Rapeseed Oil - all the flavour, none (well fewer, any way) of the miles

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Have you come across rapeseed oil yet? It's being billed as the British answer to olive oil - tasty, and healthy. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall champions it.

Rapeseed oil is great stuff. I get bottles of Pratt's Rapeseed Oil from the Winchester Farmers Market - the rapeseed is grown and the oil produced only a few miles from us on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border, and this, to my mind, is reason enough to buy it (for me, obviously - I mean if you're in the north of Scotland, there's probably a more local producer you could find).

However, local or not, I wouldn't buy it if it wasn't also delicious. It's got quite a strong flavour, really nutty and quite complex in the same way that olive oil can be, although it's a different taste. The other good things about rapeseed oil are that it has a high burn point which makes it really good to cook with because you can get it hotter. It's also got only six per cent saturated fat and is high in Omega 3. A good alternative to olive oil, from right here at home. Recently, as well as using it generally in place of olive oil, I've embraced it stirred into crushed new potatoes as an alternative, healthier topping for fish pie.

What are you waiting for?


Disclaimer: I bought my bottle of Pratt's Rapeseed Oil at the Winchester Farmers' Market, and this post is totally unsolicited. In fact, they don't even know I've written it. Hope they like it...