Just to give you a sense of the difference, we are used to cook almost exclusively with olive oil. We buy "virgin" olive oil from reputable brands for the saladas and special dishes. The home made one is soo much better compared to those.
I love it!
(Bertolli-style oil is a fine thing to have in your kitchen, too; you might not want your mayonnaise to taste like strong Greek olive oil.)
Luckily for me, I stumbled upon California Olive Ranch oil.
Again, a good way to handle this is to drop $35 on a bottle from some place like Zingermans, and just use it as a benchmark.
Beers have all sorts of different flavors, olive oils too, and honestly, you're really going to have no idea until you try them. Price doesn't mean anything, you just have to see what you personally like, and different olive oils "work" for different kinds of dishes. You want a pepperier one with one thing, and a fruitier one with another.
There's no way to inform yourself except by taste-testing them. When I move to a new city, I'll buy several bottles of olive oil from whatever shop, none too expensive, and will usually discover I really love one or two of them, and reserve them for salads/finishing/etc. The rest, I'll use for frying/etc. where the flavor matters much less, and then buy cheap Bertoli for frying/etc. once those others are gone.
So you do have to be "serious" about oil if you want to. But if you don't want to, then that's fine! Just buy the cheap stuff, obviously.
The only way I've had success is to buy inexpensive single-source stuff, even if it's inexpensive and non-Italian. Best olive oils I've had were single-sourced from Spain; $2 from a discount store. Maybe no-one wants to fake non-Italian oil?
I'm surprised "they" haven't worked to further regulate the field; apparently one problem is that developing chemical tests to reliably discern real from fake olive oil is very difficult.
I'm curious why the original article wasn't the one submitted (though it's inserted at the bottom of that entry).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/13/extra-virginity-...
Personally: stories like this should read as good news; they mean you have a lot to gain for dorking around with new oils.
http://www.theperfectpantry.com/2012/01/recipe-for-bok-choy-...
The submitted article is hosted on the original author's blog.
Later, I looked it up online, and found this gem -- according to the NY Olive Oil competition, "Alfar La Maja is one of the world's best extra virgin olive oils for 2013."
Another matter is that of honesty. Italy is known to export more olive oil than it produces and it is buying production from quite a lot of towns in my country and then mixing it and packaging it with oils from other places.
If you want good olive oil, try to find small productions, ensure that it was stored in the dark if possible and taste it first (dipping bread on the oil not just sprinkling, it should be quite soaked). Supermarket olive oil of any price is only suitable for frying, that much is known.
http://www.worldsofflavorspain.com/node/385
(arbequina is a most common variety and more spicy in the aftertaste, but as you can see, like with wine, different varieties produce so different results that talking in generics is rather uneducated).
Yeah, yeah.
and both the [eminent] foodies gave a thumbs-up to Unilever's much-derided Bertolli brand.
Same as with wine. It's just a fruit and the variations from its production simply aren't as great as people like to think. Anyway, the best fat comes from bacon.
It is so much like that, that now that I live abroad I'm flying with 8l packs of my town's oil at least twice a year.
I couldn't have been happier with the result... and even if you use a fair amount of oil it still takes a while to go through 750ml of the stuff, so that fact that it's $18/bottle doesn't break the bank. (and it keeps well if kept isolated from air and light) Er, well, I mean used properly: raw in food, not for cooking. You shouldn't heat good evo as its smoke point is lower than random supermarket mystery olive oil, and heating it removes most of the flavor anyways.
Opinions may differ though, I could certainly see some people really disliking the grassy acidic flavor of strong EVO.
(I'd rather not pay huge shipping fees for some of the other things listed here.)
E.g. http://www.titanfoods.net/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store...
Actual Italian immigrants are scare on the ground these days, so I'm not convinced you'd see anything particularly unique in e.g. the Arthur Avenue section of the Bronx. But I could be wrong.
For cooking, grape seed is the best. I've worked in alot of top restaurants, for cooking they use grape seed exclusively.
Extra virgin olive oil should only be used when you want the specific flavour it provides (ie. drizzled on things like pizza, pasta, bread, etc...).
