Safeway Vegetable Oil (24 fl. oz.)
Item Purchased: Safeway Vegetable Oil (24 fl. oz.)
Location Purchased: Dominick’s / 3145 S. Ashland / Chicago, IL
Price: $2.84 + tax
Purchased on: 02/16/08
Review: I’m a big olive oil advocate. I don’t carry signs and march in the middle of busy streets or threaten olive haters with violence, but I use the stuff for nearly every culinary use imaginable. I enjoy the flavor and the low smoke point, which I try to use to my advantage in a variety of ways. There are times, however, when I don’t need the flavor of olive oil. Sometimes, the other flavors of my ingredients just need a moist and slick base all their own. Take cakes, for example. All that sugar and eggs and etcetera… Who needs an olive taste with all that?
So, it is with a bittersweet farewell to my beloved olive oil, that I reach for the cheapest, blandest, most generic oil I can find when making such things. It doesn’t get much more generic than Safeway’s Vegetable oil. This oil is, in fact, soybean oil. Now I don’t see anything wrong with soybeans or their oil. To label a perfectly good bottle of soybean oil as vegetable oil almost seems like an insult toward soybeans everywhere. Is there a specific reason for this generic labeling? Does Safeway switch their root plant every so often for their oil supply? Is there a grade of soybean that doesn’t qualify as a full-blown soybean level soybean? Or is it simply a custom that consumers have all gotten used to. Is it simply that home cooks and bakers don’t want to think about the source of their oil? “As long as it’s not motor oil,” they may say when gathering their cooking elements.
This mystery may never be solved, but that’s of no import to me at the moment, because the carrot cake I just made with this oil tastes wonderful… and completely unlike soybeans.
Rating: 3 / 5
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