♪♪ -I've been eating my whole life, and I've been cooking professionally my whole adult life, and I think that gives me the grounds to say that fat is misunderstood.

Fat makes things taste good.

-Yeah!

-And if you remove the fat from something you love, it's just not going to be the same.

-It is a lot like making juice.

The fruit comes in, we crush it, we pull the oil out, and then it goes straight into our cellars.

-Ooh!

Look at that!

That is a thing of beauty.

It smells green like my garden.

-[ Laughs ] Exactly!

-If you don't get anything else out of "Kitchen Curious" today, don't waste your bacon fat.

♪♪ I'm Vivian, part chef... This is a match made in heaven.

...part student... What is gluten, anyway?

...full of questions.

What's this?

How cold is it in here?

How do you heat it up?

Welcome to "Kitchen Curious."

-Major funding for "Kitchen Curious with Vivian Howard" is provided by... the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio, with the generosity of individuals, corporations, and foundations.

The ETV Endowment of South Carolina is committed to sharing entertaining and uplifting stories and series like "Kitchen Curious."

And by... Penny Kay Cooper.

Additional funding provided by... the Bea and Ray Norwood Foundation, building community in Florence, South Carolina.

And First Citizens Bank.

-A little inflammation can sometimes help you heal.

That's part of why this immune-system response exists.

The problem with canola, again, according to the critics, is that it supposedly causes inflammation.

But then the argument goes the linoleic acid, the L.A... -I can't take it.

So confusing.

[Line ringing] -Hey, Vivian.

-Hey, Sheri.

How are you?

-Doing.

well.

How are you?

-I'm good.

You know, I was just listening to this podcast on canola oil.

They were sitting there saying that canola oil is good for you.

And everything I hear is like, "Canola oil is bad for you."

And -- -Yeah.

-So I feel like we should do a fat episode because I think fat is, like, really misunderstood.

-You know, I actually really like that.

I feel like every time I turn around, they're changing the rules on what's good for fat, what's bad for fat, and... -Or even if fat is good, you know?

-Yes!

Exactly!

-Then you just start your producing, Sheri.

-[ Laughs ] I'll get on it.

-[ Laughs ] Okay.

♪♪ I've been eating my whole life, and I've been cooking professionally my whole adult life.

And I think that gives me the grounds to say that fat is misunderstood.

So today I'm going to make for you a little lunch treat that features two fats -- the fat of my childhood, bacon fat, and the fat of my future, olive oil.

So we're going to make a bacon-fat toast with a light green salad on top that's dressed in olive oil.

Okay.

Bacon fat.

My mom always kept a little coffee mug next to the stove where she would pour off her extra bacon fat, and it would find its way smeared onto toast or worked into biscuits.

And it would lend this smoky, rich flavor.

So if you don't get anything else out of "Kitchen Curious" today, don't waste your bacon fat.

So once my bacon fat has melted, I'm going to put these big pieces of bread in there and toast them to golden on either side.

And while that happens, I'm going to mix this little salad.

So I've got some arugula here, some green onions, or scallions, sliced on the bias.

And then kind of the star of the salad, other than the toast of course, is this asparagus that I've cut into little coins and blanched.

That means dropping it into boiling salted water for like 30 seconds and then plunging it into ice water.

So you've got a vibrant, crunchy, fresh-tasting piece of asparagus.

So I'm going to add some of this asparagus to my arugula.

My little bacon-fat toast is crisping up and browning.

Ooh!

Look at that!

That's a pretty piece of toast right there.

I want this to be crunchy and unctuous when I bite into it.

So the toast absorbed all the fat in the pan.

On the first side, I'm going to add a little bit more.

This dish, it kind of lends itself to my philosophy of eating less meat and meat as a condiment.

You know, you're going to have this really bright, delicious green salad, and you're going to put it on top of a piece of toast that's toasted in bacon fat.

So you're not having any meat, but you're having the flavor of meat and satisfaction of the meat because this is going to be probably the best piece of bread you've ever had.

Gonna start tending to my salad, so I'm going to add a little bit of salt, black pepper.

A touch of Dijon mustard.

Some lemon zest.

A little bit of lemon juice.

L.J., my friend.

And some fruity, aromatic olive oil.

