The World of Olive Oil Is Murky. Here's Help for the Home Cook.
'Don’t try to parse every word on the label: The keys to good flavor are seeking out the freshest oil and using it generously.
When extra-virgin olive oil arrived in American kitchens around 1980, a set of myths came with it. You can’t use it for everyday cooking. You can’t use it for deep-frying. You must hoard your best stuff and bring it out only for occasional drizzling.
None of those turns out to be true: Olive oil is an excellent all-purpose cooking oil, but at the time it was too expensive for cooks to use freely.
In the meantime, the price has fallen, but global demand has grown far beyond supply, and the entire business has been transformed by technology, global trade and climate change. It has also been racked by fraud, with millions of consumers around the world regularly paying for “extra-virgin” olive oil that is cut with inferior olive oil, mixed with cheaper oils like sunflower and canola, or colored with chlorophyll or beta carotene.
Labeling has become a minefield, despite efforts by the European Union, where a majority of the world’s oil is produced, to enforce rules and make meaningful distinctions among terms like “made in Italy,” “imported from Italy” and “packed in Italy.” The European Union’s system of food certification (appearing as a D.O.P. or P.D.O. seal on a label) is relatively reliable. But the terms “extra-virgin” (meaning the very first pressing), “first-press” and “cold-pressed” are not as helpful as they used to be, as most producers have switched over from presses to modern centrifuges that produce purer and cleaner oils.
So now we are back in the realm of myth, as labels are ever harder to interpret and trust. For most of the olive oil on the American market today, even a truthful label says little about how it will taste or whether you will like it.
More than the flags on the bottle, more than the varietal, more than whether the oil appears grass-green or butter-yellow, many experts and producers now say the biggest factor in the deliciousness of olive oil is its freshness.
Assuming that the olives are healthy and of good quality, how quickly they go from tree to bottle to your cupboard may determine more about the taste of your olive oil than anything on the label (though oil labeled “extra-virgin” is still likely to be better than oil without that designation). . .
Understanding olive oil as a perishable product has two lessons for home cooks. One, we should try to choose olive oil according to how fresh it is; it should be consumed within two years of bottling, Two, we should be using much more of it, so that it doesn’t languish in our cupboards, but is used up and replaced while it is fresh and vibrant.
“There’s a saying about olive oil: ‘Pour it with the elbow up high.’” said Lior Lev Sercarz, whose company, La Boîte, supplies top New York chefs with fresh spices and custom seasoning blends. His family produces their own annual supply of olive oil on a small farm in northern Israel.
“Don’t use it sparingly,” said Mr. Coleman, who sells fine olive oil to restaurants and to quarterly subscribers through his website, Grove and Vine.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/dining/best-olive-oil.html?
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