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Rapeseed Oil
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Balsamic Dressing
Honey & Mustard
Ultimate Chilli DressingWhat is carbon sequestration?
“Carbon sequestration is the long-term removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to be stored in plants, soils, geologic formations or oceans.”
This sentence very simply defines what carbon sequestration is, but I will explain a bit more about what it actually means and how soils and sustainable farming practices can have a major impact on reducing global warming by reducing the carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere.
Soil carbon sequestration is a natural process powered by growing plants, through the process of photosynthesis. Plants photosynthesise with the energy from sunlight, taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and converting this into new plant material, both above and below the soil surface, locking up the carbon and releasing the oxygen back to the atmosphere. The process works in symbiosis with the minerals, water, bacteria, fungi and other organisms in the soil. Plants grow, die and decay, feeding the soil and the life within it. Over the long term, CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, locked into the soil and, stored in the plants. This is carbon sequestration and the soil is known as a carbon sink.
What is soil?
Soils are naturally made up of four different components, a typical soil consists of:
50% Mineral
20-25% Water
20-25% Air
1 to 12% Organic matter
Obviously, the specific percentages will vary from one soil to another and whether or not it is in wet or dry conditions for example. In winter soils will contain more water than in the summer. The organic matter is made up from all the living and dead material: bacteria, plant roots, dead leaf litter and animal manure for example. This organic matter is full of carbon that is locked in the soil. Different soils will have different soil organic matter (SOM) contents and therefore different carbon contents. For example, a sandy soil will have a low SOM of around 1%, where as a peat-based soil will be at the top end, with clay soils somewhere in between.
A bit of soil history
Around 10,000 years ago man evolved from being a hunter gatherer to a farmer as they started growing crops and grazing animals. They managed the soils, changing the natural habitat to one more favourable to their needs. Right from the first farmers, man has not been very successful at looking after our soils. In fact, every empire in human history has eventually failed due to starvation, mainly bought about by soil degradation. From the Roman Empire, to the more recent collapse of the Soviet Union.
President Franklin Roosevelt once stated, “A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself.” Wise words indeed, based on thousands of years of proof. However, when Roosevelt made this statement, he was probably thinking of the dust bowls in the mid-west of the American prairies and the loss of the natural habitat caused by farmers ploughing up their land to grow crops. He was very aware of the nutritious soil literally being blown away and was no doubt aware that unless farming practices changed, in time this land would not be able to produce food. But he was probably not aware that the general degradation of the soil was also releasing many thousands of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, adding to what we know today as Global Warming.
Traditionally farmers plough the land, a process to turn the soil over to create good conditions in which to plant the following crop or pasture. However, when the soil is moved intensely as it is in ploughing, the carbon that is locked into that soil is suddenly exposed to our oxygen-rich atmosphere, resulting in the carbon combining with the oxygen to make carbon dioxide, which is released into the atmosphere. At this point the soil changes from being a carbon sink (removing CO2 from the atmosphere) to become a carbon source (releasing CO2 into the atmosphere). Over a few short decades, soils will lose their carbon content and thus reduce the soil organic matter, not only releasing global warming CO2, but also making the soil less nutritious and resilient to extreme weather conditions, which is not good for the farmer.
How are we improving our soils on Bottom Farm?
There is a better way we can grow our crops and graze our animals, using sustainable practises carried out by the likes of LEAF farmers (Linking Environment And Farming). These sustainable farming practises have three crucial but simple requirements to make soils healthy:
– Reduce soil disturbance from intensive cultivation and ploughing
– Keep something growing in the soil all year
– Vary the crops and livestock grown on the soil
By reducing cultivation, and especially ploughing of the soil, the loss of CO2 is greatly reduced. By keeping something growing in the soil as long as possible, not only are the plants utilising the power of the sun, photosynthesising and actively absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere, but the roots are feeding all the microbes in the soil to keep a healthy biodiversity. Finally, by varying the crops and livestock grown on the soil, the farmer better mimics what would happen in nature keeping the soil in good health.
