Flora Cuisine-Waste of money

Ben84 · 7 February 2012 at 5:54PM

chrismbt wrote: »

Rapeseed is grown in Britain so might cut down on food miles. It has little flavour of its own and works fine for everything from deep drying to salad dressing.

Interesting comment, because to me it has a strong unpleasant smell and taste, particularly when heated. So, I use sunflower oil instead.

As for lower fat cooking oil and spread, all that I've seen so far work by having water in them. Water is not helpful in oil, it encourages things to stick when frying and will evaporate out when heated, so it looks better on paper than in use.

I limit the amount of oil in food by deep frying in well heated oil so less soaks in and using teflon pans when shallow frying as they use much less oil. As for butter, I still eat it, just use less. A thin spreading of real butter tastes a lot better than thickly spread water filled margarine and probably isn't a massive difference in calories either.

meritaten · 7 February 2012 at 9:08PM

Coupon_Queen wrote: »

I also bought it on offer. Buy one get one free. So now I have 2 of them aaaggghhh.

Total waste of money, I wish I had read it properly before I bought them. I thought it was the spray but its just like pouring melted butter into the pan. I would not recommend ewwww :-(

you would actually be better off with the 'real' butter!

I wont use the Pseudo 'spreads or oils'. To me if something is natural and pure - it HAS to be better for you than something concocted out of a factory using gawd Knows how many chemicals and processes!

I will be sticking with my butter (used sparingly), Extra Virgin Olive Oil (not used sparingly) and my sunflower oil (deep frying).

LadyCoupon · 7 February 2012 at 10:14PM

I like it too, have been using it since before christmas and it only cost me 50p.

Stephen_Leak · 7 February 2012 at 11:29PM

The cynic in me wondered about the amount of advertising for this stuff. I think my first suspicions may have been correct for once.

JayD · 10 July 2017 at 11:25AM

I find this is much healthier for those of us who have to avoid saturated fats as much as possible (I have a heart condition). I agree, that it is better to fry with olive oil -although it should NOT be reused once it has been heated). I pour water into my frying pan, heat the water up and cook my 'fried eggs' like that. They are really fried egg shaped poached eggs but look like fried eggs and are much healthier than frying them.

However, I use Flora Cuisine on hot toast and hot hot cross buns and find it so much tastier (and very much healthier) than the low fat spreads currently available.

I also use it for cooking pastry and cakes. Instead of rubbing in the fat, I whisk up Flora Cuisine with a little skimmed milk (using a fork to whisk it is fine) and work it into the flour with the same fork. For cakes I just squeeze some in with the beaten eggs and sugar (again with some skimmed milk) before adding the flour.

Olive oil may be a good and healthy fat with a high content of mono and polyunsaturates, and I do use it occasionally- but it is also so much higher in saturated fats than Flora Cuisine.

So you see, for at least some of us, Flora Cuisine is a very valuable, versatile and tasty alternative to much less healthy fats. It is just not ideal for frying.

JayD · 10 July 2017 at 11:30AM

Rapeseed oil is great fro frying - especially deep frying as it can be reused. However, it is not very nice on hot toast or hot cross buns - or for pastry and cake making! Flora Cuisine is a more than acceptable alternative to plain oil for these things. And I shallow 'fry' my eggs in water - they look like fried eggs but are as healthy as poached ones.