Cooking With Olive Oil: Which Bottle for Which Job, From a Producer

Cooking with olive oil is simple: use extra virgin olive oil for nearly everything you do on a stove or in an oven, keep the pan below the point where the oil smokes, and save your best bottle for the end of the dish, where its flavor can actually be tasted. I make olive oil for a living and cook with it every day, and this is the practical guide I give people who ask which bottle goes where.

Yes, you can cook with extra virgin olive oil

The idea that extra virgin olive oil is too delicate for heat comes from smoke point charts, not kitchens. Extra virgin sits around 350 to 410°F, which covers sautéing, roasting, searing, and shallow-frying. And when researchers actually heat oils side by side and measure what they break down into, extra virgin olive oil comes out the most stable of the common cooking oils, because the same polyphenols that make it peppery protect it in the pan. I wrote the long version in our smoke point guide and the frying piece. Here is the short version, method by method.

Sautéing

Medium to medium-high heat, 300 to 350°F at the surface of the pan. This is olive oil's home turf. Onions, garlic, greens, mushrooms, peppers, anything you are softening before it becomes dinner. Use enough oil to coat the pan properly; a dry pan scorches food before it browns it. Two tablespoons for a large skillet is about right.

The bottle: an everyday extra virgin. Ours is Everyday EVOO, pressed the same day it is picked and priced for the pan.

Roasting

Toss vegetables in olive oil, salt, and whatever else, and roast at 400 to 425°F. The oven air is hotter than the oil's smoke point, but the surface of the food is not, because the moisture in the vegetables keeps it cool until it browns. Potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, squash, whole heads of garlic, a chicken: all of it roasts beautifully in olive oil. Use more than you think. Roasted vegetables that come out dry and leathery were under-oiled, not over-cooked.

The bottle: Everyday EVOO or Mature Harvest, which is the rounder, higher-yield oil from the same trees picked later in the season.

Searing

A hot pan, a steak or a piece of fish, a fast crust. This lands around 400°F, at the top of extra virgin's range, so the technique matters: get the pan hot, add the oil, and add the food within a few seconds, before the oil sits alone at temperature. If you preheat oil in an empty pan for two minutes on high, any oil will smoke. That is the pan, not the oil.

The bottle: Mature Harvest. It handles heat comfortably and has less of the bitterness that gets lost at high temperature anyway.

Frying

Shallow-frying and pan-frying at 350 to 375°F, olive oil does well: chicken cutlets, fritters, halloumi, potatoes. Deep-frying also works, and much of Spain, Greece, and Turkey deep-fries in olive oil daily. At home, the problem with deep-frying is the method, not the oil: a lot of hot oil, splatter, poor ventilation, and a disposal question at the end. If you do it, do it properly and do not reuse the oil more than once or twice.

Baking

Olive oil is a better baking fat than most people expect. Cakes, quick breads, muffins, and granola come out moister and keep longer. To swap for butter, use about three quarters the amount of oil: for one cup of butter, use three quarters of a cup of olive oil. A fruity, not-too-bitter oil is the right choice for sweet things, which is why our recipes for olive oil cake, fig cake, and zucchini bread all lean on Mature Harvest.

Dressings, dips, and finishing

This is where the expensive bottle earns its keep, because nothing is heated and everything is tasted. Salad dressings, bread for dipping, a pour over soup, beans, grilled fish, or roasted vegetables after they come out of the oven. A peppery early harvest oil, used raw, is the single biggest upgrade most home kitchens can make, and it costs a few cents a serving.

The bottle: Early Harvest, picked green in October, with around 500 mg/kg of polyphenols by HPLC to IOC Doc 29 at pressing. Do not cook it away. Pour it on at the end.

Two bottles is the answer

Most kitchens want one oil for heat and one for finishing. Cooking every dish in a $40 finishing oil is wasteful, and finishing every dish with a $12 cooking oil is a missed opportunity. Everyday EVOO or Mature Harvest by the stove, Early Harvest on the table. That is how we cook at home, and it is how the kitchens I grew up around in Milas cook too.

Three mistakes to stop making

Storing the bottle next to the stove. Heat and light are the two fastest ways to ruin an oil. Keep it in a cabinet, capped.

Heating an empty pan of oil on high. Add the food soon after the oil, or lower the flame. Smoke means the pan was hotter than the job.

Rationing the good oil. Polyphenols do their work at daily doses, not at special occasions. Use it.

Frequently asked questions

Is it healthy to cook with olive oil?

Yes. Extra virgin olive oil is the most heat-stable common cooking oil in side-by-side testing, and it keeps most of its monounsaturated fat and a good share of its polyphenols through normal cooking. It is the fat the Mediterranean diet research was built on.

Does heating olive oil destroy its benefits?

Some polyphenols are lost at high heat, and none of the fat's benefit is. For the most polyphenols per spoon, use early harvest oil raw. For cooking, use an everyday extra virgin and do not worry about it.

Can you cook with extra virgin olive oil at high heat?

Yes, up to roughly 400°F at the surface of the pan, which covers searing and roasting. Refined "light" olive oil goes higher but has had the flavor and polyphenols stripped out.

What is the best olive oil for cooking?

A fresh, harvest-dated extra virgin that you can afford to use generously. The peppery, expensive bottle is for finishing. Here is the full guide to choosing one.

Can you use olive oil in an air fryer?

Yes. Toss the food in a tablespoon or two of extra virgin olive oil before it goes in. Air fryers run at 350 to 400°F, inside olive oil's range, and the oil is on the food, not sitting in a pan.

Can you reuse olive oil after frying?

Once or twice, if you strain it and it still smells clean. If it smells stale or smokes sooner than it did the first time, it is done.

Keep reading

• Olive Oil Smoke Point: The Real Numbers, From a Producer
• Best Olive Oil for Cooking: A Producer's Honest Guide
• Can You Fry With Olive Oil?
• Bread Dipping Oil: A Producer's Guide to Getting It Right

Berk Bahceci