As a cook, I've used olive oil my entire career.

And I thought it was something I really understood.

But a recent trip I took out to California let me know that I really knew very little about the subject, which is part of the reason we're sitting here talking about this today.

Alright.

My toast is looking good.

And then I'm going to just toss up my salad.

You know, I wanted to do it this way for you all today because I think people at home are often nervous about making vinaigrettes.

They always think they need to buy, like, a bottled salad dressing.

You don't want to get out the blender.

You don't want to get out a jar and shake it up.

You don't have to.

You don't have to.

I've put all the ingredients you would put in a lemon vinaigrette right in here and tossed it up in the bowl.

So it doesn't have to be an all-day affair.

And now I'm going to plate myself a lunch.

Nice and crispy.

I'm gonna pile my salad on top.

Make sure I don't lose any of my asparagus coins.

And then I'm going to grate some Parmigiano Reggiano on top of that.

Voilà.

That is a thing of beauty.

[ Crunching ] That is really good!

I would never get excited about eating the salad by itself, but putting it on this piece of toast makes it satisfying, crunchy, filling.

I mean, it feels like so much more than the sum of its parts.

Don't sleep on your bacon fat.

Do not throw it away.

For me, fat is one of the most confusing subjects in the food world.

What's good for you?

What's bad for you?

I have no idea.

Hopefully my nutritionist friend Christine can help clear things up.

Christine, I think that out of all of the categories of foods that we eat... -Yeah.

-...fats are, like, the most misunderstood or the thing that we change our minds about the most.

-Yeah.

That's really important.

It's denser.

It's got more energy in it than carbs and protein, which I think is why people kind of thought maybe it was bad.

-Fat makes things taste good.

-Yeah!

-Fat makes food taste good.

And if you remove the fat from something you love, it's just not going to be the same.

-Right.

-Don't you, like, need fat to process a lot of the other things that we eat?

-Yeah!

-You need fat.

Fat's, like, a vehicle in your body.

-For vitamins.

So there's -- I think a good example is salad dressing.

And there's all these vitamins in the vegetables, in the greens, the tomatoes, whatever.

But you can't really properly use those if you don't have any fat in your salad dressing or any cheese on your salad because it just goes through without going in.

-That is, like, the best news I've gotten from you so far.

-[ Laughs ] ♪♪ -Alright.

We got our fat aisle here.

-Yeah.

-This might be my favorite.

As a nutritionist, you love olive oil probably.

-I as a person love olive oil.

It tastes so... And it's good for you!

-You're a person, too.

I forgot.

So what is it that makes olive oil so much better for us than most other fats?

-Yeah, so, olive oil is higher in the unsaturated fats and lower in the saturated fats.

And it's the saturated fats that are linked to, you know, if you eat too many of them, a higher risk of heart disease, high cholesterol, whereas the unsaturated fats are actually kind of opposite.

They have the opposite effect.

They're really good for your heart.

So you're still getting all the benefits of fat, but without the potential negatives that come with eating too much saturated fat.

-So saturated fat is solid at room temperature?

-Exactly.

That's a really good way to know the difference.

-Okay, so all of these liquid ones are unsaturated.

-More unsaturated than saturated.

-Okay.

So this is the big situation that everybody's talking about.

-Everywhere.

And it's a big aisle, too.

-Yeah.

You can see there's a lot of it.

-The seed oils.

-Seed oils.

-So, that's the thing about these seed oils and vegetable oils, right?

Like, they are really processed, as opposed to avocado oil, olive oil, tallow.

And then we realized like, oh, maybe all of that processing is not so great for us.

Maybe we shouldn't have demonized the tallow right off the bat.

Maybe we should be using all these things instead of only using the seed oils in everything.

-Right.

And then here's my lard.

Believe it or not, I've got one about that size underneath my sink.

-That's a huge bucket!

It must take you a long time to get through all of that.

-Yeah, well, it doesn't go bad.

It's fully saturated.

Christine, I couldn't come and talk about fat without coming to the butter.

-Butter.

-You know, I think we all are coming to understand that butter is not bad... -Yeah.

-...but maybe this stuff is.

What about -- Tell me about margarine.

-So, margarine.

Right.

Butter is a saturated fat.