If farmers follow these simple principles, they can again turn the soil back into a carbon sink, sequestering carbon in the soil and increasing the soil organic matter. I have done this on our farm over the last two decades and on one field which I have been monitoring, I have increased the soil organic matter from 3.8% to 6.3% between 2002 and 2016. To put this into context, if every farmer around the world practiced sustainable soil principles, our soils have the ability to remove 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, taking us back to pre-industrial levels. So, the prize is extremely big and very worthwhile aiming for.
I think I might be a Tree Hugger.
I have always appreciated the beauty of and adaptability of trees, whether this be an individual tree impressively showing its unique beauty in the open countryside or adding a warmth of texture to the architectural lines of an urban setting. Together trees make the copses and woodlands that characterise our British landscape, creating our ‘green and pleasant land’. 13% of Britain is covered in woodland, up from just 5% at the beginning of the last century when the Forestry Commission was established. Britain also has an exceptional number of ancient trees compared to the rest of Europe, these trees are a living history, wrapped up with mythology and traditions stretching back thousands of years. Trees provide a home for other forms of wildlife from lichens and fungi, to insects, birds and small mammals. They are also a valuable source of food for wildlife and humans alike, as well as timber having many uses; from being a fuel or an important raw material to build everything from ships and buildings, to fine furniture to the more mundane but essential: paper for toilet rolls.
As a young boy I can just about remember the grand knarled Elm trees around the farm, most of which succumbed to the devastating Dutch Elm Disease which just about wiped this species out. Luckily, a few Elms survived which are resistant to the disease, but this is now a rare sight. From the 1980s, farmers started to be encouraged by government policy to plant trees on their farms to replace the former trees that had been lost over the years from Dutch Elm disease and from those pulled out following the second World War, where government policy had encouraged farmers to grow more food ensuring Britain was never held hostage to food shortages again.
Over the years, my father and I have planted well over 8,000 trees on our farm. Father started this in 1987, establishing two small copses of native deciduous hardwoods and fruiting trees in awkward field corners. Now some thirty years later, these trees have added real beauty to the landscape, as well as providing habitat and food for wildlife. From autumn 1989, as soon as I left school, I planted my first trees on the farm and spent many subsequent winters with a spade and flask of tea planting trees and hedges around the farm. Over the years, these have needed weeding, tending and replacing ones that either died in summer droughts, or were eaten by Muntjac and hares. But now as they grow and mature, I find real pleasure in seeing them evolve, becoming part of the landscape.
When I first started planting trees and hedges on the farm, my motivation was to improve the visual character of the farm, by creating a network of small copses linked by hedgerows next to water courses or across fields. For example, I created a beetle bank across our largest field and planted it with a mixture of tree and hedge plants. This created a wildlife corridor from an old hedge at one end to a small copse at the other. Over the years it has provided habitat for Grey Partridge and other farmland birds, as well as small mammals and insects, including of course beetles. It is visible from a nearby bridleway, providing an interesting focal point on the horizon.
In addition to the visual and wildlife benefits, many of the trees we have planted such as English Oak, will in time be a source of quality timber, however this will be long after I have gone. But I have also planted a couple of areas of Poplar trees purely for their timber around twenty years ago. This is a quick growing hardwood which takes around twenty five years to mature. So these will soon be ready to cut down to make pallets or furniture frames, following which we will replant the areas with more trees in their place to start the cycle over again.
Since I started planting trees on our farm as a way of improving our own little part of the countryside, the appreciation of trees in the wider world to reduce flooding and soil erosion has become more apparent. However, the biggest change over the last decade has been the wider realisation of the ability of trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the sense of despair at the continued global deforestation, especially in the Amazon basin, often thought of as the planet’s lungs. Admittedly the 8,000 trees we have planted is not going to make up for vast tracts of lost rainforest, but every little bit genuinely helps.
Trees absorb carbon dioxide all their lives, but are most efficient during their teenage to middle age years. Therefore, the trees we planted between 1987 to around 2005 are currently doing a very good job for us. According to the Farm Carbon Toolkit every hectare of broadleaved deciduous trees will absorb around 4,761Kg of carbon dioxide per year. In addition, for every 1,000m of managed hedgerow, a further 1,175 Kg of CO2 is absorbed every year. On our farm we have doubled the area of woodland over the last thirty years to over 9 hectares and increased the length of hedgerows to over 14,000m, so our woodland and hedgerows are absorbing over 59 tonnes of CO2 every year.
(To learn more about how plants store CO2 in the soil, have a read of our blog post about why we no longer plough our fields.)
To put this into perspective, an average family car such as our ‘Mellow Yellow Mini’ produces around 117g of CO2 for every kilometre driven, therefore our trees and hedges are removing enough CO2 out of the atmosphere every year to offset over half a million kilometres of driving, which is enough to remove over 40 ‘Mellow Yellow Minis’ off UK roads each year (for the average car use of 11,900 km per year).
With all these great benefits that trees bring to our lives and the world around us, we are certainly going to continue planting trees on our farm. Starting this February, working with the Woodland Trust, we are going to plant up a small area next to a pond with 100 trees, that until recently had scrub and dead elms. This time though, rather than doing all the work ourselves, we are going to invite local people to help us. We will provide the young trees and in return for everyone’s hard work, we will lay on some refreshments to create a real good community spirit. If you would like to join us and plant a tree on Bottom Farm on Sunday 16th February, register for your ticket here.
So yes, I am definitely a Tree Hugger and proud to be called one! Any other prospective tree huggers out there, feel free to sign up to come along in February and plant your very own bit of history in the English countryside.
What is rapeseed oil? Let us answer that for you here…
Rapeseed oil is the oil extracted from the small black seeds found in seed pods grown on the rapeseed plant, Brassica napus, a plant species which is a member of the brassica family. These seeds are tiny, quite hard black seeds with a bright yellow centre which holds a high oil content. To release this oil, the seeds must be either pressed or processed at a high temperature.
Rapeseed oil dripping from a press
We produce our Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil by a traditional cold pressing method which we like to call the ‘process of no process’. We simply squeeze the seeds in a screw press and collect the oil that is released. The screw press is very simple and is an incredibly traditional food production method. A slowly turning screw uses pressure to gently squeeze the seeds which releases the oil. This oil is then passed through a filter (a bit like coffee paper) and then it is ready to go into bottles to be used in your kitchen.
Not all rapeseed oil is produced in the same way though. Some companies use a chemical extraction method to produce refined rapeseed oil. This involves quite an intense process where the rapeseed oil is extracted from the seeds under high temperatures, then is bleached and deodorised using chemicals to create a flavourless and colourless oil. This is often sold as vegetable oil in large quantities to be used for deep frying.
Stages of growth of a rapeseed plant
We sow the seeds into the earth in August straight after harvest time. The seeds are then left to grow throughout September and October with the rain at this time of year helping. Growth slows down from November to February until Spring arrives and it starts to warm up. We put fertiliser on the fields at this time to help the growth. From April onwards, the rapeseed plant continues to grow, becoming a tall, green plant with yellow flowers, about 1m high.
Rapeseed flowers
These yellow flowers appear around May and June time. The flowers then die, leaving a seed pod to grow in their place. This seed pod develops over the late summer months until August when harvest takes place.
Rapeseed pods ready for harvest
A combine harvester cuts down the plant and breaks the seed pods open to release all the little black seeds that have formed. These seeds can then either be planted again to grow even more rapeseed plants the next year, or can be gently cold pressed to produce cold pressed rapeseed oil.
Harvesting rapeseed
What is rapeseed oil also known as?
In the UK, we refer to it as ‘rapeseed oil’ or ‘cold pressed rapeseed oil’ depending on the way it is produced. However, in Canada and the USA, they know it as ‘canola oil’. This stands for Canadian Oil Low Acid, which refers to the low erucic acid of the product.
Some people ask us if we use any genetically modified (GM) rapeseed. Our seeds are not GM and additionally, they are LEAF Marque. LEAF stands for Linking the Environment And Farming and means that they we are independently audited to ensure that our farming methods are both sustainable and sensitive to the environment.
What is rapeseed oil used for?
With a high smoke point, rapeseed oil is a brilliant culinary oil and is great for roasting, frying, baking or dressing. Take a look at our recipes using Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil here. As well as a culinary oil, we use our Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil as an ingredient for our range of salad dressings, infused oil and mayonnaise. With its subtle nutty flavour and low saturated fat content, it is perfect for this and creates delicious and healthy dressings and mayonnaise with a beautiful yellow colour.
Mellow Yellow range
What is so special about Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil?
– Duncan Farrington, a fourth generation farmer, was the UK’s original seed-to-bottle producer of cold pressed rapeseed oil back in 2005.
– Our rapeseed is grown to LEAF Marque standards, a system designed to promote environmentally responsible and sustainable farming.
– Grown, cold pressed and bottled on the Farrington’s family farm in Northamptonshire.
– Flavour is key. Our cold pressed rapeseed oil is not brash or punchy, with mellow nutty and buttery tones.
– 90% less saturated fat than coconut oil and half the saturated fat of olive oil.
– Ten times more Omega 3 than olive oil with a healthy balance of Omega 3, 6 and 9.
So what is rapeseed oil? It is a brilliant culinary oil that is produced from the oil found in seeds from the rapeseed plant. Cold pressed rapeseed oil is produced by gently squeezing the seeds and has a subtle nutty flavour and is low in saturated fat with a high smoke point. Find out more about Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil here and find your local stockist here.
Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil is a fantastically healthy choice for your cooking oil, so we know that lots of people choose our products when they are following various diets, for example, Weight Watchers, Slimming World, the 5:2 diet and many others.
In order to make it as simple as possible for those following these diets, we have worked out the nutritional information for the full Mellow Yellow range depending on the diet you’re following. If you would any other nutritional information about our range of products, please get in touch with us on info@farrington-oils.co.uk.
If you would like to learn more about the nutritional properties of Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil, we have a number of articles written by The British Nutrition Foundation:
– Introduction to Healthy Fats
– Comparison of Different Culinary Oils
On the 8th August, we took part in 24 Hours in Farming, the agricultural industry’s biggest online event, which highlights the pride of the nation’s food producers and encourages farmers to show the general public a typical working day through the power of social media using the hashtag #Farm24. Starting at 5am on Thursday 8th and finishing at 5am on Friday 9th, this 24 hour event encouraged British farmers to share an insight into their day to show consumers the effort and care that goes into producing their food.
Duncan Farrington ready for #Farm24
Starting first thing in the morning, Duncan had to move all the barley in the barn back as far as possible, to give plenty of room for the barley he was due to the harvest throughout the day.
View from inside the combine harvester
Meanwhile, Robert (Duncan’s father) and Marvin (our farm worker) started preparing the combine harvester. This involved cleaning the windscreen, blowing the dust from the combine to reduce fire risk, setting up the GPS and getting the combine ready for a busy day. Once everything was set, Marvin starting combining. We use GPS to pinpoint our location in the field and steer the combine through the field, ensuring that each length of the field is harvested as efficiently as possible, reducing fuel usage and taking less time.
We were harvesting spring barley on this particular day. This year our spring barley was destined to be made into malt for beer, so a fairly important crop in our opinion!
Barley being unloaded into the trailer
Whilst Marvin drove the combine, Duncan and Robert took it in turns to fill a trailer load of harvested barley from the combine and take it back to the farm yard and tip it into the barn. By having both Duncan and Robert do this, they were able to keep up with the speed Marvin was harvesting at so the combine didn’t have to stop at any point.
Cover crop seeds – buckwheat & phacelia
We visited another field on Bottom Farm, this one was harvested a few days previously and then planted with cover crops. We use cover crops to improve the health of our soil, but the key benefit is the fact that they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store the carbon in the soil (more info here). We planted buckwheat (the bigger, pyramid shaped seeds) which scavenge for phosphate and helps young plants’ root development. We also planted phacelia (the tiny seeds) which have fibrous roots for soil structure. On the same day as #Farm24, the UN also released their latest climate change report, which highlighted the importance of soil and storing carbon from the atmosphere in soil, which is exactly what our cover crops do!
Whilst Duncan was busy with harvest, his wife Eli jumped in a tractor and rolled the fields of cover crops. Rolling smooths the field and ensures the seeds are pushed into a good soil base to give them the best chance for growing.
