Camellia Oil: An Old Staple Morphs into a Superfood
Chang Chiung-fang / photos Jimmy Lin / tr. by Jonathan Barnard
August 2016
Traditionally, the Chinese believed in seven essentials for any home: firewood (or charcoal), rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar and tea. Few people burn wood anymore, and many elect not to eat rice, but virtually no one doesn’t consume the oils used in food preparation. In 2014, a scandal erupted in Taiwan over adulterated cooking oils that led to great anxiety about consuming food prepared with them.
To rest easy about their food, some people began using expensive imported olive oil, while others turned to searching for good fresh oils produced locally.
Seeing is believing: camellia oil, sesame oil, and peanut oil are all oils that are produced and pressed in Taiwan. In particular, camellia oil—known as the Far East’s olive oil—has quickly gained popularity because of its high content of monounsaturated fatty acids. Prices have likewise rocketed.
Exactly what attributes of camellia oil—called a “superfood” and a “healthy oil”—are winning people over?
Shunfa Oil was established in 1963, first as a contract oil presser. Marketing manager Joseph Lin, a member of the family firm’s third generation, began production of Shunfa’s own brand of extra virgin cooking oils several years ago. He has commissioned the design of glass bottles and gift boxes and has opened a store in a bustling retail location in Taipei’s Zhongshan District. Last year Lin took his cold-pressed camellia oil to a Monde Selection competition in Belgium, and won a bronze medal.
Golden Flower Tea Oil in Miaoli’s Sanwan takes a more mass-market approach. CEO Chen Fu-kang started out 30-some years ago as a wholesaler of the camellia seeds from which camellia oil—a.k.a. tea seed oil—is made. In 2000, Golden Flower began working as an oil presser and supplier for the Leezen organic grocery chain. Because market demand was so high, in 2006 it launched its own brand.
Once the oil adulteration scandal hit, Shunfa’s business took off. Golden Flower likewise ramped up production, so that today it is Taiwan’s largest producer of camellia oil.
In addition to providing seeds to create camellia oil, oil-tea camellias also protect the soil. Consequently, the Agriculture and Food Agency has been trumpeting the benefits of planting the trees in former betel nut orchards.
Camellia oil’s benefits
Chinese have been using camellia oil for more than 2000 years. Yet today most people’s impression of the oil stops at adding it to thin noodle dishes. Many think that camellia oil has a bitter flavor (it’s commonly called “bitter tea oil” in Chinese) and should be left to those with sensitive stomachs or to women who have just given birth.
Is camellia oil necessarily bitter? In truth, no. “Not only is good camellia oil not bitter in taste, it actually has a delicate and pleasant aroma,” says Susan Huang, Golden Flower’s assistant general manager.
Setting aside the subjective matter of fragrance, camellia oil is undoubtedly a good oil. According to Lin, it contains 83% monounsaturated fatty acids, surpassing the 73% of olive oil. And it’s loaded with other healthy components, such as tea polyphenols, chlorophyll, and vitamin E.
Lin holds that camellia oil is simply more nutritious than olive oil. Monounsaturated fats can lower bad cholesterol and raise good cholesterol, helping to protect blood vessels.
What people find particularly surprising is that camellia oil’s fats are stable, with a smoke point of 252°C. That compares to 160°C for common olive oil and 216°C for grapeseed oil. The high smoke point makes camellia oil suited to all manner of cooking methods: sautéing, boiling, frying or deep-frying.
In addition to providing seeds to create camellia oil, oil-tea camellias also protect the soil. Consequently, the Agriculture and Food Agency has been trumpeting the benefits of planting the trees in former betel nut orchards.
Purity well worth the effort
Camellia oil is pressed from the mature seeds of oil tea camellias. Oil tea camellias are members of the family Theaceae, and they are one of only four kinds of woody plants that produce a cooking oil.
From sprouting and planting, you need to wait patiently for four or five years before the plant will flower. And then you need to wait another ten months from pollination to harvesting. It’s not an easy process.
There are two basic types of oil-tea camellias in Taiwan: those planted for the oil alone, which include both large- and small-fruited varieties (Camellia oleifera and Camellia tenuifolia); and a second type, Camellia sinensis, whose leaves are also harvested for tea.
Camellia fruits are harvested once a year, and it’s important to harvest at exactly the right time. Chen Fu-kang says that if you harvest too early, the seeds’ oil content will be low; too late, and the fruit will have dropped and grown moldy, so that no oil can be produced at all.
Producing camellia oil is a simple process.
The harvested seeds are first sun-dried for ten days, after which the outer layer of the shell will naturally separate from the seed. Then a shelling machine is used to remove the second layer. Before pressing the oil, the seeds are crushed into a powder, which is placed into a wooden pail to be sterilized by steaming. The wet powder is then removed and spread out to cool and dry before being formed into layered cakes, which are placed under 200‡300 kilograms of pressure to extract their oil.
“Camellia oil, sesame oil and peanut oil are all seed oils, while olive oil is the oil of a fruit’s flesh,” points out Huang. The biggest difference is that with seed oils you’ve got to first heat the seeds—both to kill germs and to help the seeds stick together, making it easier to extract the oils.
