Is It Okay To Cook Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Past FRANCESCA VAN SOEST, DECEMBER 21st, 2022

As we all know, Actress Virgin Olive Oil has many k y thursday s associated with information technology. The one we at Cobram Estate hear the virtually, tin can you lot cook with it? T he short answer is YES! Not only tin you lot, yous should melt with extra virgin olive oil!

In fact, it should be your ' Go To ' healthy kitchen oil!

Here's why…

Most people have at some point in their life been told that y'all tin can't cook with EVOO. I myself am one of those people. Luckily for me, when I told my Italian grandmother nigh hearing from a friend's mom that you shouldn't cook with EVOO, she but waved her spoon in my face and with her heavy Italian accent said, "if cooking with extra virgin olive oil was going to kill you, we would all take been expressionless long ago amore".

T hat was good enough for me... that is until I went to university and learned nearly organic chemistry and realized that there must be a more scientific mode of supporting my Nonna'south claim.

And lo and behold, there was! The get-go step in debunking the myth that you tin't melt with extra virgin olive oil starts with looking closer at what the myth claims. The myth states that you cannot cook with EVOO because information technology has a lower smoke point than other oils. So what does this hateful? It means that sometimes, when yous are cooking with an extra virgin olive oil, you lot will begin to see smoke, or vapor, at higher temperatures, such equally when you are frying it or broiling in. And with other oils, such as canola or grapeseed, there is no smoke or vapor until much higher temperatures. And and then, which no further scientific discipline than simply observing "smoke", people assumed that yous cannot cook with EVOO considering it has also low of a smoke signal.

Simply what even is smoke bespeak? Well, but put, it is the indicate when an oil gets heated sufficiently and components of the oil begin to volatilize and go visible. And while smoke in a pan is never a great sign, what is really going on with the chemical stability of the oil that is still in the pan? Well, according to a recent article published in Acta Scientific Nutritional Health Journal, the fume point of an oil is a poor indicator of the health and stability of the oil equally information technology is heated. In fact, they state that the "smoke indicate does not predict the oil performance when heated".

To come to this determination, they tested ten of the near common cooking oils (canola, grapeseed, avocado, coconut, peanut, rice bran, sunflower, virgin olive oil, olive oil and extra virgin olive oil) and exposed them all t o ii variable temperature conditions (ane where all the oils were gradually heated in a pan to get them upward to 464˚F and the other where the oils were heated in a deep fryer to 356˚F for six hours) where they monitored when the oils started smoking, and besides the chemistry of the oil both before heating and after heating. They were specifically looking for specific compounds called "polar compounds". These polar compounds are molecules that have an unbalanced electromagnetic charge. What this ways is that they have the potential to disrupt the delicate residue of charges inside our bodies, and this disruption has the potential to lead to complicated health issues such as cancer and chronic inflammation.

Moral of the story: polar compounds = bad news. Therefore, the oils that had the most polar compounds in them later the heating tests performed the worst. And guess what? Extra virgin olive oil was found to be one of the most stable oils with some of the least polar compounds after heating. This is due to the fact that EVOO has and then many antioxidants that sacrifice themselves during heating (hence the occasional puff of smoke) and protect the structural integrity of the fats in the oil. What was shocking to me near the results was that some of the oils that are recommended for high heat cooking, such equally grapeseed and canola, had the highest number of polar compounds, fifty-fifty though there was no smoke.

Then at that place yous take it, non only can you cook with extra virgin olive oil, y'all should cook with extra virgin olive oil because non only will it make your food taste better, it is really healthier for you do and then!

No surprise, t urns out Nonna was correct along with her age-old Mediterranean wisdom!

Cheers,

Francesca