Oil Infusions

I love cooking with flavoured oils, of course if you are cooking your favourite Spag Bol. You won’t want just garlic oil you’ll want some good old grated or crushed garlic as well but if you start the dish by softening the onions in garlic oil instead of the your normal oil it just adds so much depth to the flavour.

Also in chillis a mix of chilli oil and garlic oil is a wonderful thing, I had nothing in for lunch the other day so I quickly cooked out some dried noodles then stir fried them in some garlic oil with a dash of chilli oil added some chicken stock and a little soy seasoned and ............... What a lunch!

I also love to mix infused oils with white wine vinegar to dress salads.

These oils are so easy to prepare, here’s how I do it-:

You will need

Oil – any oil you prefer but I normally use olive oil.

Flavour – whatever you fancy, chillies, garlic, basil the list is endless, quantities depend on you and your taste buds.

For my chilli oil I took half a dozen red chillies and roughly chopped them leaving the seeds in.

Heat 250 Ml of oil in a pan to around 100°c, if you are using a pan you will need a thermometer if not use a deep fat fryer.

Gently poach the chillies in the oil for about 30 minutes.

Leave to cool then strain through a fine sieve.

Put a chilli or two that you have saved into the bottle before decanting the oil into that bottle.

The oil is good to use immediately but of course over time it will deepen in flavour because of the chillies in the bottle.