My parents retired to Italy a number of years ago, to a place with a hundred or so olive trees in the garden, and each November some of us head over to pick the olives (much to the amusement of the locals, who think we're crazy to do agricultural work in our spare time) and take them to a nearby pressing plant (where you can wander around and see the process to make sure your harvest isn't being mixed up with other, lesser olives). The end result is much spicier and harsher than anything I've ever bought. Personally I think it's delicious, but I'm hardly an unbiased judge...
Once a year I get some 5 liters of cold pressed virgin organic olive oil. I know it´s origin for sure because it comes from a private guy doing his own stuff on a small cold press (he is not for quantity just for the best quality for his family, it´s a hobby for him).
I agree with you that you won´t find anithing similar in a store: It´s more acid, spicier, deep green, clowdy (it´s unfiltered) and very very tasty (it has some taste to the olives still in it). It defenitely gives flavor to your salads or bread. You can not use it for frying as it will give a distinct flavor, not that it´ll ruin the food but it´ll taste to green olive oil.
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.
It baffles me how people are not puzzled how the "extra virgin" olive oil they use doesn't taste anything like olives. I mean, c'mon people, have you never tasted olives? How do you expect the "unadulterated" extract to have none of that flavor at all?
It baffles me that people expect to buy "extra virgin olive oil" in canola- oil- sized- jugs and expect it to have huge flavor; I get that it's frustrating that the "extra virgin" label has been diluted to meaninglessness, but really, just treat cheap extra virgin oil as if it was "pure olive oil" (saute with it, for instance) and seek out specific oils you really like.
Serious good olive oils all taste very different, so the whole idea of them being interchangeably good is a bit weird.
There is absolutely no way anybody who is serious about olive oil could mistake a serious Tuscan or Greek olive oil for Bertolli, for exactly the reason the article points out: serious olive oil has a grassy, peppery flavor that fills your throat and sinuses; it's unmistakeable, like the difference between a 3 Floyds Dreadnaught DIPA and Bud Light, and the reason Bertolli has "corrupted" extra virgin olive oil is that American consumers won't routinely buy it. I find the anecdote at the beginning of the article hard to reconcile with the rest of the piece!
(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.)
So, unless you are "serious" about oil, you have to take a shot in the dark? I'm no professional cook, but I do have a passion and cook new dishes weekly. I couldn't possibly know, from the store labels, what I can expect out of the 50 versions of EVO on the shelves. They're all EVO, unless I'm serious? They're all from Italy or Greece, unless I'm serious? There's no grounds for oils between Bertolli and "serious" oils that are better suited for salads or dipping -- the "serious" EVOs? The problem exists for $8 to $50 bottles; how can consumers possibly inform themselves that they are buying crap?
Luckily for me, I stumbled upon California Olive Ranch oil.
Yes, if you're buying olive oil at the supermarket, it's going to be a crap shoot. But you're going to know immediately that you've got bland oil (if it tastes anything like other supermarket oils, it's bland; the difference isn't subtle --- again, think about the difference between an IPA and a lager).
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.
Zingerman's is like oil overload. Last time I was there I couldn't even dream about picking a single one out of their entire stock. I just wish there were a way to reliably find reasonably priced, quality oil since I can't afford to spend anywhere near $35/bottle on olive oil more than once or twice.
It's just like taking a "shot in the dark" with beers.
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.
Does anyone have any tips for finding quality olive oil?
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?
Best olive oil is Greek. Italian or Spanish ones are nowhere near the quality of Greek. In Greece more than 80% of total production is extra virgin while in Italy the percentage is less than 40% and in Spain 20%. Italians buy bulk olive oil from Greece and they mix it with their own oils to raise the quality. There are small brands that offer high quality extra virgin oil and I guess you could look some of them at your local super market or grocery store. If you want top quality you should look for small privately owned brands rather than big companies, at least for Greek oil. A few well known and trusted producers are Gaea [1], Papadimitriou [2], WEP [3], Eleia [4], Moria Elea Deluce [5], Maleas [6].
Seconding this. It also tastes somewhat different, which is a matter of preference admittedly. I personally love the typical flavor of oil from Kalamata olives, which makes up a large part of the Greek-labeled production (i.e. bottled as Greek olive oil, rather than exported for blending).
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.
Agreed, if you can find the name of the exact location on the bottle then you are probably protected under a European PDO. Kalamata is an island famed for the quality of its olives. In the UK I buy Iliada oil from the supermarket, it is a good quality Greek olive oil that is one of the most popular brands in Greece (not just a made up brand for export).
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.
> 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.
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.
