About Oils

There are three oils that are good to have in your kitchen: peanut oil, ordinary olive oil and extra virgin olive oil.
You may be able to do without the ordinary olive oil, as is explained below.  Peanut oil does not flavor foods
and withstands very high heat.  However, peanut oil becomes rancid if stored at room temperature.  I use it for frying or
sautéing when I don't want the flavor olive oil will impart or when using high heat that will scorch butter.  I use peanut
oil to fry tortillas or sopes, for Asian dishes, and the like.  Extra virgin olive oil has a spicy or fruity aroma that goes well
in most salad dressings and many other sauces or dishes that are not heated.  Heat will rapidly drive off the special aroma
and flavor of extra virgin olive oil so that it becomes like ordinary olive oil.  For this reason it may be a waste of money to
use extra virgin olive oil in dishes that are cooked.  That depends on how much you pay for extra virgin and regular olive oils.
If the costs are comparable extra virgin olive oil works well in place of ordinary olive oil.  Use ordinary olive oil (or extra
virgin, as explained above) for all Mediterranean dishes and for French dishes if you are concerned that butter will scorch.
Mixing equal volumes of butter and olive oil as you melt the butter will prevent almost all scorching.   Clarified butter is
very resistant to scorching.