Butter in moderation.

And then, I don't know, three decades ago, four, they came up with margarine.

So they turned vegetable oil solid.

And, again, we figured out later that maybe that solid vegetable oil, maybe the processing that happens to make that isn't great for you.

-Right.

Right.

-So it's one of those examples of we try and make something better.

-We're trying so hard!

-And we end up making it... -Worse.

-...not better, yeah.

-Earlier, I mentioned that last fall I went to California and my experience there challenged everything I thought I knew about olive oil.

So I'm back ready to share with y'all what I learned about this fatty fruit juice.

So tell me where we are and what y'all do here.

-Yeah, so we are -- We're in Lodi, California, which is basically kind of in the center of California, and we make premium fresh olive oil.

-Out of all the olive oil available to us, like, how much is grown in California or the United States?

-California, or in the U.S., we produce about 3% of what's consumed in the U.S.

every year.

And in the world, we're less than 1% of the global olive-oil production.

-How many olives or how much olive oil do you make?

-We have about a thousand acres of olives that we farm.

Most of what we do from the family is right -- is right here around the middle.

♪♪ -We're here in the middle of the grove.

It's not a lot to see right now because we just passed the bloom stage.

We do have some small fruit on the trees.

-Okay.

I see the tiny little... -Yeah, yeah.

So that's -- I mean, that's our crop right there.

That's what we expect to have make all that beautiful oil come October and November.

So a majority of the olives harvested in Europe and Spain is more of the winter harvest.

More traditional style groves.

Wider spacing.

And the reality is they have to wait for the fruit to ripen up.

And so there's a thing called abscission.

And abscission is the weakening of the stem over time.

And so when that fruit ripens, that stem becomes weaker.

And how they harvest the majority of that fruit is with a mechanical shaker, and it grabs on to the bottom of the tree and it shakes it and it allows that fruit to come off.

The problem with that is that's late.

That's wintertime harvest.

That's December, January, February.

-It's overripe olives.

-Ripe olives.

And so what's the difference?

It's not super high-quality fruit.

We're harvesting in October and November when the fruit is really at the peak of its freshness.

-That's just so mind-blowing to me.

Just that -- think about, do you ever want to eat the apple that's fallen off the tree on the ground?

Like, it's overripe, it's brown.

It's, like, starting to ferment.

Like... But that's what we've been making olive oil.

I mean, that's what we think it is.

I don't know.

-Exactly.

-That's just mind-blowing to me.

-And that's the education that you're bringing to everybody.

-Y'all hear that?!

And so you pick all of these olives in the span of like three weeks or a month?

-Our crop season is about 30 days, and we're going 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I mean, again, the fresher the fruit, the fresher the vegetable, whatever it is, the faster that you can harvest it and utilize it, we want to be able to do that.

And so, yes, the idea is to harvest.

Within eight hours, we have a finished product ready to serve to our customers, basically.

♪♪ -So, David.

[Echoing] Ohh!

-[ Laughs ] -So where are we?

-So we're currently in our cellars.

And this is the perfect environment for storing olive oil.

-So, every October, they fill these with your fresh olive oil, and then it's just slowly emptied out over the course of the year?

-Exactly.

So what we do is we try and keep it in here as long as possible.

The real world is the worst thing for olive oil because that's where you introduce light, heat, and air.

So everything that you see here is all designed to minimize the impact of light, heat, and air.

And so these tanks, slowly over the course of the year, the volume slowly goes down until the next harvest when we refill them again.

-What happens once the olives are picked to get them here?

-So as the olives come in, they go through a grading process, and we remove what we call "MOO."

M-O-O -- material other than olives.

So that could be, like, leaves, sticks.

And then the olives get crushed into, like, a tapenade almost.

And then that paste gets slowly mixed for about 20 minutes.

Then it goes to a centrifuge.

So, in the centrifuge, the oil will come out one side, and the water and the pomace, the leftover olives, will go out the back side.

That goes to cattle feed.

The oil that comes out goes straight into the cellars.

-Wow!

-So it is a lot like making juice in the sense that it just -- The fruit comes in, we crush it, we mix it for 20 minutes, we pull the oil out, the rest goes to pomace, and then it goes straight into our cellars.

