Coconut Oil

Details

Coconut oil pressed cold from sun-dried copra, one source per lot, filtered and bottled without refining. It smells of coconut, because nothing has been done to take that out. The refined oil most people buy has been bleached and deodourised, which is what gives it the clear, smell-free character that reads as clean and in fact only means the oil has been stripped. The cheats sit underneath that. Liquid paraffin and white mineral oil are cheap, clear and tasteless, they have been mixed into coconut oil in this country for a long time, and they are not food. Palm kernel oil is the harder one, because it is chemically close to coconut oil and sets at a similar temperature, so it gets past an eye and a spoon. Solvent extraction with hexane squeezes the last of the oil out of spent cake, and that oil then has to be refined before it is edible at all. All three are answerable. MOSH and MOAH testing on a gas chromatograph finds mineral oil down to trace level. Iodine value separates coconut from palm kernel, because the two sit in different places and a blend has nowhere in the middle to hide. Free fatty acid says how fresh the copra was when it went into the press.

• No liquid paraffin, mineral oil or white oil, MOSH and MOAH tested per lot
• No palm kernel oil or any other oil blended in, confirmed by iodine value
• No solvent extraction and no hexane, pressed only
• No refining, no bleaching, no deodourising
• No added antioxidant and no fragrance
• It sets solid and white below about 24 degrees Celsius and melts clear above it, which is coconut oil behaving normally and not a fault
• It smells and tastes of coconut and it will carry that into whatever you cook, which is the point of an unrefined oil and is not to every kitchen taste