Nobody that I know buys 5-liter tins of oil (I'm italian) and I wouldn't even know where to buy them. The most common format is 1 liter, followed by 0.75
Apparently I have bad memory, because 3-L is what I was thinking of, not 5-L. I'm not Italian myself, but my Italian landlord brings these kinds of things (not the same brand, but same format) regularly: http://www.colavita.com/store/images/products/EV_Oils/Med-Ti...
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.
Don't confuse olive oil for cooking (commonly purchased in 3 liter tins) with extra virgin olive oil. This article is about extra virgin olive oil. EVOO is usually consumed raw, unheated, with bread, cheese, on salads - it would completely defeat the purpose of the EVOO production technique which is one of low temperture, purely mechanical extraction, to heat EVOO to high temperatures as is commonly done with lower grades of olive oil.
Just checked my 3-L tins to be sure, and they're extra-virgin also. The problem with the lower grades is that they're extracted with chemical means (hexane solvents) and generally worse for any usage. The modest price savings isn't really worth it, since better stuff is affordably priced anyway.
It varies by country, but heating doesn't necessarily exclude an oil from "extra-virgin olive oil"; the separate "cold-pressed" label covers that.
I'm italian and when you buy extra-vergin olive oil (btw I think I never buyed in my lifetime non extra-vergin olive oil) you can read where the olives come from (either 100% italian, mixed with european olives, extraeuropean). It's not difficult to make a choice. I'll try greek oil if I can find it and compare
Beware of 'local' oils, too. A few years back, I ran a food truck that served Belgian style fries. I tested a lot of oils and decided on olive oil, but everything I could buy at the store or farmers' markets were prohibitively expensive. After some research, I found a regional seller (I'm in Texas) that imports olive oil from throughout Europe and Africa. We ultimately settled on an African import that to me had the best flavor of the bunch.
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.
"But fyi, there is an ever-growing list of recommended oils on my website: www.extravirginity.com.
Best wishes,
Tom Mueller"[0]
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's what you do. Make friends with immigrants that still have connections to their olive oil producing motherland. They either get shipments from their family, know somebody else in their community that gets shipments, or know somebody back home that may be willing to ship some. Ask them if you can buy some from them. Or, be nice to them and they may offer you some as a gift. I've done this on many occasions, and it's always very much appreciated.
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.
Yes, I got a bottle of good Greek stuff from an in-law who got it from her dentist who imports it in small batches from Greece. "St. John's Iapetra" or something like that.
If you don't know what you're looking for, you don't have someone you trust to help you, and you're unable to sample each oil in a taste test, the best way to buy high quality Italian olive oil is to look for the D.O.P. (in Italian; P.D.O. in English) certification symbol on the bottle [1, 2]. There's a similar looking symbol if the produce is also organic. This symbol means that inspectors have physically gone over the entire operation of the producers and checked it against a list of standards.
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.
Yes: order it from Zingermans online. Zingermans is a mail-order deli in Ann Arbor, a sort of culinary Mecca, and they specialize in sourcing lots of interesting olive oils. Their descriptions of those olive oils is pretty much dead on.
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.
Right, but there's 100s of kinds out there, and I could go broke buying crappy ones. To me, the article implies that the system is gamed – I am wondering if anyone knows sources / etc. for identifying those suppliers which don't game the system.
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).
Yeah, I don't understand why they make such a big deal out of being sourced from Italy. Olives grown elsewhere should make fine oil, and you could probably use the honest advertisement of non-Italian origin as a gauge for the honesty of the company.
The Italians have been caught selling rancid and impure olive oil in Australia about once per year (ie. just about every time it's checked). It applied to cheaper and expensive oils, so cost wasn't a judge.
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.
You might be thinking of Cobram Estate[1] Olive Oil? My mate actually works in their factory in Lara, Victoria. Apparently the family who owns it are very generous, and he comes home with a box of olive oil every other month (with one or two bottles then finding their way into my hands).
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.
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.
I live in Italy, and love the food here. I am sure I could not tell Italian olive oil from Spanish, Greek, or Californian olive oil. Perhaps there are people who can, but I doubt most of my friends here could. I happily buy the "Mediterranean" extra vergin olive oil to save a bit.
The locally produced, New Zealand Olive Oil is far nicer to me than the expensive stuff I've had imported from Italy. Country of Origin is definitely not an indicator of quality in my experience.
I wish to educate my ignorant palate, not settle for a lowest common denominator, and somehow do so in a manner which will neither exhaust my wallet nor remaining lifespan.
I know a thing or two about olive oil. My family has had olive trees for centuries---probably since the Roman Empire.
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...