Eli Farrington in tractor
Next, we headed over to the Mellow Yellow production barn. Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil is grown, pressed and bottled on the farm. First of all, the seeds go into big yellow hoppers which feeds the seed into the presses. The seed is then cold pressed which involves being gently squeezed until the yellow oil is released. The seed husk is not wasted, it is shaped into pellets and sold to local farmers as high quality animal feed for cattle, pigs and sheep.
Rapemeal
Rapeseed oil dripping from press
Once the seed has been pressed, the oil trickles out and is simply passed through a filter, a bit like coffee paper, before it is put into bottles. These bottles were then destined for Morrisons, the sponsors of 24 Hours in Farming, a lovely coincidence!
Returning back to the combine harvester, Duncan, Robert and Marvin had lots of barley to harvest, so ended up going until half 10 that night, it’s a good thing the combine has headlights! By the end of the day, we had managed to harvest all the barley, which we were VERY pleased with, especially as rain started to fall the minute after we had shut the combine into the barn, perfect timing or what! The weather often causes problems around harvest, the crops may be ready but if it’s raining, we can’t combine as the moisture levels must be low.
Duncan, Robert and Marvin after a busy day’s harvesting
Throughout the day, hundreds and thousands of British farmers and food producers shared images and videos from their day with #Farm24. It was a fantastic day for learning about how our food is produced. #Farm24 was trending for most of the day and over 8 million people saw the photos and videos shared throughout the day! For more information on 24 Hours in Farming, please visit Farmer’s Guardian here: https://www.fginsight.com/24hoursinfarming/sponsored—24hoursinfarming
On Tuesday 25th June, we welcomed almost 400 people to Bottom Farm, the home of Farrington’s Mellow Yellow. We were this year’s host of Universal Cookery and Food Festival. This festival is held at a different venue each year and is attended by chefs, food producers and food industry professionals. We have attended in previous years when it has been hosted at Laverstoke Park (where Jody Scheckter makes his famous Buffalo Mozzarella), Padstow Farm Shop and Westlands Nurseries (the home of microherbs and edible flowers) and Duncan has always thought that Bottom Farm would be an ideal location. After working out if it would be possible and scouting locations for all the different parts of UCFF, we were honoured to be chosen as the host for the festival in 2019.
After months of organising, the week of the festival arrived. Our grain store was transformed, with two bays being used for food producer’s stalls and a main stage and a game stage being built at the back of each. Outside, a huge marque was built, with even more food producers inside, and an ice cream van, falconry and deer on the grass outside. With plenty of entertainment going on throughout the day, guests were kept busy with superb demonstrations and talks and on the stages about topics relevant to the food industry today, Mellow Yellow farm and factory tours, foraging tours and clay pigeon shooting. Throughout the day, a team of chefs headed by Alan Paton, Matt Wilby and their team, alongside trainee chefs from Northampton College cooked breakfast, lunch and a BBQ for all guests, including truly delicious bacon buns, smoked pigeon chimichurri, crispy chicken wings, a ploughmans grazing station and tasty salads.
UCFF was established by three chefs from the Craft Guild of Chefs – Jon Feeney, Lee Maycock and Ian Nottage. They wanted a show created by chefs, for chefs, full of an eclectic mix of demonstrations, workshops, in-land and coastal foraging, farm tours and live debates to create an event unlike anything else available.
Mellow Yellow Farm & Factory Tours:
A true field-to-bottle experience. First we took guests into a field of rapeseed and explained how we grow our crops to sustainable LEAF Marque standards, the timeline of a growing rapeseed crop and the harvesting process. After this, the tour moved into our production barn where guests were able to see our oil presses gently squeezing the rapeseed to produce oil, filtering and storage of oil and then finally, the oil being bottled ready to be sent to shops and restaurants around the country.
Foraging Tours:
Fred the Forager hosted these tours. Fred is from Fruits of the Forage and is an expert is foraging the British countryside. He started by explaining that foraging comes from bees as they leave the hive every day and ‘forage’ for honey. Hogwood was a particular focus for Fred’s tour as he uses this a lot in his range of homemade jams and chutneys. This is an incredibly common plant in Britain and it was very interesting to hear Fred explain many of the uses for this relatively unknown plant.
Clay Pigeon Shooting:
With the introduction of a Game stage to this year’s UCFF, clay pigeon shooting was an obvious activity to include. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation offered their ‘Have a Go’ clay shooting to guests.
