How to store Olive Oil

4.7.2019

ALL THE TIPS TO CONSERVE OLIVE OIL

From the supermarket to the table, but also to the restaurant, here’s what to pay attention to.

1 – Darkness is the best friend of the oil

Excess lighting affects the quality of extra virgin olive oil. Prevent the oil bottle from being exposed directly to the sun or any type of artificial light.

Safety

2 – Keep it cool

Temperature is essential to maintain the properties and taste of the oil. The ideal is to preserve the precious “green gold” at a temperature neither too hot nor too cold.

3 – Watch out for air currents

It is always a good idea to close, carefully, the cap after use, in order to avoid the danger of oxidation.

Genuine

4 – Watch the deadline

On each bottle the date on which it is preferable to consume oil (12-18 months) is always indicated. Usually consumption date cannot exceed 24 months.

5 – Far from impregnating odors

Like all fats, the oil works a bit like a sponge. It is therefore good to keep it away from cans of paint, very fragrant detergents, local with mold or saturated with smoke.

6 – If put outside the home, pay attention to the container

Old olive oil cruets are prohibited by law, in favor of bottles with anti-refill caps. A bottle pack of dark glass is the preferred one.

7 – Pay attention to an abnormal color 

The oil can be of various shades ranging from golden yellow to bright green, but it cannot be red-orange.

Cold pressed Olive Oil

TECHNICAL INSTRUCTIONS

For a proper conservation, you need to follow some precautions, which should be taken to avoid damaging EVO, especially if organic.

In order not to alter its nutraceutical potential, it should be remembered that both EVOO (organic EVO) and EVO is very demanding and prefer:

• To       be stored at a temperature between 14 and 18 degrees; while, it does not tolerate high temperatures or near or below zero;

• To be kept in small (maximum 500 milliliters) well-closed containers, always clean, of glass (opaque or dark), porcelain or stainless steel, in cool places and away from aromatic contamination.

Good

Although tin is a good compromise for short periods, food grade plastic should never be used.

Please, do not put EVO in contact with oxygen and for this reason do not let it remain for a long time in empty containers, even if hermetically sealed.

Extra virgin olive oil, how to buy it

22.6.2019

EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL, INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE

The purchase of olive oil is often among the most difficult quotidian activities of housewifes and of everyone who loves the good cuisine.

We do not always have the opportunity to meet and know personally a producer or have an olive oil mill in our neighborhood. This explains why many of us are forced to turn to the large-scale retail trade, with all the pitfalls and possible frauds that involve this product in particular.

Difficult to understand…

Let’s try then to understand how to defend ourselves from fraud or counterfeiting and above all to add some tools that allow us to choose a good oil, clean, fair and above all healthy.

Meanwhile, we refer you to the following technical notes that help us understand what we mean, in Calabria, with the expression “first cold pressed”.

  • “First pressed” – means the olives were crushed and pressed only one time. The olive oil extracted from the first pressing is of the highest quality and purity.
  • “Cold pressed” – means that the olives never exceed a certain temperature during the entire pressing process– around 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Only a first cold pressed olive oil can meet high standards of quality, because purity of oil increases only following such process.

PRICE

This year (2019), a real 1 Lt bottle of 100%-Italian extra virgin olive oil should not cost less than 8 euros. Below this figure it is legitimate to doubt about origin and quality.

If you follow such guidance and instructions, then there are no offers, promotions and below costs, which can be included in the definition of EVO.

Therefore, watch out for the harvest year which, if present, reveals that all the olives with which the oil was made were harvested in the same year.

HOW TO DETERMINE THE PRICE:

Olive grower receives 4.7 euros for a kilo of oil.

The wholesale price then rises to 5.5 euros.

No quality, no label

Once worked by the olive oil industry the cost rises to 6.67 euros which includes: VAT, salaries of those who work there, marketing and bottle.

Please, add also the profit of the industry which is around 4% and the GDO margin, on average 15%

The final price therefore comes to around 8 euros. Lower prices are, sadly, only Community blends, potentially frauding!!

FRAUDS

According to a well known research of Mr. Gennaro Sicolo, president of Italia Ovicola (an organization that involves 50% of olive growers in Italy), about one bottle out of two of extra virgin olive oil contains deodorized oils that are then mixed with Italian oils to give it a bit of flavor and reach the basic chemical and organoleptic parameters to be labeled as extra virgin.

“After two months on the shelf these oils in the panel test can be considered as adulterated,” explains Gennaro Sicolo.

But how is this scam happens?

No tag, no quality

In Italy the olives are harvested between September and October at the right point of ripeness, with a yield of 10 – 13 kg of oil per quintal of olives.

In Spain and Tunisia the harvest begins in January, when the raw material is very mature, in order to have a greater yield. But from a very ripe olive an acid oil is born, so that to remedy it is mixed with a bit of 100% Italian so as to obtain a light fruity that recalls the normal smell and taste of extra Virgin olive oil.

The price of such blend?

Wholesale these deodorized oil lots cost around 2.2-2.4 euros per liter, but to the consumer a mixture of such European community oils costs at least 5 euros … And here this lower price reveal itself as an indicator (certainly not the only one) if not of quality, of the absence of quality!!