Quality conscious and low on bullshit.
The end of this article has some tips to ensure getting the best oil.
http://news.discovery.com/earth/plants/olive-oil-health-bene...
http://www.monell.org/news/news_releases/olive_oil_contains_...
[1] http://www.gaea.gr/, [2] http://www.papadim.com/en/products/extra-virgin-olive-oil/, [3] http://www.fiveoliveoil.com/five-olive-oil-from-greece/, [4] http://www.eleia.gr/index_en.html, [5] http://www.moriaelea.com/?page_id=42, [6] http://www.maleasoliveoil.gr/en/olive-oil.
Greek marketing and distribution has been poor, however, and very slowly improving. The traditional place to buy it in the U.S. has been in 5-liter tins at Mediterranean grocery stores catering to immigrants (depending on the region, these might be "Greek", "Lebanese", "Turkish", or "Arab" supermarkets). These are a great deal, especially if you cook with it, but off the radar of most regular shoppers. Lately I have been seeing it in smaller bottles in normal grocery stores more often. Trader Joe's now has a house brand of 100% Greek Kalamata olive oil, which they buy in bulk and bottle, and is very good for the price.
This is one thing the Italians got way out front of the Greeks on. Both Italians and Greeks at home will not typically buy small glass bottles of olive oil; the 5-L tin is the typical container. Partly that's because it's used in cooking, not just to sprinkle on salads or pasta. Especially in Greece and southern Italy, it's the main cooking fat, since butter, lard, canola oil, sunflower-seed oil, etc. are not widely used. But Italians realized that selling smaller bottles to the boutique export market was a good business, while Greeks only realized later that there was this market for premium-priced oil in a 500-mL bottle, aimed at people who use it for smaller-volume things (i.e. not for cooking imam baildi or French fries).
It does last a long time, though, so if you want a good deal, find your local Mediterranean market and pick up a tin, then transfer portions to a more convenient bottle with a funnel. Kept in a cool, dark place, you should get several years of shelf life.
edit: Everywhere I said 5-L above, substitute 3-L. Misremembered the size. The tins are rectangular and look like this: http://www.thegoodfoodnetwork.com/shop/images/26713/Iliada-p...
The interesting things I took away from my meeting with this man were:
1. A lot (if not most) olive oils sold in markets are blends of oil that include cheap oils such as canola.
2. Many local producers throughout the country were unable to meet demand...so they would buy from him and then add to their "locally produced" olive oil which they would in turn sell at a huge premium on site, at farmers markets, and at grocery stores.
I don't have the business any longer, so unfortunately I don't have access to my supplier anymore. For now, I get all of my olive oil via Whole Foods...their store brand is the best priced and I assume that they have some relationships with their producers which minimizes the chance of being hoodwinked.
The only reason I quote the book's author is because on the Amazon review site, he exchanges some additional thoughts on olive oil with some Amazon users.
Here is the list, which is linked from Mueller's site: http://www.truthinoliveoil.com/great-oil
[0] http://www.amazon.com/review/R8G1CO1XY4DJ7/ref=cm_cr_rev_det...
And FYI, not many people press their own olives anymore. Typically they'll bring their harvest to a factory that will do it for them. And the pressing that is done is typically not a cold press, and they're certainly going to press it more than once. Oil is food, they're not just going to throw food away to be fancy. But what you will get from this process is still miles above anything you will get at the grocery store.
Other things to look for: the bottle says if it's filtered or unfiltered (the unfiltered stuff has much more of a peppery kick), there is a production date, there is a best before date, it says that the oil has been cold-pressed and mechanically extracted, and there is an indication of the region of Italy that the olives come from.
I have never been disappointed by using this method, but of course not every good oil is certified. For reference, today I bought Planeta DOP Val di Mazara oil, which is even available on Amazon [3]. Their price is 50% more expensive than what I paid though.
[1] http://italian.about.com/b/2008/07/19/waiter-my-cheese-has-b...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_t...
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Planeta-Extra-Virgin-Olive-Oil/dp/B005...