In Taiwan oils are currently extracted using either an expeller press or a hydraulic press.
Lin stresses that Shunfa makes special accommodations so as to be able to “cold press” its oils: “To keep the temperature below 60°C, every step of the process is done by hand, rather than being automated.”
Furthermore, with cold press extraction—as opposed to automated extraction with an expeller press—less of the oil is captured. Lin points out that ten kilos of camellia seeds only yield about one kilo of cold-pressed oil.
At Golden Flower’s camellia oil extraction factory, they place great stress on cleanliness and on keeping the oil contaminant-free. The oil is transferred from the presses to the bottling machines in sealed pipelines so as to reduce the chance of contact with air pollutants, and people entering the factory have to wear dustproof clothing.
Shunfa Oil has been building its reputation for half a century. Joseph Lin, of the family firm’s third generation, has put a focus on raising the profile of the company’s own brand of oils. Sales have been impressive at a shop Shunfa opened in Taipei. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)
Community camellia-oil workshop
Even with its many advantages, camellia oil has gained little acceptance with young people—largely because of its bitter taste.
In comparison to oils that have been chemically processed to lose their heavy scents (and which may contain toxic residues), virgin oils retain their original scents and flavors. But with higher-quality raw material and improvements to pressing technology, camellia oil is losing its stereotypical bitterness.
Huang encourages people to use flavorful oils: “Refined oils may lack strong flavors and colors, but you can’t even tell if they’re fresh or not. They’re totally bland.”
On the other hand, the more natural the food product, the shorter its shelf life. You’ve got to eat it fresh. “The reason for eating fresh oil is the same as for eating freshly ground coffee. The less time it has had to oxidize, the fresher and less acidic it is.”
To promote the concept of freshly pressed oils, in May Golden Flower installed a “community oil workshop” in a structure created from shipping containers in the Hoh Market in Zhubei, Hsinchu County. The workshop both presses fresh camellia oil and sells simple food made with it: bowls of camellia oil and vegetable noodles or garden salads with oil and vinegar. Occasionally it also offers classes on preparing dishes with camellia oil.
Huang points out that most wholesale camellia oil pressers require the purchase of at least 60 kilograms of camellia seeds. It’s hard to consume such a large amount quickly, and it will soon lose its fresh flavor. The community workshop takes the artisanal approach, cold pressing camellia seeds by the single kilo. Customers see for themselves the whole process of defrosting, crushing, steaming and pressing.
Golden Flower Tea Oil’s CEO Chen Fu-kang started out as a wholesaler of camellia seeds. Today, the company has become a vertically integrated force in the industry, cultivating and processing camellia seeds, as well as selling camellia oil and developing products that use it.
Nouvelle camellia oil cuisine
In order to promote camellia oil, Huang has developed a series of sauces made with the oil, including camellia oil mushroom sauce, camellia oil and ginger power sauce, and Hakka lion’s-mane mushroom and Chinese mustard sauce with camellia oil.
As part of her campaign to promote camellia oil over the past two years, Huang has even compiled a collection of recipes using the oil and published them in a cookbook. Her “green latte” calls for well-cooked sweet potato leaves and wood-ear fungus, to which are added apples and pineapples, before the whole mix is juiced with a drizzle of camellia oil. It’s delicious and healthy. Then there’s camellia oil with ginger and fungus, Japanese-style steamed mushrooms with camellia oil, mixed fruits and vegetables barlotto with camellia oil, and so forth. Each of these dishes tastes great and is good for you.
After filtration and settling, the virgin camellia oil put in bottles is crystal clear.
Nourishing people and the environment
Based on figures published in 2014, Taiwan currently produces about 1 million kg of camellia oil per year, mostly in Chiayi, Nantou and Miaoli. Since Taiwan doesn’t produce nearly enough camellia seed itself, more than 90% has to be imported.
In recent years, in order to raise the percentage of food oil products produced domestically and to ensure the safety of food oils, the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute has assembled a camellia oil research team from staff at the Tea Research and Extension Station and the Tainan District Agricultural Research and Extension Station. The team is working on breeding new and improved varieties and advancing growing techniques, so as to improve quality and increase yields.
What’s more, the Agriculture and Food Agency, under a policy of revitalizing farmland, is encouraging farmers to plant camellia and sesame and is bringing farmers and processing plants together to sign production contracts. The AFA is also actively pushing a policy of repurposing abandoned betel nut orchards. Plans call for turning over 4800 hectares of former betel nut orchards to camellia oil production in the years 2014‡2017.
In 2015 Golden Flower worked with the Sunshine Social Welfare Foundation, which promotes oral cancer prevention, to establish an experimental camellia cultivation site in the Sediq Aboriginal village of Gluban (Qingliu) in Nantou County’s Ren’ai Township. Golden Flower provided its oil processing services free of charge.
Thanks to the efforts of many, fresh camellia oil is not only protecting the health of those who consume it, but is also helping to nourish Mother Earth.
The community oil workshop uses simple methods of steaming seeds and pressing oil from them, so as to provide local residents with fresh oil in manageable quantities.
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