Olive Oil
Cooking with Olive Oil
Just as soy sauce is a staple to Asian cuisine, olive oil is essential ingredient to Mediterranean cuisine. The use of olive oil for cooking has become so prevalent that it has become a must-have in every household kitchen. Touted as the healthier oil to cook food with, it seems like the latest recipes call for using olive oil as a necessary ingredient. Due to a strong demand for olive oil, a grading system was developed to discourage fraudulent products from being circulated. We typically use virgin olive oil, extra-virgin olive oil, refined olive oil, or a blend of these (more commonly known as “pure olive oil” or “light olive oil” for cooking. As you already know, extra-virgin olive oil has the best taste and this is what you find at the restaurants for dipping your bread or for your salad dish. As you can guess, the extra-virgin olive oil is the most expensive type of olive oil.
Tips For Buying Olive Oil
Considering the popularity of olive oils, you know there are nearly hundreds of different brands for olive oil. Short of tasting the brand yourself, we want to some help on what to look out for.
Extra-Virgin vs Pure Olive Oil. You probably already know that the highest quality olive oil to purchase is extra-virgin olive oil. For the best quality, purchase extra-virgin olive oil and avoid bottles that are just labeled as pure olive oil. Virgin refer to the fact that the oil was extracted from the olives that was crushed only once and that no chemicals or heat was used to aid in the extraction. This is important because the olive oil is not refined and there are no additives making virgin olive oil pure and natural. Extra-virgin refers to the fact that the acidity level does not exceed 0.8% while virgin olive oil does not have acidity level exceeding 2%. Think of it like quality control. The less acid present in the olive oil the higher the quality is. Refinement and processing can reduce levels of acid and improve taste, but once this occurs the olive oil can no longer be branded as “virgin olive oil”.
Bottle Color. When buying olive oil, avoid bottles or containers that are clear. Most olive oil brands use dark-green bottles because it minimized the affects of UV rays from the sun damaging the olive oil. For this reason, it is always best to store olive oil away from the windows in a cool, dark area to preserve the taste. If you are buying olive oil in bulk, olive oil stored in cans are fine to purchase.
Place of origin. The best quality olive oils for cooking come from Spain and Italy. Know that just because a bottle is labeled “Italian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil” does not necessarily mean the olives come from Italy. More often than not, the olives come from numerous regions such as Greece, Spain, Turkey, etc in addition to Italy. Just like avid wine drinkers, olive oil connoisseurs will swear by olive oil produced in particular regions because of unique flavors they have.
Is Olive Oil Really Healthy?
There have been quite a bit of research on this topic but the key thing I want to mention when considering the question of whether or not olive oil is healthy is “relative to what?” I’m a fan of the philosophy that doing everything in moderation is key to a healthy lifestyle. I think we can all generally agree that eating food that is prepared fresh will be healthier than eating fried foods, but it’s not like we’re going to avoid using cooking oil. Given that cooking oils are used in nearly all cuisines, there are definitely vegetable oil types that are considered to be a more healthy choice. Going back to our original question of whether or not olive oil is really healthy, I would answer that olive oil is a healthier choice compared to most other cooking oils available.
Olive oil has a high concentration of monounsaturated fats and studies have shown evidence that regular consumption of 2 tablespoons every day may help reduce the risk of heart disease. Similar to omega-3 fats found in fish, olive oil controls the level of LDL (bad) cholesterol in your body and is considered to raise the HDL (good) cholesterol in your body. When you compare olive oil to other cooking oils like peanut or corn, you see that olive oils have one of the highest levels of monounsaturated fats.
How Olive Oil Is Made?
Although there are a wide variety of quality grades and flavors to olive oil, the one thing they have in common is that it comes from the olive fruit. There are thousands of cultivars of olives and by combining the different types of olives available, a unique flavored olive oil can be made. To make olive oil, it all begins with the olive tree. Once the olive fruits mature, farmers harvest the olives from the tree. Prior to machines, harvesting olives was quite labor intensive because it involved going tree by tree, raking the olives off. Now a day, automated harvesters machinery is used because of its efficiency. Once the olives are harvested off the trees, these are taken to production plants where the fruits are washed. The highest quality olive oils minimizes the time between when the fruits are harvested and when they are pressed to produce the oil so once the olives are cleaned they are sent to machines that will grind the olives up. These mills grind the olives to produce a thick pulp paste but caution is undertaken to reduce the amount of heat generated since heat can skew the flavor of olive oil. To produce the actual oil, the thick pulp is placed in between layers of hemp mats where hydraulic presses will squeeze the oil out. To produce virgin olive oil, only a single press occurs. That is the traditional way of producing olive oil. As an alternative method, factories use machines that act as a centrifuge for the olive paste where the oil is collected. After the oil is collected, the olive oil is placed in bottles to be shipped around the world.