The day ended with a delicious BBQ and music by local band The Ouse Valley Singles Club.
Hosting UCFF in 2019 was a huge honour for us and was truly a day to be remembered! For more information on future UCFF shows, visit their website or follow them on Twitter.
Can you cook with cold pressed rapeseed oil? We get asked this question quite a lot, and the answer is simply YES. There is a lot of information about how some oils are only for drizzling or cooking at low temperatures and that some oils are meant for high temperature cooking, so let us explain the differences between the oils and what makes them suitable for high temperature cooking.
The way to tell if an oil is suitable for cooking with is to look at its smoke point. Smoke point is the temperature at which oil can be heated to before it starts to produce smoke. Once an oil goes above its smoke point, other than the unpleasant smoke that is created, the oil itself also starts to breakdown and the nutritional composition changes.
Different oils have different smoke points, below shows the smoke point of common cooking oils. This is a great way for you to choose the oil that you need for your cooking and which oil you may want for other uses, such as drizzling.
Smoke points of common cooking oils
Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil – 230°C
Sunflower Oil – 225°C
Extra Virgin Olive Oil – 190°C
Coconut Oil – 175°C
Butter – 120°C-150°C
Typically, when roasting in an oven, your oil will get up to 180°C, so for roasting you need to ensure you choose an oil with a smoke point above this. For pan frying, you may reach up to 220°C and deep frying is typically around 180°C.
When choosing a cooking oil, you need to ensure that the smoke point is suitable for what you want to use it for. As well as smoke point, nutritional composition and flavour are also very important.
Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil is an ideal all-round cooking oil. With a high smoke point of 230°C, you know that you can use it for all types of cooking. As well as the smoke point, our cold pressed rapeseed oil also has a lovely subtle, nutty flavour, which means it great for cooking all sorts of delicate ingredients such as fish and also adds a lovely nutty flavour when used a drizzle or pouring oil. In terms of nutrition, cold pressed rapeseed oil has half the saturated fat of olive oil and ten times less than coconut oil, it has the correct balance of Omega 3, 6 and 9 which is good for your health and it also contains Vitamin E and Vitamin K. For more information about the health benefits of cold pressed rapeseed oil, read our blog post here.
Delicious recipes to cook with cold pressed rapeseed oil
Now you know that you can cook with cold pressed rapeseed oil, here are our some of our favourite recipes to cook with cold pressed rapeseed oil that take advantage of the versatility of this brilliant oil…
Roast potatoes
By using Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil, you can create a beautifully crunchy coating with a light and fluffy centre. Follow our Roast Potato recipe here.
Stir Fry
Drizzle your oil into a hot wok and enjoy cooking a stir fry without creating lots of smoke. Find our Vegetable Stir Fry and Dipping Sauce recipe here.
Crispy Baked Chicken Goujons
Mixed with panko breadcrumbs, the oil on the outside of these goujons gets super crispy in the oven without needing to deep fry! Find the recipe here.
Raspberry & White Chocolate Granola Bars
The subtle, nutty flavour of cold pressed rapeseed oil is perfect in these simple and delicious granola bars. Recipe here.
For more recipes, visit our Recipe page.
To find stockists of our Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil, visit our Where to Buy page.
Did you know that making cakes with oil is just as easy and tasty as using butter? Well we have plenty of recipes for you to get started baking with oil.
One of the main benefits we find when making cakes with oil is that you no longer have to struggle to combine hard butter with sugar. Simply pour your oil into a mixing bowl with your sugar and mix, as the oil is a liquid you will find it so much easier and quicker to combine the two.
With a subtle nutty flavour, Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil is great for making cakes as this nuttiness is very subtle but adds a wonderful depth of flavour to your bakes.
As well as being easier and with a delicious flavour, using Mellow Yellow for baking acts as a brilliant butter substitute so you can make vegan or dairy free cakes.
Our favourite recipes…
Courgettes make this tasty cake wonderfully moist. With a lime cream cheese frosting, the sweetness is perfectly balanced to create a cake that doesn’t feel heavy or too indulgent. Our recipe can be found here.