-So what happens in here?

I think I know, but... -[ Laughs ] Yeah.

You know, the harvest happens in 30 days, but this part of the operation happens for the rest of the year.

And that's because we package just in time.

So we literally pull the oil out of the cellars into a package, and then it goes straight into restaurants or, you know, home chefs using it at home.

♪♪ You know, at the end of the day, tasting is really the best tool we all have to understand olive-oil quality.

So this is what we're going to do.

We always like to say you should always have a cup in your hand.

We're going to move it around like this and we're going to warm it up.

-We're warming it.

-Yep.

And we warm it up to release the aromas into the head space.

We're going to smell it, and then we're going to ask ourselves, does it smell like the garden?

Does it remind us of green, natural things?

-It smells green like my garden!

[ Laughs ] -Exactly!

I know!

That's why we chose that language, because, like, I don't care what -- I don't care if it's green apple or -- -No, it's a ton of green things together.

-It's just green.

Exactly.

-Might even be a green banana in there.

-Exactly.

Right.

And so when we taste professionally, we look for the second two things on here.

-Peppery finish.

-Peppery finish.

The third thing I'm going to look for is my mouth should be crystal clean.

If it feels like you're wearing chapstick or, like, buttery lips, telltale sign of oxidation.

♪♪ So now you'll start getting that warming sensation in your throat.

-Yes.

Right here.

-So those are the polyphenols, right?

And as we sit here, I can see you're already starting to lick your lips a little.

It's starting to pull the moisture out of our mouth.

-Yes!

-So that is a fresh, high-quality olive oil that's, you know...- -Like, my palate is dry.

There's no, like, oily residue or anything like that, which is not what you expect.

So are we going to taste an unfresh one?

-Oh, yeah, of course we are.

-Okay.

Good.

-So what we're going to taste now is what I described earlier, where we're past the prime.

Just real simply, does this remind you of all the green things that we tasted in the first one?

Right?

-[ Gasps ] No!

No!

It actually almost smells like...petroleum.

-Yeah.

♪♪ -Mnh.

No.

-I won't lead you.

I'll let you do it.

-No.

No, no.

No real peppery finish.

And my mouth is like an oil slick.

-Yeah.

-And my lips are... They feel like I've got gloss on.

-Yeah.

That's the exact same oil that we just tasted.

-Really?!

-The only difference is that we took it and we put it in a clear glass bottle and we put it outside on the roof for five days.

-Wow!

-So we do that to show how sensitive it is to light, heat and air.

Okay.

So why does it matter, right?

The beauty of olive oil is that it makes food better if it's good olive oil, right?

If it's not, it has the opposite effect.

-Yeah, that's why we're drizzling, you know, to finish.

We call it finishing oil.

-Yeah.

-And ideally it should taste as good, if not better than everything else on the plate.

-Exactly.

-That's -- I'm not -- I'm not going to take a shot of it.

[ Laughter ] ♪♪ To continue our conversation on fat, you know, we've talked about bacon fat and animal fat that's full of flavor.

Makes a great piece of toast.

We've talked about olive oil, essentially, like, a fatty fruit juice that's also full of flavor.

Now we're going to talk about some neutrally flavored oils or flavorless oils.

And we're going to demonstrate the power of these by frying fish.

So I've got peanut oil here.

Peanut oil is an affordable, flavorless, odorless oil that has a very high smoking point.

So people love to fry anything in it.

Chicken, French fries, hushpuppies.

If you're fryin' in peanut oil, you're in good company.

The problem is quite a few people have peanut allergies, so peanut oil is a no-go for those folks.

In that case, I like to use grapeseed oil, which is also a flavorless, odorless oil with a very high smoking point, but it is a bit more expensive.

So if you can use peanut, why not?

Okay, so I've got my oil.

It's heating up.

And the fish that I'm going to fry is flounder.

And we're going to start by seasoning it on both sides with salt and on one side with cayenne.

And then we're going to dredge this flounder in a little bit of cornmeal.

You could use flour or you could use some ground-up breadcrumbs.

Whatever you have in your kitchen.

So I'm going to take this one seasoned side and put it presentation-side down in my cornmeal.

♪♪ And then I'm going to season the other side with a little salt.

