The Epicurious Guide to Olive Oil
We all know the story, more or less: the rise and fall and rise again of olive oil.
It emerged victorious from the low-fat era as the cooking oil of choice in American kitchens. It was Mediterranean. It was healthy. It was, as oils go, glam. Then, like many a glamster, olive oil's reputation could only fly so high before it suffered at the hands of the internet. Starting in around 2012 the general click force came after olive oil for being fake. A billion well-intentioned scare articles emerged about how many so-called olive oils were cut with inferior oils like canola—and they weren't coming from they said they were, either.
Now, we've mostly forgiven olive oil its transgressions, even while we've had flings and fallings out with other oils. It seems we've recognized nuance, in olive oil flavor and sourcing and terroir.
What's more? It's the golden age of fat—fat will cure your many ailments and give you the wisdom of an ancient prophet and the skin of a tiny baby. And we've seen new frontiers for olive oil: There's a generation of Instagram model olive oils inundating our feeds. There are olive oils you can subscribe to as you once subscribed to those old print magazines. There are new and unlikely territories popping up as promising olive oil districts.
So, it seems like it might be time to talk about olive oil again.
Because it's still confusing to shop for, we've gathered here all our tips for finding the best olive oil. We baked with it and fried with it and cooked chicken in it for six hours. And, we explored the next gen of scary olive oil situations, digging into how climate change has begun to affect the farms that grow everyone's favorite golden fat juice. In short, we're coming at you with the Epicurious guide to everything you need to know about olive oil right now, in 2019. Check it out below.
Photo by Joseph De Leo1/5Buy the Best
While olive oil is a kitchen staple—something home cooks and professionals alike reach for day in and day out—it's still remarkably confusing to shop for. And then there's the fact that everyone's tastes differ: You may love a tannic, peppery guy while your neighbor Jim loves a fruity, grassy number.
That's why we decided to tackle the topic of shopping for olive oil from a few different angles.
First, we asked an olive oil expert about how to read labels and what to look out for on the shelves. Read about how to navigate the olive oil marketplace here.
Then, we asked chefs about their go-to oils—because if it's good enough for the expert on Salt, Fat, Acid, and Heat herself, it's good enough for us. Read what Samin Nosrat (and other chefs like Italian food expert Katie Parla and Bon Appétit's Claire Saffitz) turn to for everyday and special occasion oils.
Finally, we tasted olive oils ourselves. Staffers at Epicurious spent countless afternoons sipping and slurping olive oils in the name of, not exactly science, but rather identifying some common ground in our olive oil preferences and finding the best ones for everyone—whether you like notes of green apple, licorice, fresh-cut grass, or artichoke. (Yes, all of these flavors can be found in olive oil!) We sipped ten trillion (almost!) oils in a variety of price categories and from a variety of sources. Read our results here.
Photo by Joseph De Leo2/5Store It Properly (And Beautifully)
Like that orchid you bought and immediately killed and Maria Carey's vocal cords (and entire persona, actually) olive oil is delicate, precious—dare we say high maintenance. Exposure to sunlight, oxygen, heat, and the general elements will destroy its flavor and freshness—and more quickly than you think. But we're not trying to scare you. There are solutions. You can appease the diva of fats, provided you buy it in the proper packaging and store it correctly.
Read our general guide to storing olive oil, with tips from an expert, here.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell3/5Bake, Batter, And—Uh, Confit
You're likely already using olive oil as a go-to fat in the kitchen. And yet, there are always ways to use more of it in your home cooking.
Case in point? Our Digital Director David Tamarkin has committed to olive oil as his go-to fat for baking. Read why he likes it (gasp!) better than butter for cakes.
Senior Editor Maggie Hoffman makes a case for slowly cooking your chicken (we're talking six hours here but it's totally worth it) your chicken in copious amounts of olive oil. That's right, you don't have to reserve the luxurious, pull-apart tenderness of the confit method for fancy proteins like duck. You can do it on your everyday chicken. Learn more about why she loves the recipe from Tyler Kord's new chicken cookbook here.
You know what else you can confit? Vegetables. That's right, it turns out those good-for-you things taste better when they're cooked in glugs and glugs of olive oil. Read about it here.
And finally, contributor Amiel Stanek says it's fine to be a little less precious about your olive oil for cooking. He blends a fancy, peppery, green-grassy extra virgin olive oil with regular neutral oil, resulting in a cooking fat that has a bit of the nuanced flavor you'll get from a good olive oil, but that's less overpowering and more economical. Read more about his method for blending oils here.
After all that, if you still can't get enough olive oil, here are 41 more recipes where it shines.
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We also experimented with new ways to get fancy olive oil: Instagram and through subscription services.
A year or so ago we noticed that we were being served ads for olive oil on Instagram. Like, a *lot* of ads for one specific olive oil. This wasn’t packaged in a classic metal tin, or a bag-in-a-box bulk container; this olive oil came in a sleek, matte bottle. With its sans serif fonts and Memphis-style graphics, the bottle was like a skincare product, the kind only celebrities know about.
That olive oil was, of course, Brightland, the progenitor of well-designed, impeccably-marketed, olive oils. Soon, we started seeing other similarly chic olive oils in our feed, too. Well-designed, luxe olive oil brands like Wonder Valley, Oracle Oil, and Mr. Pete’s became mainstays in our social media feeds, seemingly out of nowhere.
We wanted to know if they actually tasted good. Yeah, they looked pretty enough to be in someone’s Top Shelf, but did they also taste like expensive skincare products? Since we’d just done an official olive oil test, we wanted to taste these olive oils we'd seen on Instagram to see if they were more than just good looks. Here's how it went.
We also wanted to see how olive oils that you could have delivered to your door on a semi-regular basis fared. Gourmet and specialty items such as coffee and chocolate have long been offered as subscription services. More recently, everyday items like olive oil have joined the ranks of products offered in subscriptions. We sampled bottles from four of these (relatively) new subscription services and picked our favorites to share with you.
Photo by Carmen Lawrence5/5The State of Olive Juice in 2019
Want a new channel for your climate change anxiety? Look no further than that golden bottle of oil on your counter! We delved into how warmer temperatures, droughts, and unexpected freezes lead to chaos for the makers of this essential pantry staple.
The silver lining: New olive oil producers are popping up in unexpected places—like the chilly, rainy Pinot Noir country of the Pacific Northwest. Read why Oregon could be the next great region for olive oil.