A seasonal delight and a refreshing change from rhubarb crumble. Almond and rhubarb join together in this delicious cake, an easy yet impressive bake to enjoy during the rhubarb season. Enjoy with a dollop of creme fraiche for a simple and delicious dessert, recipe here.
We love making delicate little apple roses to decorate this cake with. Thanks to the apple, this recipe creates a particularly moist cake that is wonderful enjoyed with a cup of tea. Fill with whipped cream for that extra indulgent touch!
This recipe is made in one bowl to keep it super simple and reduce washing up. Use overripe bananas rather than throwing them away to keep your food waste to a minimum and enjoy this delicious banana bread in the process, find our recipe here.
This cake is fantastic, especially when made with seasonal British plums which create a lovely decoration on top the cake. With ground almonds in the sponge, this cake has a lovely nutty flavour to it which is complemented by the sweetness of ripe plums.
We hope these tasty recipes inspire you to start making cakes with oil!
For more information on our brilliant cold pressed rapeseed oil, visit our Product page.
For stockists, visit our Where To Buy page.
For more recipe inspiration, visit our Recipe page.
“Salads are good for us.”
Everyone agrees with this statement as we are encouraged to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables, including salads, every day. Salads provide an essential source of vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants and fibre, as well as being a delicious meal or accompaniment to meals. So why are we telling you to never eat a salad naked?
As people become more aware of healthy diets, the desire for low fat, low sugar or low salt meals and ingredients increases. This is especially so with oils, mayonnaises and salad dressings as ‘low fat’ or single calorie sprays become increasingly popular. At Farrington’s Mellow Yellow we often speak to customers who are keen to eat a healthy low-fat diet, to the extent that they don’t like to put salad dressings or mayonnaise on their salad with the aim of reducing their fat intake. The logic and ambition may be good, but a quest to reduce calorie intake by eating a salad un-dressed actually deprives people of the fantastic health promoting nutrition locked up in the salad. Not only is a fat required to absorb the nutrition within a salad, dressing a salad makes it more interesting and delicious to eat, helping you to make it a regular and enjoyable part of your diet. Also consideration should be given to the choice of fat used, but more on that later.
Salads are a wonderful source of vitamins and carotenoids. Vitamins play vital roles in health and body metabolism, along with their interaction with minerals required in the diet. We need to take vitamins in small regular amounts in our diet as the body can not store them and they can even be harmful if taken in excess. Vitamins are either fat soluble or water soluble, with Vitamins A, D, E and K being fat soluble. Salads contain fat soluble vitamins, so unless a salad is dressed with an oil-based dressing or mayonnaise, it is very difficult for the body to absorb these vitamins. By eating a healthy, balanced diet, there is no need for vitamin supplements to be taken.
Carotenoids are the naturally-occurring pigments in foods, with fruits and vegetables providing most of the carotenoids in the human diet. They play important roles in the body as powerful anti-oxidants; from the prevention of various types of cancers and chronic heart disease, to the maintenance of healthy eyesight. Carrots, known to help us see in the dark, get their orange colour from Alpha and Beta-Carotene. While the yellow colour of Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil comes from carotenoids called Luteins, containing around five times more than in extra virgin olive oil.*
Carotenoids are fat-soluble compounds so, just like the fat-soluble vitamins, to get the best nutritional benefit from colourful salad ingredients such as peppers, carrots, spinach and tomatoes, dress your salad with a fat to allow your body to absorb the carotenoids. However, research has shown that the type of fat eaten also affects how well we can absorb carotenoids from food. For example, a salad dressing made with an oil rich in mono-unsaturated fats, such as cold pressed rapeseed oil, absorbs more carotenoids compared to a dressing made with oils rich in saturated or poly-unsaturated fats, such as soybean, palm, sunflower or coconut oils for example. So not only should you ensure your salad is dressed with a fat, you should try to ensure the fat is rich in mono-unsaturates.
