What You Should Know About Olive Oil Before you Buy it.
This is a substance that should not leave the kitchen. It contain countless benefits that could surprise you, starting from flavor to medicine.Olive oil is being used in beauty products, health medicines, cooking and so much more. You should always have oil in your kitchen, the taste is very good although quality may differ from a seller to another or from a brand to another. There are many types of oil in the market, this is exactly what your should know about these types, buy one that meets your requirements or buy them all, it requires a lot of time to go bad. Without further ado, here is what your should know on every item and later we give you the types of olive oil.
Everything You Should Know
First, your should never buy a product based on its cover or price just like books, you can’t know the quality of olive oil based of these two measures. The package of a bottle can be tricky, companies can write anything on labels to lead you astray and convince your to buy their product assuming that it is the best your can get. The olive oil business is probably the most full of scam industry, there are various procedures that companies use to make their product look and smell like original olive oil. Olive oil can be categorized to two things, Extra-Virgins and Virgins, each of these categories have their types, extra-virgins and virgins are not what the quality is about, it is merely the half of it,
these details are of course gets taken under consideration when your are trying to pick good olive oil, the extra virgins have a higher quality oils than virgins.
The price serves as a big factor in buying oil, many people go for the cheapest and there of course other people who go for the most expensive, the latters though do not get the best quality sometimes, some expensive oils are as bad as cheap ones. The content of the olive bottle is what your are interested in, and since it is a product that comes purely from nature, pricing has several rules, if gets lower and higher depends of the quality level set by mass products.
Your can know the quality by tasting, olive oil has a special flavor, either your eat it raw or cooked with other ingredients, but it preferable that your consume olive oil without cooking it, this way it can be more beneficial for your health. If your buy a high priced olive oil and used it only for eating it uncooked, it will probably last for sometimes because simply you won’t be consuming it that much, so buying an expensive olive oil can be totally worth it. To make your more familiar with the quality of oil, compare it with wine, the older the wine gets the better it becomes, the same thing applies on oil, although don’t let it be older than one or two years because it can only keep its best quality up to 18 months. When it comes to cooking, you should know what kind of ingredients that fits olive oil, and what foods would taste better if you use olive oil with them, with enough experience your will be able to create your own flavors. It would be preferable to buy oil directly from farmers, ones that can be trusted of course, buying olive oil from abroad is also beneficial but your have to find someone you can trust, Moroccan olive oil is one of the most delicious products in the world, if your have someone in Morocco, tell him to send your big loads of olive oil. There are places like farms and stores that allow your to taste the product before your but it, the quality can be determined by many factors based on tasting, the quality of olive oil can be known from how the latter has been made.
The flavor is impacted by procedures as follows:
- Types of olives used.
- Places where it is grown: farms or factories etc…
- The condition of weather and overall growing environment
- How ripe the olives are,
- Time where they are harvested, there are seasons where good olives are harvested, if they happened to be harvested earlier or later that season, the quality will be lower than those harvested mid season.
- How long it took the olives to be turned to oil.
- The ways of harvesting
- Techniques of pressing
A simple way to know the quality of your olive oil is to put a sample of the product in a cup and put it in the fridge for 2 or 3 days, if the product become crystalline your have an extra virgin oil of high quality, if it happend to stay to some extent liquid, the your oil is refined.
Types of Olive Oil
As we have mentioned earlier, there are two categories of olive oil and these categories have their own types.
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Virgin Oil
The term refers to the originality of the product, it means that this type of oil was not reined in any way possible, this type of oil is a little bit cheaper that Extra virgin oil which we will talk about later, when this oil is tasted your can tell that it is good, the types of virgin olive oil are Fine virgin oil and Virgin oil, they both have an acidity between 2 and 1.5 percent, it is the best oil to use for cooking, but all these details does not make it better than other oils we are going to discuss later.
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Light Olive Oil
The name of the this type kind of give everything away, light oil is tasteless and a waste of money, it is also called Pure olive oil, so don’t be fooled by the term Pure. This type of oil has been through a lot of refinement processes but that does not mean it is not healthy, it can be used on cooking the only things you won’t get are the flavor, color and aroma which are basically everything, some foods however should not taste like olive oil and this is why this type is the best to use. You are better off buying this type of oil, Fine Virgin oil will do
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Refined Olive Oil
This type of oil is a mixture of many oils that is why it is called refined. It is a combination between good quality olives and low quality oil, the result naturally is a good quality olive oil but not high quality of course. However, this refinements are most of the time chemical, they contribute in making the olive oil tasteless and colorless to some extent, but before the product is distributed in the market a slight proportion of very high quality olive oil is added by the producers to give the taste, smell and color it needed to be acknowledged as a “good olive oil”. You are better off buying this type of oil as well, Fine Virgin oil will do.
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Extra Virgin Oil
This is what your want, it is a a high quality olive oil, it is a 100% the product of nature without any refinement, when your buy this type of oil, don’t use it for cooking unless your are cooking something that requires strong olive oil flavor, it is healthy and can also be used in making your skin look clearer. In Food, it is best used with salads because it will be uncooked and this way it can keep its full benefits, flavor and aroma. You can distinguish this type of olive oil by only the look of it, it usually thick green and its taste is fruity.
The olive oil industry is very, VERY tricky, you should pay attention to all details, we hope we have brought your one step close to the full knowledge about the subject.