Vegetable oil is a product on its own, but it’s also a category. Grapeseed, avocado, safflower, peanut, and coconut oils are all considered vegetable oils. Vegetable oil typically refers to soybean oil: flavorless, scentless, colorless, and with a high smoke point—the temperature at which oil starts to burn and emit smoke—that's ideal for high-heat cooking. If you cook with it on a regular basis, you've probably wondered what the best substitutes for vegetable oil are, and we're here to break it down.
If vegetable oil’s purpose is simply to conduct heat quickly and efficiently without imparting much flavor in the process, why reach for a more expensive variety? The author of The Big Book of Healthy Cooking Oils Lisa Howard told TIME Magazine, “vegetable oil is guaranteed to be highly processed."