Why Is It a Myth That You Can’t Cook with Olive Oil?

From the author’s series “Artichoke and Olive Oil” by Anna Petkova

Source: https://www.bacchus.bg/

“I chose exactly this name for my column because the artichoke and olive oil are very similar - whimsical and multilayered, with amazing taste and aroma characteristics that reveal themselves to us gradually - leaf after leaf, dish after dish.

Every month I will reveal to you secrets about this so noble and bountiful life-giving liquid. And gradually, I hope, the love of extra virgin olive oil will capture you, just as it captured me years ago. And there is no going back.

I wish you health and happiness with food,
Yours, Anna”

Has it happened to you, while in Greece, that a local offers you the best extra virgin olive oil from the latest harvest for salad only, and another one with which you can cook, but not fry? And tells you about acidity and how it affects cooking. It has happened to me quite a few times, I admit. Sometimes there have even been curious, amusing situations around olive oil terms, which together with the local person we untangle down to their essence. And we inevitably arrive at the conclusion that olive oil is the best fat they have cooked with every day for as long as they can remember. This is the plain truth: in Greece the consumption of liquid gold is the highest, on average 24 l a year per capita, and on Crete a full 36 l! I have had similar moments in Sofia, in shops that offer olive oil, where we talk about how unfiltered olive oil is the real one and filtered is not, or that extra virgin is best for salad, while our sunflower oil is for cooking, baking and frying. All of these are topics surrounded by myths and legends, and our task today is to unveil and clarify them.

Where is the truth? And why has the perception become established over the years that with olive oil, and especially with extra virgin, we cannot cook with heat, that it is only for salad and for the dipping that we all love with good fresh bread? It is true that in its cold use we best sense the rich palette of the oil’s natural aromas and flavors. It is also true that a remarkable single-variety extra virgin in the high price category above 35-40 BGN for 500 ml is worth using for a brilliant finish to a dish before we serve it. But when we stew, bake, sauté, fry or cook slowly, it is good for the olive oil to be more ordinary, calm, as I call it, without particular pretension. In most cases these are good multi-variety olive oils in the lower price category.

I strongly recommend that for food in all its heat-prepared incarnations, the olive oil (labeled as olive oil) be of the highest quality category, extra virgin, because it is the pure 100% juice of the olive fruit, extracted at a low temperature of up to 27 °C, only by mechanical methods and without any additives. It is as if it had just come out of a juicer, only on a large scale! The other valuable thing about extra virgin is that only it contains the beneficial and unique polyphenols, which are activated and concentrated in the process of cold extraction. And this whole bouquet of lots of Omega 9, lots of antioxidants and rich flavors raises extra virgin olive oil to an absolute pedestal among cooking fats, because it brings together health and pleasure in one, without compromise.
I myself have no explanation for how the myth of “not cooking” with extra virgin was formed.
The more important thing here is to know that for heat-preparing food on a daily basis

there are three main factors that make extra virgin olive oil the ideal fat:

First, the high content of oleic fatty acid (monounsaturated Omega 9, 75% on average).
Second, the presence of polyphenols (about 40 compounds with antioxidant action).
Third, the high smoke point (190-210 °C) and oxidative stability during prolonged heat treatment (34 hours on average).

The smoke point is usually the first thing mentioned when we talk about cooking and heat-preparing food. It is the temperature at which a fat literally begins to give off smoke, and it is directly related to the presence of free fatty acids, known to us as the acidity of fats. It is important to mention that the legally permitted acidity for the extra virgin category is up to 0.8%, and high-quality oils have much lower levels (0.2-0.4%), so this is one more reason why extra virgin is considered a safe and secure fat. On the market, refined vegetable oils are widely offered, treated at extremely high temperatures with chemicals to neutralize off-aromas and for maximum yields. Their smoke point is slightly higher than that of olive oil - on average around 215-235 C. This is one of the advantages recommended by the producers of sunflower, corn, rapeseed, soybean, palm, grapeseed and other vegetable oils that have neutralized their natural character in the refining process. One way or another, however,

when we cook at home, the temperatures are much lower:

roasting and frying are at around 180 °C, stewing and sautéing are at just over 100 °C, so that high limit of over 200 °C in sunflower oil, for example, is unnecessary for us. Other fats such as butter and unrefined coconut oil have a smoke point of up to 177 °C. For them it is useful to recall that they are high in saturated fatty acids (about 70% for butter and over 90% for coconut) and should not be consumed excessively.

The second and very important matter is the oxidative stability of a fat during its prolonged heat treatment. This indicator is much more important than the smoke point, because if the structure of a fat is broken down, harmful substances may be released. The numbers are more than eloquent: the sunflower oil familiar to us starts to change its structure after only 2 and a half hours of cooking at high heat. For extra virgin this stability is in the range of 34 hours - put differently,

olive oil is almost 14 times more stable than sunflower oil!

The reasons for the rating “excellent” on the above two indicators lie in the composition of extra virgin olive oil - a very balanced ratio between monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and saturated fats in favor of the first. And their complementation by valuable polyphenols with anti-inflammatory and protective function. Broadly speaking, unsaturated fats are the “good” ones and saturated fats are the “bad” ones, when we talk about good and bad cholesterol, which is why on food packaging you may have noticed that fats are described with a sub-line specifying what part of the fat content is specifically saturated fat. Let me open a parenthesis: monounsaturated fatty acids have a more stable structure, resistant to oxidative processes, unlike the essential polyunsaturated Omega 6 and 3 acids, which are less stable. This is purely chemically determined. By comparison, the vegetable oils more familiar to us, such as sunflower and grapeseed, are predominantly Omega 6 in composition (about 70%). It is similar with Omega 3, which we find in larger proportions in nut or seed oils such as walnut and flaxseed, and it is advisable to consume such fats in their cold use. We know that

oxidation leads to inflammatory processes in our body

and the more balanced the intake of different fatty acids in our diet, the more favorable this is for our health.

It has always been curious to me how for some of us the richness and intensity of the natural aromas and flavors of extra virgin can be disconcerting. And then I realize that we grew up and were raised with neutral-tasting industrial vegetable oils, which lost their natural flavors (of the specific seed or nut) in the refining process, without thinking much about it.

However, I know that taste and good taste are cultivated, they also turn into a pleasant habit - all things that depend on ourselves.

And in closing, I think about how valuable it is in our time to serve “Nature on a plate” every day, with a variety of minimally processed products, and for it to fill us with joy and delight, even when it is simple and unpretentious.