Desifact — Cooking Fat Smoke Points | desifact.com
An ordered procedure: read the pan temperature, look up the smoke point, leave a margin, and stop at visible smoke.
Step 1 — read the pan temperature you need. Frying sits near 200 °C (392 °F); gentler methods run lower, hard searing runs higher. Fix this number before the fat goes anywhere near the pan.
Step 2 — find the fat's smoke point in the comparison table. If it sits at or below your target, the fat will smoke during cooking: extra virgin olive oil at 190 °C and unrefined butter at 150 °C both fall under the frying line.
Step 3 — leave a margin of tens of degrees. A fat rated exactly at your pan temperature has no headroom once food moisture evaporates and the surface overheats; ghee's 250 °C gives a full 50 °C above frying.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Step 4 — watch for continuous visible bluish smoke. That is the smoke point reached: stop and cool the pan rather than pressing on with a degraded fat.
The common failure mode is judging by smoke point alone and then heating unrefined fats hard. A high number on the label does not help if the fat is virgin, unrefined, or already near its ceiling before the pan is hot.
A second failure is confusing smoke point with flash point or fire point. Visible smoke marks the first threshold; ignition thresholds sit higher and are not what a cooking pan reaches in normal use.
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