One cannot debate with the fact that olive oil truly has become quite popular in and around the culinary world in recent years. There are however a few things you need to remember when using this oil for cooking. Have a look here as to what they can be!
Olive oil might just be one of the most versatile oils that you will ever come across without a doubt. From using it to season salads and dips to cooking with it, olive oil truly is an amazing weapon to have in your cooking as well as a healthy arsenal for sure. The one thing that a lot of people do however, when cooking with olive oil, is make a few mistakes that they ought to stop doing in order to ensure that one is able to derive the greatest number of benefits from this miracle oil.
Have a look at some of these tips here to make the best of cooking with this amazing oil!
Storage:
Ok so you have brought your first bottle of olive oil home and you have finished cooking with it. What follows is you pushing the bottle to the back of the pantry without making sure about how the temperature of that particular location is! Of the many mistakes that people make when it comes to cooking with olive oil, not storing it correctly might just be the most common one! It is of the utmost importance that you store olive oil properly to ensure that the shelf life of your olive oil is long and healthy one. Seeing as olive oil is one of the best oils for cooking, you need to remember one simple thing; when any kind of olive oil is exposed to even a little amount of heat, it ends up deteriorating over the course of a few months.
What if we told you that olive oil could easily go bad in a few days when it is kept on a window sill where sunlight streams? Same goes for keeping it near an oven. We understand that sometimes it can be hard to find a cool dark place to store your olive oils, especially in the households of a tropical country like india. In such cases one can always end up buying olive oils that come in tin boxes or dark bottles. HOwever, this is NOT a long-term solution.
You see, the spoilage due to the exposure to sunlight is basically due to the fact that the ultraviolet rays from the sunlight essentially breaks down the composition of the olive oil over an extended amount of time. But the issue does not stop there. Sunlight, apart from making the olive oil go rancid, thanks to the heat exposure, the light too ends up deteriorating the quality as well as the amount of antioxidants present in the olive oil. You need to remember to store olive oil in a temperature of 15 degree celsius to 30 degree celsius at most to ensure that the quality of the olive oil is maintained.
Usage quantity:
We know that most good quality of the best cooking oils turn out to be more expensive, but rightly so. We also know that you probably would be thinking that you will not use the oil more than a few drops or a splash here or there at a time. This, in the long run, could very well end up causing problems. How you ask? Well, if you end up taking out only a little amount at a time, the chances of the oil getting spoilt and going rancid are high since every bottle has a particular shelf life that you need to keep in mind.
We obviously are not telling you to end up using a whole bottle or half of it in one go, but it is important that you use olive oil generously in order to make sure that simply by lying in the pantry too, the bottle does not end up getting spoilt. Think about this the next time you decide to just use a dash of the olive oil in your cooking.
No Bulk Buying
If you have ever talked or interacted with an olive oil producer, you will agree that most of them will always advise that you consume an opened bottle of olive oil in 6 weeks or at the most 8 weeks’ time. Essentially what happens when you keep an opened bottle of olive oil as is, you end up exposing it to more and more oxygen. During this course of time, when it gets exposed to oxygen frequently, the oil gets oxidized. This in turn ends up making it lose close to all of its flavors. Hence say no to hoarding large bottles or tins of olive oil in order to save a few bucks. Instead opt for buying and using smaller bottles.