I've been buying California Olive Ranch oil for a while, after reading this: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/dining/californias-olive-o... . It's about $16 – $17 for 750ml or about $20 – $21 for 1 liter. That's more expensive than generic olive oil but less expensive than many of the alternatives.
My family actually runs a small oil-producing olive grove in Tasmania, Australia.
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.
Find a place that does olive oil tastings and taste them. Seriously.
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.
Well we came across Lucero [1] at a farmer's market, they are a California company, and drove up to their factory and did the tour. It isn't European or African oil but we like it.
If you've got a Costco membership, their extra virgin Toscano is a great tasting oil (if you like that peppery back-of-the-throat taste) and a bargain, about $15/liter in a glass bottle.
I'm not sure if it's available at all locations, seems to come and go seasonally at mine.
my limited experience fits your theory - we just noticed that one particular make smelt awesome when we opened it. turns out it was locally produced (i was living in the north of chile at the time; i suspect i bought it because it was cheap!). we've now found someone who sells it down here in santiago (not so cheap, but no more expensive than the imported stuff).
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.
Definitely. There's a handy table on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point I'm thinking about the table color-coded smoke pt and a space for notes. A bit "paint by number", but there's plenty of other variables.
Smoke point is another good thing to know about (you can saute in olive oil but probably don't want to double-fry french fries in it) but you'll degrade the flavor of a good Greek olive oil way before you hit 160c.
Well, I've never fried with olive oil and light cooking didn't seem to affect the flavor too much. Also, I use it mostly for the health benefits, not so much the flavor alone. I've also been experimenting with sesame oil. Made this the other night and it came out pretty well :
I found my favorite olive oil, Alfar La Maja, in a small shop in San Sebastian, Spain. It comes from Mendavia, Spain, which is part of the Navarra region and is well known for its' olive production. At the time I bought it I had no idea it would be the best olive oil I've ever had, but I had two things working in my favor: 1) San Sebastian's residents and tourists are incredibly serious about food, 2) it was fresh, single source, small production, local, etc.
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."
Fairway in the NY area has an olive oil bar with about dozen varieties and bread for dipping. Most are domestic and labelled as such. The nuance in flavor is easily detectable. I find most supermarket brands taste about the same. The olive taste is so distinct you'd never confuse it for canola, corn or anything else.
There are many kinds of olive varieties, some of them growing in the span of one or two towns. Saying it is supposed to taste like this or like that without saying from which kind of olives it was made sounds kind of nonsensical.
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.
(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).
Supermarket olive oil of any price is only suitable for frying
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.
I'm just saying how we do it in my oil producing town. The oil you get from your production or from a town producer in the local mill is for salads, toasts, etc. Oil bought in packs of 3-5l in the supermarket (extra-virgin brands) is what we use for frying.
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.
My first experience with proper olive oil was ordering some from http://www.amphoranueva.com/ after one of their coratina oils was suggested by someone on some forum who'd done chemical assaying on a number of oils looking for polyphenol content, as relevant to some moderately supported study results on positive health outcomes.
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.
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.
I think there's a store in Chelsea Market (my brother lives there and sent me some OO) called the Filling Station which has some nice choices. I can't speak to the veracity of their origin, but that place will have a lot of choices and you will be able to get a very peppery, very strong oil (I am a big fan of Hojiblanca if you see it, but anything toward the more peppery end is my preference).
Personally, I only use grapeseed oil. I've tried olive, it's too heavy. Tried canola, it's okay. But grapeseed is amazing. It has no particular flavor, you could drink it and not become sick from the heavy load that typical oils will give you, etc.
I thought everybody knew this already. Store-bought (TJ, WF, etc.) doesn't look, taste and isn't priced anything like the real thing. If you didn't see it go in the bottle yourself, it probably has cheaper oils mixed in. Caveat emptor.
Hmm, citrus everywhere. I've just finished oiling my floor (last night!) with an oil that seems to have a lot of citrus oil in it, judging by the smell and contents label. Looks great, is patch repairable (sand and reapply) and is nice to work with, none of which apply to polyurethane after the first scratch. http://www.naturalhouse.co.nz/shop/java-classic-resin-oil/
Round Pond Estate has some wonderful olive oil with citrus aromatics, including one with Meyer lemon that you would probably love. If you're in the SF area, they also do tours of their winery + olive oil press/facilities.
Many people buy into the supposed health benefits on olive oil, which probably boils down to its phenolic content. However, this depends on many things and drops over time.
The end of this article has some tips to ensure getting the best oil.
Good olive oils contain an anti-inflammatory substance called oleocanthal, which is similar to ibuprofen. It's been suggested that it's part of what makes the Mediterranean diet so healthful:
