Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Stopping oils and fats from becing rancid - novel idea

Stopping oils and fats from becing rancid - novel idea

RogueRose - 27-12-2018 at 23:07

For those who enjoy culinary delights of exotic oils and animal fats that tend to become rancid fairly quickly, I'd like to explore the options on how to either stop this process or drastically improve the shelf like (at room temp or refrigerated).

I've seen lards and tallow claiming they can be kept at room temp before being opened and then suggest refrigerating them or freezing them. This is a PITA for people who use it often.

I'm looking at the wine industry for a possible solution where they use either N2, argon or CO2 injection into the opened bottle to drive out the O2 so that the wine doesn't further oxidize giving a bad taste.

I'm looking at oils and fats in the same way. Bottle them in similar bottles as wine or oils (glass bottles) with a cork on the top. When you want to use them, allow them melt (the animal fats), remove what you need, replace cork and then inject the gas to drive out the O2 - thus not letting the O2 make the fats or oil rancid.

When a high quality grass fed tallow costs $7-10/lb (32 oz costing up to $18-28 for high quality tallow) storing it in a wide mouth plastic container like mayonnaise just seems like a bad idea as the top layer is probably going to go bad if you don't use if w/n the first ~3-4 months or so.

The same goes for high quality oils like hemp, avocado and many other luxury brand oils which tend to go bad much too quickly even if refrigerated. and the thing is, if you REALLY like to cook, you might have 10-20 of these perishable oils/fats that you are racing against the clock to use and all too often they end up being disposed of with a lot left in the bottle.

So would evacuating the O2 from the bottle fix this problem and if so, what would be the ideal gas to inject into the bottle to keep it fresh - N2, CO2 or Argon (or something else).

I guess another option for the "hard fats" would be to add a layer of water on top of the solidified fats to act as a barrier to O2 interfacing/acting with the fats.

As far as how to do this, I think the tools already designed for the wine market can be used in the same process but instead of puncturing a wine cork, it's a cork on a bottle of oil/fat.

What do you guys think? Does this sound like a plausible idea and which would be the best method for keeping these things fresh!

Sulaiman - 28-12-2018 at 01:50

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancidification

Ubya - 28-12-2018 at 02:07

rancidification is just radical oxidation of fatty acids, a quick google research (as Sulaiman pointed out) gives all the informations to solve your problems.
add an antioxidant, simple as that. melting fat inside a wine bottle and purging the air out it everytime you open it? seems a bit excessive and boring (if you need just a quick spoon of fat uou would neet to melt first all the fat in the bottle, take what you need, purge the bottle and then let the fat cool and harden, the mayonese jar thing is much more convenient.
try ascorbic acid or vitamin E, they are easy to find and are harmless, you just need to figure out how much you need for every pound of fat/oil

happyfooddance - 28-12-2018 at 11:27

Changing oils in to appropriate sized containers as they are used up, to minimize headspace, is a great habit to get into. Also, keep small containers for your daily or frequent use, and large containers for your bulk and only open bulk as infrequently as possible.

At work we sometimes use nitrogen, but it is not practical except to eliminate headspace and again that is best done by using appropriate-sized containers.

Twospoons - 28-12-2018 at 16:35

For oils the obvious solution is storage in a collapsible bladder, as used in cardboard cask wine. No head space at all.

happyfooddance - 28-12-2018 at 16:59

Quote: Originally posted by Twospoons

For oils the obvious solution is storage in a collapsible bladder, as used in cardboard cask wine. No head space at all.

It is actually quite impractical to store a collection of bladders (ask any pastry chef). I have always thought that peanut butter should come in a tube, though.

RogueRose - 29-12-2018 at 07:03

Ok so I really like the antioxidant idea if it will work with the 3 main compounds I'm looking at using.

Tallow/lard, paraffin, coconut/palm oil. The only thing I'm worried about is the tallow/lard as the rest seem to be fine at room temp and don't emit a smell.

I don't have much of a selection of antioxidants that I know of but I do have Vit C tabs (I had 500 1g tabs that were about 15 years old - I tried extracting the ascorbic acid but I got an unfilterable pulpy orange mess). I could easily dry it out with heat, vacuum and or dessicant as the decomp is near 400F. The problems I'm facing are as follows:

Is Vit C soluble in fat? Heat fat to maybe 300-350 and stir in dry powdered Vit C?
-How much is needed per gram of fat - I'm not even sure where to begin to determine this.

Option 2
Buy new ascorbic acid powder (am buying some anyway for fruit canning/freezing - to mix with my citric acid) I do see that citric acid is listed as a weak antioxidant so maybe that will work in place - I have 5kg of it, so not worried if I have to use a decent amount.

Option 3
Buy vit E - this seems expensive IIRC. 1Kg of TOCOPHEROL ACETATE is about $200! Now I know the amounts are measured in micrograms, so that is a little different than needing 1g of Vit C. I'd prefer not to use Vit E for fire-starters - too expensive. But for human consumption, is the acetate fine or should I look for a lighter ester?

Either way, I realized that as I age, I need to get more VitC and E in my diet and will be supplementing. IDK if I can go over-board with C & E, I have heard that you just piss away the excess and it can't really hurt you unless you are MEGA dosing LD50 for a rat is 11900 mg/kg! probably more than the rat weighs, lol and 4g/kg for a rat/mouse for Vit E, so this stuff is pretty safe.

