I don’t understand the fuss currently made about the shortage of cooking oil in Malaysia and how Singaporeans, like us, aren’t allowed to buy or are rationed. I shall miss the oil as much as I’ll miss having an atomic bomb in my carpark.

Frankly, since I stopped cooking with oil from October 2006, I’ve never missed the stuff. My taste buds have changed, as have those of my mother’s. Even those of my family who eat my cooking occasionally have learnt the pleasure of eating food with little or no oil.

This is because in all ingredients that go to make up a meal, there is some natural oil, no matter how little. In fact in most ingredients, the embedded natural oil is way too much, especially in most meat and fish.

I’ve cooked pork ribs entirely without oil; yet the leftovers, ribs and gravy, would solidify into a thick slab of ghee-like fat the next day, after spending a night in the fridge. This was despite the fact that the ribs had been trimmed of fat before they were cooked.

Had I added oil in the cooking process, I shudder to imagine how much thicker that slab would be. I shudder even more to imagine what all the oily fat is doing, as it slithers through our guts and our blood stream.

Picture this: when I do the washing up, the detergent and suds, the oily debris and other bits and bobs all go out of the kitchen sink and down the outlets into the waste pipes that dispose off such stuff, day in and out, year in and out.

Every now and then, the waste pipes get choked and the water refuses to flow out and down; that’s when the plumber is summoned to clear the blockage.

Anyone who has seen a plumber clearing choked pipes will know it’s not pretty stuff he sometimes brings up — blancmange like stuff which is black, slippery, oily and basically so yucky, that it quite turns the stomach.

If that’s the residue of the daily washing up of our pots, pans, cutlery and crockery, I shudder again to imagine what the residue of our oily meals is doing to the internal pipes of our body.

PS: What I said for oil goes for butter, margarine, ghee, cheese, ice-cream etc as each item is but a form of oil solidified.

The reason for this blog is to send a message to the world that we should cut down and then cut out using oil in our cooking at home.

This is because there is already much natural oil in most of the food we eat. Of course, it’s not possible to dictate “no oil” when eating outside or when the food is bought as take-away. Indeed, how to tell the bakery selling cakes and kueh-kueh to eliminate oil from their products altogether?

That being the case, where we are in control on how our food is prepared ie when it is cooked at home, then we must say “no” to oil.  

And cooking without oil needn’t be a pain. Apart from making the food healthier to eat, cooking without oil actually makes washing up after a meal a lot easier. Less grease, less need to go crazy with the washing up liquid, kinder on your hands and your water bills.