What surprised me was finding out that US people think that EVOO burns easily and turns bitter when fried. I found out when I was watching a youtube video from a foodie influencer, I'll see if I can find it.
Anyway, for me that's incomprehensible. I have stir fried with EVOO all my life and I have never seen it burn. The only exception is when I've accidentally, and stupidly, left the pan with only olive oil in it in full heat and went off to do something else, at which point it starts smoking and smelling bad. I have also never had it turn bitter, no matter what I've done with it. I've burned food cooked in olive oil, and occasionally the food has turned bitter (burned onions and garlic taste bitter for example; eugh) but mostly it just tastes burnt.
I've also used olive oil for deep frying and again it has never burnt on me, although lately I prefer to use cheaper oils, like sunflower oil, also because I find that deep frying with olive oil makes food taste too heavy, as if you cooked it in lard or fat (and that's not what I'm going for when I make chips or falafel, say).
So my conclusion is that people outside the Mediterranean, including in the US, just don't normally cook with good quality EVOO. I can certainly see lower quality olive oils behaving badly at high temperatures.
Extra virgin olive oil is definitely on the lower end of cooking oil smoke point spectrum, that is not really contentious point. Refined olive oils (e.g. extra light) tend have higher smoke points, same is true afaik for most vegetable oils.
If you have not observed olive oil smoking, then that is more reflective of your cooking habits than the oil itself.
Are you sure about that? Because my cooking habits are not anything strange. As I say above, I stir fry and I've deep fried, and I do everything else that you can do with shortening, with EVOO, and it doesn't burn.
Where does your information about EVOO being "on the lower end of cooking oil smoke point spectrum" come from?
And what kind of EVOO are we talking about? There are different qualities of EVOO with drastically different behaviour, but they're all sold as EVOO.
The two lists you found never say what "Extra virgin olive oil" they list, where it came from, and how they knew it was not adulterated. They don't say where the numbers in their tables originally come from, either (they list secondary sources, like food textbooks and wikipedia) [1].
Surely you can see that if "EVOO" is commonly adulterated with lower-quality olive oils, then the measurements of its smoke point are not going to be representative?
>> If you disagree then the burden of proof is on you.
I'm sorry but why is there a "burden of proof" on anyone here? I just remarked that I've never seen olive oil burn while cooking. How exactly could I "prove" that?
I hope you are not trying to invite yourself over for dinner :|
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[1] What's more, the second source seems really confused about the difference between extra-virgin and refined olive oils:
You will note that refining oils tends to increase the smoke point as impurities and free fatty acids are removed. Hence refined ‘extra light’ olive oil has a higher smoke point than extra virgin olive oil. The table shows that high quality extra virgin olive oil has a higher smoke point than refined – due to the presence of anti-oxidants and low free fatty acid levels. Another selling point for high quality extra virgin olive oils.
So which one is it? Is it "refined 'extra light' olive oil [has] a higher smoke point than extra virgin olive oil" or is it "high quality extra virgin olive oil has a higher smoke point than refined"?
Thanks for those links; I didn't realize that clarified butter came in with such a high smoke point.
I usually use a mixture of (unclarified) butter and EVOO for frying steaks; tonight I shall try just clarified butter (with flavourings - thyme and garlic). It makes sense; and maybe I'll get a decent pan-sauce this time.
The only exception is when I've accidentally, and stupidly, left the pan with only olive oil in it in full heat and went off to do something else, at which point it starts smoking and smelling bad.
Getting a little off-topic here, but as a former firefighter, please allow me to plead with everyone reading this to not ever start cooking (on the stove-top anyway) and "go off to do something else." Fires start (and spread) much more rapidly than most people's naive intuitions tell them, and we're also much more vulnerable to getting distracted and forgetting about the cooking, than most of us want to admit.
Note that cooking (particularly including unattended cooking) is generally the leading cause of structure fires, at least in the US in recent history.
Cooking was the leading cause of reported home fires and home fire injuries in 2015-2019 and the second leading cause of home fire deaths. Cooking caused 49 percent of reported home fires, 20 percent of reported home fire deaths, and 42 percent of home fire injuries.
Based on 2014-2018 annual averages:
Two-thirds of home cooking fires start with the ignition of food or other cooking materials.
Clothing is the item first ignited in less than 1% of these fires, but clothing ignitions caused 8% of the home cooking fire deaths.
Ranges or cooktops account for three-fifths of home cooking fire incidents.
Unattended equipment is a factor in one-third of reported home cooking fires and over half of the associated deaths.
Frying dominates the cooking fire problem.
Well that's me told then. I promise I won't do it again, sir :P
For the record, when I say I "went off to do something else" I don't mean I left the pot on and went away, I mean I stayed in the kitchen and turned my back to it, while I was preparing to cook. This happened last summer. I started heating some oil in my French oven to brown some meat. It takes some time to heat the oil because I start from a low heat and increase it gradually to avoid damaging the pot (enamel is very sensitive to sudden temperature changes). Because I'm an idiot, I eventually turned the heat all the way to the max, even though it's a French oven and it will get hot enough to brown meat even at medium heat. In the meantime I prepared my other ingredients, then I turned back to the pot and it was smoking, so I took it out and left it to cool down, then changed the oil and started all over again. I think this has happened a couple more times over the years, when I changed homes or got a new stove.
I have certainly managed to burn food in hot oil, of course. That makes a lot more smoke and smells a lot worse. I have never seen any flames though. And I'm completely paranoid about frying, not even deep frying. A friend of mine had an accident when we were kids, when frying some eggs, and it's left him a scar for life, so I still treat frying oil a like an extremely dangerous substance. Which it is.
Burning it is easy, and a technique sometimes to add astringency for balance depending on what exactly you’re doing. Common mistake is to heat oil on a cold pan though - lots of unnecessary burning of flavor/smoke to reach sometimes necessary high momentary temperatures
Anyway, for me that's incomprehensible. I have stir fried with EVOO all my life and I have never seen it burn. The only exception is when I've accidentally, and stupidly, left the pan with only olive oil in it in full heat and went off to do something else, at which point it starts smoking and smelling bad. I have also never had it turn bitter, no matter what I've done with it. I've burned food cooked in olive oil, and occasionally the food has turned bitter (burned onions and garlic taste bitter for example; eugh) but mostly it just tastes burnt.
I've also used olive oil for deep frying and again it has never burnt on me, although lately I prefer to use cheaper oils, like sunflower oil, also because I find that deep frying with olive oil makes food taste too heavy, as if you cooked it in lard or fat (and that's not what I'm going for when I make chips or falafel, say).
So my conclusion is that people outside the Mediterranean, including in the US, just don't normally cook with good quality EVOO. I can certainly see lower quality olive oils behaving badly at high temperatures.