SO if there are any other common anti-oxidants that I can use, or if the vit C I have in solution will work, let me know what you think - I could also mix the Vit C and Citric acid if they might work better together.

Finally, I do have about 5gal of tallow that has started to go rancid and I was wondering if I heat it very hot (maybe kill whatever is growing in it if any) then add the vit C / citric acid, if that would eliminate any of the current rancidity of the fat or just inhibit the new growth of it. I will be testing either way, but I need to make some of these asap to give to someone for their cabin.

Thanks!

Ubya - 29-12-2018 at 07:43

an antioxidant can't turn something rancid good again, antioxidanta scavenge •OH radicals by getting oxidized, if something is already oxidized antioxidants won't help, you would need to remove those smelly compounds

andy1988 - 29-12-2018 at 10:04

Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose

Tallow/lard

I know lard sold on shelves in the U.S. is hydrogenated (making trans fats) so it is shelf stable. The U.S. cooked quite different prior to Crisco [1] (there are much more interesting articles on the subject, but I couldn't find one at a glance). I love lard!

Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose

I need to get more VitC and E in my diet and will be supplementing.

Especially if you have titanium implants [2][3].

In the case of vitamin E, the form may be important [4] (could have sworn I read something against tocopheryl, but couldn't find it again).

Consider also cooking some heart from the butcher! Read about Mesoglycan ("Aortic Acid")[5]:

Quote:

Vascular glycosaminoglycans (GAG) are essential components of the endothelium and vessel wall and have been shown to be involved in several biologic functions. Mesoglycan, a natural GAG preparation, is a polysaccharide complex, rich in sulphur radicals with strong negative electric charge. It is extracted from porcine intestinal mucosa and is composed of heparan sulfate (typical content 52%), dermatan sulfate (35%), electrophoretically slow-moving heparin (8%), and variable and minimal quantities of chondroitin sulfate (5%).

Mesoglycan is reported to have several favorable actions on the fibrinolytic system, on macrorheologic and microrheologic parameters, and to restore the electronegativity of the vascular endothelium in case of damage. [5]

Bunch of stuff in that reference saying when supplemented it helps prevent stroke to the same degree as blood thinners, but doesn't have the side effects of blood thinners (e.g. the cost/benefit trade-off of bleeding to death over a paper-cut or internal hemorrhage).

Mesoglycan at present looks relatively expensive... perhaps a good profit margin if you figured out how to prepare it inexpensively, and maybe prolong some people's lives? :-)

[Edited on 30-12-2018 by andy1988]

RogueRose - 29-12-2018 at 11:30

I have my tallow and lard separated and rendered it myself, so it is preservative free, cooked at 275F max for a long, slow drip. The lard is mainly bacon fat but also some very large cuttings from a butcher. I have about 4-5gallons of each which I was intending to use in soaps and I have 1/2 remaining from my original 8-10 gallons of each. I wish I knew how to preserve it back then but when I gave it up (till I needed more), I allowed it to sit ouside in December and never brought it back in.

There was a black "mold" about 1/32 to 1/16" thick over the top of the tallow and it looks like beautiful white tallow underneath. I'm wondering if the entire bucket is rancid or just the top. I guess allowing it to warm and the nose test will tell.

Metacelsus - 29-12-2018 at 22:05

Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose

Is Vit C soluble in fat? Heat fat to maybe 300-350 and stir in dry powdered Vit C?
-How much is needed per gram of fat - I'm not even sure where to begin to determine this.

Either way, I realized that as I age, I need to get more VitC and E in my diet and will be supplementing. IDK if I can go over-board with C & E, I have heard that you just piss away the excess and it can't really hurt you unless you are MEGA dosing LD50 for a rat is 11900 mg/kg! probably more than the rat weighs, lol and 4g/kg for a rat/mouse for Vit E, so this stuff is pretty safe.

Vitamin C isn't soluble in fat. Vitamin E, on the other hand, is very fat-soluble. Among other things, this means you can piss away the excess of vitamin C, but NOT vitamin E. Generally this isn't a problem since vitamin E isn't very toxic, but if you take absurdly large amounts (on the scale of grams) it can be an issue (see: https://radiopaedia.org/articles/hypervitaminosis-e)

RogueRose - 30-12-2018 at 20:42

Quote: Originally posted by Metacelsus

Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose

That is a major bummer! I was planning on boiling down my Vit C solution and using that b/c I have it. Is there anyway I can make it fat soluble, maybe making a salt of some kind like sodium ascorbate or something?

I do have a bottle of Vit E oil, 30,000 IU per bottle (71ml) of which I have about 1/2 left. other ingredients are soy, corn, sesame, wheat germ and lemon oil.

5 drops, .25ml is 100IU and it is D-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate and it is about 12-14 years old (kept in a desk drawer - completely dark - at about 65-72F - which should be fine.

Would adding something like an emulsifier to the Vit C, like PEG, then add that to the fat? These fire starters are more of a fun project that I have about 10-15 people who love to use them, so it's a nice little challenge to overcome and use the bacon fat that is otherwise thrown out.

How do I figure out how much Vit E or Vit C is needed per 1 or 100g of lard/tallow?

oberkarteufel - 31-12-2018 at 03:16

Regular vit. C isn't soluble in fats, but ascorbyl palmitate is. It is sold as "oil-soluble vitamin C" by companies that sell DIY cosmetic ingredients.