And I can see that my peanut oil is getting nice and hot over here 'cause it's literally moving in the pan.

And one thing you want to make sure of when you're frying fish, or really frying anything, is that your oil is hot enough before you put it in the pan.

Because if the oil is not hot enough, whatever you're frying is just going to soak up the oil and become greasy.

And no one wants a greasy piece of fish.

So whenever you're dropping something into oil, even if it's just a little bit of oil in the pan, you want to drop it away from you in case it splashes.

You don't want it to come back at you.

And I'm putting it presentation-side down, which is the side of the fish that does not have skin on it.

You want to cook the side that you want to be the prettiest first.

People don't fry fish at home.

They believe they're going to have to have a FryDaddy and about two gallons of oil that they have to heat up.

And nobody wants to do that at home.

But I can tell you that I have fried a lot of fish in my day, mostly in my restaurants.

And, you know, in a restaurant setting, you have a fryer that you can just set to the appropriate temperature, so it makes it really easy to fry fish or fry chicken.

But what I've found over the years is that fish fried in a skillet in a shallow layer of oil is much better than fish dropped into a deep fat fryer.

Because when you drop a piece of fish, you submerge it in hot oil, that fish, like, curls up and becomes kind of tough.

So you don't want a tough piece of fish.

And you don't have to have one.

Oh, yeah, that's looking really nice there on this first side.

So I'm going to flip that over.

♪♪ So I've chosen flounder because that's a fish that's available here in Eastern North Carolina and a fish that a lot of people love.

But you could do catfish.

You could do snapper.

Any thin, mild-flavored kind of lean fish, if you will.

♪♪ Okay, so I think this first one is actually pretty close to done.

And I'm going to pull it out.

And you see I still have a fair amount of oil in here, and it's in good shape, and I don't want to waste it, so what I'm going to do is let the oil cool on the stove.

And then I'm going to strain it and put it in a mason jar that's labeled "oil for frying fish."

Because you don't really want to -- Once you've fried fish in a fat, you don't really want to use that fat for anything else.

So I'm going to hit this with a little bit of salt because when something comes out of hot oil, comes out of a fryer situation of any kind, it is most vulnerable at that moment.

So you want to hit it with salt, whatever seasoning you're going to hit it with.

And I always like to finish my fish with a little bit of lemon juice.

So we'll set this aside.

And we're going to make a little sauce to drag our fried fish through.

So I'm going to start with mayonnaise, which is also a neutrally flavored fat.

So, mayonnaise is just emulsified oil.

And this is more than 70% soybean oil.

And soybean oil is also one of these flavorless, odorless oils.

And that's important for mayonnaise because I think mayonnaise is a vehicle for flavor.

So we're going to make what I like to call "kitchen sink mayonnaise."

And I call it that -- you might have guessed -- because it's got almost everything in it but the kitchen sink.

So I'm starting with my favorite brand of mayonnaise here.

I'll let you guess on that.

Now I'm going to add some lemon juice... hot sauce... ...soy sauce... anchovy paste... rice vinegar... honey... ...and some grated garlic.

And I'm going to grate my garlic on a microplane.

You could chop it with your knife, but it won't really be graded small enough to kind of dissolve into your mayonnaise.

And I'm also going to add a little pinch of salt to this.

Then we can whisk.

♪♪ Right.

So I've got my kitchen sink mayonnaise right here.

I'm going to taste it.

♪♪ Tangy, bright.

Sweet, salty.

All the things.

And now I'm going to show you this little chef trick.

You know, this little swoosh on the bottom of the plate with my mayonnaise.

Then I'm going to lay a couple of my prettiest flounder filets right on top of that.

♪♪ Put a little bit of lemon here to gild the lily.

And you've got fat two ways.

Or fried fish and kitchen sink mayonnaise.

Depends on how you look at it.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Major funding for "Kitchen Curious with Vivian Howard" is provided by... the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio, with the generosity of individuals, corporations, and foundations.

The ETV Endowment of South Carolina is committed to sharing entertaining and uplifting stories and series like "Kitchen Curious."

And by... Penny Kay Cooper.

Additional funding provided by... the Bea and Ray Norwood Foundation, building community in Florence, South Carolina.

And First Citizens Bank.