How to buy olive oil
• Find a seller who stores it in clean, temperature-controlled stainless steel containers topped with an inert gas such as nitrogen to keep oxygen at bay, and bottles it as they sell it. Ask to taste it before buying.• Favor bottles or containers that protect against light, and buy a quantity that you'll use up quickly.
• Don't worry about color. Good oils come in all shades, from green to gold to pale straw.
• Ensure that your oil is labelled "extra virgin," since other categories—"pure" or "light" oil, "olive oil" and "olive pomace oil" – have undergone chemical refinement.
• Try to buy oils only from this year's harvest – look for bottles with a date of harvest. Failing that, look at the "best by" date which should be two years after an oil was bottled.
• Though not always a guarantee of quality, PDO (protected designation of origin) and PGI (protected geographical indication) status should inspire some confidence.
• Some terms commonly used on olive oil labels are anachronistic, such as "first pressed" and "cold pressed". Since most extra virgin oil nowadays is made with centrifuges, it isn't "pressed" at all, and true extra virgin oil comes exclusively from the first processing of the olive paste.
Being in the Mid-West, it is not easy to find and buy quality items that one could easily find and buy in Italy; not even in the Italian neighborhoods here. These days, unless you can truly afford to follow the above recommendations, its not easy to find/buy quality items - especially olive oil.
If want, you can simply get off 'olive oil' and use butter because in the Mid-West there is plenty and its real. Yes, the Brainy Gourmet tries to make the best choices from her shopping point of departure. But... best to say a blessing over every meal, it doesn't hurt.
*Source ~ https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/04/olive-oil-real-thing
No comments:
Post a Comment