Cooking with Cottonseed Oil

Cindy Zimmerman

bwcc13-cottonseed-1Cotton Incorporated held one of the best press conferences I’ve ever attended at the Beltwide Cotton Conferences this week – featuring a cooking demonstration with flavor-infused cottonseed oils and some kickin’ Texas Tea.

You might remember Chuck doing a post about these great Acala Farms cottonseed oils after World Dairy Expo last year. We got to find out more about them from Tom Wedegaertner, Director of Cottonseed Research and Marketing for Cotton Inc., who says that they are hoping the specialty oils will help increase public awareness of cotton as a food crop.

“Per capita consumption of cottonseed oil is about three pints per person,” Tom explains. “It’s a wonderful frying oil, has a very high smoke point, so a lot of restaurants use it in their deep fat fryers.” Tom says it’s also used in salad dressings because it has a very light, delicate taste that lends itself well to adding other flavors.

Listen to Tom talk about it here: Tom Wedegaertner interview

bwcc13-chefSan Antonio Marriott Executive Chef Donald Hoffman provided a demonstration and taste test for the media so we could find out for ourselves just how great these flavor-infused cottonseed oils are. First, he made Salmon Salpicon featuring the Jalapeno Lime and Cilantro flavored oils. He also made a BBQ sauce with Chipotle flavor on chicken breast sauteed in fresh-roasted garlic cottonseed oil.

You can watch Chef Donald demo the salmon recipe in the video below and if you want to find out more about these great tasting cottonseed oils, go to Acala-Farms.com.

2013 Beltwide Cotton photo album

beltwide-fmc

Audio, Beltwide Cotton, Cotton, FMC, Video