vegetable oil substitutes?

[chiver78]

since I'm apparently brain-dead today, I have managed to take trips to 3 different grocery stores and still find that I need something else.

I am making enchiladas tonight, and the sauce recipe calls for vegetable oil. the open bottle I found in the back of the cabinet has an illegible expiration date. given that the label is starting to peel off the bottle, I'm betting it's past due.

I have canola oil in the house, would that be a comparable substitute? I use olive and cottonseed oils most of the time, so I'm not really used to veggie or canola's cooking characteristics. thanks in advance!

[Apple]

From everything I've read in the past, canola is fine to substitute. In large enough quantities it could change the flavor a little, but I'm guessing there isn't enough in the sauce to make much of a difference. If you use so little of the vegetable oil that it goes bad, I wouldn't bother buying another bottle.

[chiver78]

thanks, it's only 3T of oil at the very beginning. I suspect it will be a moot point anyway, because I grabbed the wrong chili powder out of the spice cabinet - hot mexican chili powder in place of regular. yowza! tonight's dish will have drizzled sauce, and hopefully a few weeks in the freezer will tone down the rest of it.

hopefully everything else I've made today comes out OK.