Why you should never eat a salad naked:
– Adding fat to salad allows your body to process the fat-soluble vitamins
– Using an oil rich in mono-unsaturated, such as cold pressed rapeseed oil, helps the body absorb anti-oxidant caratonoids
– Adding flavour helps motivate you to eat healthy salads regularly by making them more enjoyable
So, whether you are a purest and enjoy your salad simply drizzled with oil, like to pimp up a lettuce leaf creatively with a salad dressing, or if you prefer an indulgent dollop of mayonnaise; remember never eat a salad naked. The best dressed salads not only taste better, but make their nutritional delights all the more enjoyable. And just pause to think if a single calorie spray oil, a low fat salad dressing or mayonnaise really is as healthy as you first thought? Not to mention what actually goes into making some of those so-called healthy options…
But as far as the clothing you chose to wear, or not, while enjoying your favourite salad, we’ll leave that up to you.
* Crude rapeseed oil contains up to 95 mg/kg carotenoids, comprising about 85-90% luteins and 7-10% as carotene (Gunstone 2004). Extra virgin olive oil also contains luteins and carotene, but at levels of up to 20mg/kg only (Bosku, 2009) i.e., it only contains around one fifth the carotenoid antioxidant properties of rapeseed oil.
Bosku D., (2009). Olive oil Minor Constituents and Health CRC press p52.
Gunstone F D., (2004). Rapeseed and Canola Oil; Productrion, Processing, Properties and Uses, Blackwell Publishing
The rapeseed crop has been grown in Britain for a number of centuries, in fact, it was first introduced to the UK by the Romans. Rapeseed is a brassica and is related to such plants as the cabbage, mustard and turnip for example. Rapeseed became a popular crop in the UK from the 1970’s, as farmers were encouraged to grow it due to increasing demand for a refined British rapeseed oil by food manufacturers, as an alternative to other imported refined oils. The oil also became popular in Canada and the USA and became known as canola oil.
Rapeseed continued to be used purely as a refined oil until 2005, when Duncan Farrington became the UK’s first seed-to-bottle producer of cold pressed rapeseed oil. After studying the oil as part of his degree, he was fascinated by the health and culinary benefits when it was cold pressed. So, in 2005 he set up a small press on his family farm and started cold pressing the rapeseed grown in his fields. The oil was a huge success and British cold pressed rapeseed oil is now a store cupboard staple for many households up and down the country.
Benefits of cold pressed rapeseed oil
– Half the saturated fat of olive oil and ten times less than coconut oil
– Healthy balance of Omega 3, 6 and 9
– 10 times more Omega 3 than olive oil
– A rich source of vitamin E
– Contains plant sterols and phenols
– High smoke point of 230°C
– Subtle, nutty flavour with buttery notes
Producing British Rapeseed Oil
We are so proud to produce British rapeseed oil. As we grow, press and bottle our Mellow Yellow oil on our farm in Northamptonshire, it is truly British. Normally planted in August, a rapeseed crop is incredibly difficult to establish as it needs perfect conditions for it to survive the first couple months as it emerges through the soil. To ensure success the crop requires a combination of good soil nutrition and structure; moisture in the soil (but not too much); warm soils, ideally over 9°C; no pests, especially Cabbage Flea Beetles and Slugs, both of which find newly emerged tender leaves incredibly delicious and can decimate a crop in a matter of days. Later in the winter months, pigeons also enjoy eating the leaves which we try to stop with bird-scarers.
If the farmer’s skill, along with a bit of mother nature’s help get the crop through to the spring, then rapeseed starts looking after itself as the days lengthen and the weather warms. From late February onwards it starts waking up and literally grows before your eyes, going from a small cabbage like plant to something over a metre tall in a matter of weeks. By April the crop starts flowering, giving the countryside the recognisable yellow fields. The flowers are pollinated by native bumble bees, to produce the tiny black seeds ready to harvest some eleven months after the crop was first planted.
As well as the weather affecting the growth of the rapeseed crop, weather conditions at harvest time also affects the quality of the finished oil. Ideally the seeds need to be harvested in cool dry conditions, as moist warm conditions will spoil the crop and encourage the growth of moulds. Once harvested, the seed is stored with the moisture and temperature carefully controlled to ensure the seed is keep in the best possible condition, ready to be cold pressed to make a deliciously healthy, quality British rapeseed oil.
Where to buy British Rapeseed Oil
Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil is available nationally from Booths, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and many independent farm shops and delis. In order to find your local stockist, visit our Where to Buy page and just enter your postcode.
