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Seed Oil Free

Why We Cook Without Seed Oils

Every dish at Amelia's is cooked without seed oils. Instead, we cook with four fats people have trusted for generations: beef tallow, avocado oil, extra virgin olive oil and butter.

It's one of the first things guests ask about, so we wanted to explain what "seed oil free" means in our kitchen, why we chose it, and what we use instead. The short version: we want real ingredients, made the way food used to be made, that taste better on the plate.

What are seed oils?

"Seed oils" usually means the industrial vegetable oils found in most restaurant fryers and packaged foods: canola, soybean, corn, cottonseed, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed and rice bran oil.

Seeds don't give up much oil on their own, so most of these oils are made in a factory process:

  1. The seeds are crushed and heated.
  2. The oil is often pulled out with a chemical solvent, usually hexane.
  3. The oil is refined, bleached and deodorized to remove color, bitterness and off smells.

The result is a cheap, neutral oil with a long shelf life. That's why it's everywhere. It's also why we don't use it.

Why we cook without them

Less processing. We make everything from scratch with organic, local ingredients where we can. An oil that needs solvents and deodorizing to be edible doesn't fit that standard. Every fat we use can be made by pressing fruit, churning cream or slowly rendering fat.

Stability under heat. Seed oils are high in polyunsaturated fat. That type of fat breaks down more easily under long, high heat, like a fryer running all day. The fats we use are mostly monounsaturated or saturated, which hold up better at cooking temperatures.

Flavor. Industrial oils are made to taste like nothing. Tallow gives fries and seared meat a rich, savory depth. Olive oil brings fruit and pepper. Butter makes a sauce taste like a sauce. Fat carries flavor, so we choose fats worth tasting.

Food the way it used to be made. Most seed oils only entered the kitchen in the last hundred years. Tallow, butter and olive oil have been cooking staples for centuries.

What we cook with instead

Beef tallow

Tallow is beef fat, slowly rendered until it's clean and golden. It's the original frying fat: for decades, America's most famous french fries were cooked in it.

  • Why we love it: It stays stable at frying temperatures, so it doesn't break down as quickly over a long service. It gives a crisp, golden crust and a deep, savory flavor you can't get from neutral oil.
  • Nose to tail: Tallow makes use of a part of the animal that might otherwise go to waste.

We love Brandt Farms Beef Tallow

Avocado oil

Avocado oil is pressed from the flesh of the avocado, not a seed. Like olive oil, it's a fruit oil.

  • Why we love it: It's mostly monounsaturated fat, the same heart-friendly type found in olive oil. Refined avocado oil has one of the highest smoke points of any cooking oil, and its mild taste lets other ingredients lead.
  • How we use it: High-heat sautéing, grilling, and dressings or aioli where we want a clean, neutral base.
  • What we watch for: Not all avocado oil on store shelves is what it claims. Researchers have found many brands are old, oxidized or cut with cheaper oils. We buy from suppliers we trust so what's in the bottle is really avocado.

Extra virgin olive oil

Extra virgin olive oil is simply the juice of pressed olives, with no heat or chemicals. It's the backbone of the Mediterranean diet, one of the most studied ways of eating in the world.

  • Why we love it: It's rich in monounsaturated fat and natural antioxidants called polyphenols, which give good olive oil its peppery bite. Those antioxidants also help protect it when it's heated, so it's steadier in the pan than many people assume.
  • How we use it: Everyday sautéing and roasting, vinaigrettes, marinades, and finishing dishes with a drizzle right before they go out.
  • Taste the difference: A good olive oil should taste fresh, grassy and a little peppery at the back of your throat.

Butter

Butter is cream, churned. One ingredient, nothing hidden.

  • Why we love it: Nothing else gives the same richness, browning and flavor. Butter from pasture-raised cows also carries fat-soluble vitamins like A and K2.
  • How we use it: Baking, pan sauces, basting steaks, eggs, and anything that should taste like home. Whole butter burns at lower heat because of its milk solids, so for higher-heat cooking we clarify it into ghee, which handles the heat much better.
  • What we choose: Organic butter, from grass-fed cows where we can get it.

Beef tallow in the fryer: the skinny fries, the steak fries, the street fries on the slider board. Olive oil on the crudité, through the citrus salad, over cottage cheese. Butter where a dish needs butter like cookies and toasting bread.

We won't pretend a single ingredient is a miracle or a poison. Nutrition science is still debating seed oils, and tallow and butter are rich foods best enjoyed as part of a balanced plate. What we can promise is how we cook: real fats, minimally processed, chosen for quality and flavor.

Being seed oil free is one part of a bigger commitment. Organic. Local. Scratch made. Food we'd serve our own families.

Come taste the difference. We’ll see you at the table.

organic · local · scratch made · seed oil free

The rest of how we cook is on our values, and the farms behind it are on local purveyors.