if you had a chance to read this week’s “How To Kick Your Thyroid’s Ass” you know that i’ve had this jar of red palm oil sitting in my cupboard for a few weeks now. i had no clue what to do with it, and was afraid i’d hate the taste.  sometimes my adventurous palate gets the best of me and i end up with a pantry full of foods i want to try but are still a bit tentative about. perusing the health food store for such foods is my weakness, fyi. 

i finally used some last night. i decided to start with something small… something easy, like sautéeing some vegetables in it (in a non non-stick pan, of course! no Teflon, ever — endocrine disruptor city). i usually only use coconut oil for heated cooking because the structure isn’t broken so much when it’s applied to heat, which means no free radicals and damage to my body when i ingest it. (i don’t heat olive oil for this very reason).  

so, “sautéeing…” i thought, which then turned into “caramelized onions”, which actually ended up pretty good (and with a red tint, as the picture shows). i could taste the red palm oil — it’s earthy/smokiness — but it wasn’t at all overpowering.  i added the onions to a salad, which, when all was said and done, ended up delicious and a perfect dinner (and, of course, liver detox- friendly!).

if you pretend and squint a little, you can make out the texture of the oil in the picture above. should you choose to buy and use some yourself in order to get in some vitamin A and E and some good saturated fats, just be warned that it has a gel-like consistency, and due to both this and the color, it reminds me more of ketchup than an oil. 

overall, i give it a thumbs up and will have to come up with some more uses for it. also, i think i like it mainly because it feels so subversive. ;) will share whatever recipes i come up with, for sure.