Get a couple Paesano loaves to go with it (throw the extra loaves in your freezer). I don't know what it is about that bread --- I think they mill some of their own flour --- but it is crazy and addictive.
Well, shit. This thread just cost me $400.
My method isn't to "fetishize the origin/process" (what, do you think I'm like 12?), but to look for oils that carry lesser-desirable (and hence less likely to be gamed) properties (e.g. sourced from outside Italy; inexpensive).
A decent heuristic for finding good olive oil is to look for small producers that cultivate weird local olive varieties. These are generally the ones aiming at high quality. Such varieties are usually much less profitable.
Don't listen to people saying that Greek oil is the best one. That's utter non-sense, and a gross generalization. It's like saying that French cars are better than German ones. Sure, some French cars are awesome, but the Germans produce some fine ones too.
I'm Italian, and my favorite variety is Manzanilla Cacereña---a really weird olive oil from mid-West Spain. There are some fine Portuguese, French, Italian, Greek... ones as well. Just find a good local producer through the Internet and get it shipped to your place. I buy everything using this procedure. It's a bit inconvenient initially, but once you find your suppliers...
Our olives are hand-picked and cold pressed within 24 hours of picking. We produce about 200-250L of oil per year so it is a boutique operation.
We are currently bottling our 2013 oil and have a few bottles in excess of our pre-orders. If anyone on HN is interested in a bottle of gold medal standard Tasmanian oil, please message me for the details.
The Spanish wonder why Americans like Italian olive oil. The Italians wonder why Europeans like Spanish olive oil. The Greeks wonder why people call anything but what comes from Greece olive oil. The French wonder why everyone doesn't use butter.
But the fact is, the best olive oil is the one you like best. I'm lucky enough to be in the Bay Area and olive oil tastings are very easy to come by and so I've found a couple California olive oils that suit me just fine.
I'm not sure if it's available at all locations, seems to come and go seasonally at mine.
He's at the San Rafael, CA farmers market every Sunday and Alemany market in SF on Saturdays. He also ships anywhere in the US.
Serious good olive oils all taste very different, so the whole idea of them being interchangeably good is a bit weird.
Remember that each oil has its own smoke point and you shouldn't take Olive oil to it's smoke point. If you need to cook with smoking oil (some Asian cooking) then you need a different oil. I once saw a chart of which oils were best for different uses but I can't find it now.
Does it taste at all like olives, or is it the same bland test-tube oil?
> The traditional place to buy it in the U.S. has been in 5-liter tins at Mediterranean grocery stores catering to immigrants (depending on the region, these might be "Greek", "Lebanese", "Turkish", or "Arab" supermarkets). These are a great deal, especially if you cook with it, but off the radar of most regular shoppers.
This is an excellent tip, thank you.
Most households in Greece will have something like that, and they're easy to find in any country if you go to a Turkish, Greek, or Arab supermarket. I could be wrong about Italy.
I don't buy Italian olive oils any more because of the wide-spread deception. To be fair to the Italians, they were as dishonest as the Greeks and the Spanish. The list of brands was very long and the levels of rancidity/impurity were worrying.
The only name I remember that was found to be honest was Cobham. I think they're an Australian family business (but could be wrong). I have no affiliation with Cobham in any way, except I buy their extra virgin olive oil.
Interestingly, I know rancid oils are very poisonous, but have never found a reference to the ill effects of rancid oils.
Cobram Estate, as well as many other Australian olive oil brands are certified by the Australian Olive Association[2]. For some reason they have a separate website[3] for listing certified brands.
[1]http://cobramestate.com.au/ [2]http://www.australianolives.com.au/ [3]http://australianextravirginoliveoil.com/brands/
It varies by country, but heating doesn't necessarily exclude an oil from "extra-virgin olive oil"; the separate "cold-pressed" label covers that.
Cobram Estate is the oil I buy for dripping/drizzling on any food I eat. I just found it to have the best flavor out of the oils I tried and since they are Australian I thought I woulds stick with them.
I use random Spanish out of a can for cooking though.