Now that I know how to buy olive oil, I've vowed to never carelessly sling a random bottle into my grocery cart ever again—and neither should you. Here's what you need to know. Look for those two words, and you've already eliminated a vast array of crappy bottles. Choose from one of two flavors: Awake, which is grassier and best used in soups, pastas, or roasted veggies; or Alive, which has a nutty flavor and is great for salads, marinades, and baking. Sometimes you want an olive oil with strong flavors and a lot of personality.
Italian olive oils are widely used around the world, and there are a lot of them, so we asked Beatrice Ughi, founder and president of high-quality Italian-food importer Gustiamo, for her recommendations. She picked Pianogrillo, which comes from the Ragusa province in Sicily, which is well known for the excellent quality of its oils.
Compared to Tuscan olive oil, Sicilian EVOO tends to deliver a more forward flavor with bite and fewer notes of grassy voluptuousness. Nick and Sarah Suarez, owners of Gaskins restaurant in Germantown, are partial to Pianogrillo and to Gustiamo, who delivers it.
When trying out different olive oils, many experts suggest tasting the raw oil, but Raij has a different approach. He uses this one for roasting meat as well as for marinades. Similar to California Olive Ranch, this is an olive oil suited to pretty much everything.
Hyland uses the organic variety regularly at home, mostly for finishing. If green were a flavor, I would say it tastes green. Jacob Sessoms, the executive chef at Cultura in Asheville, North Carolina, prepurchases 50 gallons of this olive oil for his restaurant. It took only one taste of this oil the Australian counterpart to the Cobram Estate California varietal listed above for Hyland to become a fan.
According to chefs Elise Kornack and Anna Hieronimus, who ran the Michelin-star restaurant Take Root, husband-and-wife team Giuseppe Morisani and Skyler Mapes from Calabria and California, respectively have made their business out of deeply loving what they do.
Their product is great, and they are transparent about how it gets made, a bonus in a market where that is not usually the case. The Strategist is designed to surface the most useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. Some of our latest conquests include the best acne treatments , rolling luggage , pillows for side sleepers , natural anxiety remedies , and bath towels.
We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. The association runs authenticity testing on olive oils at the retail level, using criteria set out and monitored by the granddaddy International Olive Council, based in Madrid. A big part of the problem for American consumers is lack of federal regulation. The USDA standard for olive oil isn't mandatory, so a producer can but doesn't have to pursue certification showing its extra virgin oil is legit.
And given that 98 percent of the olive oil sold in the United States comes from somewhere else mostly Spain and Italy, but also Greece, Turkey and Tunisia , that makes for a lot of unknowns. Panicked yet?
Don't be. There's a lot of good—and real—olive oil out there. The upside to shopping at a specialty olive oil store is that such purveyors do their research. You can rely on knowledgeable staff and taste before you buy.
But the more likely scenario is at the supermarket, so buy where you know there's high turnover. Dust collecting on bottles isn't an encouraging sign. Olive oil doesn't get better with age. The real stuff is essentially fruit juice, Mueller writes. Buy what you know you'll use within two months, Balch said. Olive oil has three enemies: heat, light and air.
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