Southern Olive Oil
ambrook.com28 points by surprisetalk a day ago
28 points by surprisetalk a day ago
I used to buy good virgin Spanish olive oil in tin - I had a Spanish friend that insisted that Spanish oil is better than Italian and that the Italians just have better marketing.
But then one day I realized that I live north of the alps and that I should therefore use virgin rapsöl instead. "Virgin Rape" in English. They re-marketed it as canola in America for obvious reasons but their version also has a couple of mutations that make the flavor milder. Virgin rape is different than processed rapeseed cooking oil - processed has no flavor while virgin tastes nutty.
Farmers have been growing it north of the Alps for thousands of years all the way up into Scandinavia. The fields of yellow flowers are everywhere.
One nearby farm that I buy it from, it tastes like hazelnut. At another farm it tastes like sunflower seed. It's softer than olive oil and doesn't have that bite at the back of your throat.
It makes beautiful mayonnaise - a nice rich yellow color and faint nuttiness - you can't use olive oil for mayonnaise because of the sharpness in olive oil.
Spain has some of the best and some of the worst olive oil in the world, mostly because it has about 45% of total world supply, and because people in the country care a lot about EVOOs.
It’s true that Italian olive oil has traditionally had a lot better marketing. When we talk about p70 and p80 olive oil quality, Spain wins hands down over Italy and other producers. Don’t get me wrong, Italy and Greece have excellent olive oil too, but it’s much harder to find and usually a lot more expensive. If you’re at a supermarket and have to decide between Italian and Spanish olive oil, chances are that the Spanish olive oil will be much better and, sometimes, even cheaper. A common practice in Italy, even though they don’t like to admit is, is that they import Spanish olive oil, relabel it, and sell it as their own.
One thing Italy, Greece, and other parts of the Mediterranean have is different and more diverse olive tree varieties. Frantoio is a good example.
The most important thing when buying great extra virgin olive oil is to buy straight from a well-known producer. If you buy from an intermediary, the chances that they’ve cut the EVOO with other oils (a common practice in markets outside of Southern Europe, like the US) to cheapen them is high.
Taste aside, rapeseed oil is rich in erucic acid unless it is made out of canola. Canola is a special low-erucic variety of rapeseed that is safe for consumption in large quantities.
Yeah. About that.
The tolerable daily intake of erucic acid is 7 mg per kg of body weight and the legal limit for erucic acid in canola oil is 2%. This means that an average adult (70 kg) could hit that intake with 24.5 grams of canola oil, which is less than 2 tablespoons for the non-metrically inclined.
Also very common in Sichuan cooking! https://themalamarket.com/products/caizi-you-sichuan-roasted...
I learned this recently while doing an olive oil tasting in Greece: the bite in the back of your throat is caused by polyphenols - antioxidants. The bite is indicative that the olive oil is providing something healthy
The tin part is interesting to me - I don’t know of any coops in Spain that still sell it in tin. It must be one of those things that people abroad deem authentic but which aren’t.
I'm Spanish, born in Jaén (the most Olive Oil producing province in Spain).
There's multiple kinds of olives, each producing different kinds of oil. The processing used also affects the end result (extra virgin olive oil comes from the first press, less quality oils from successive processing).
* Picual is the most popular one. It has a strong taste, that "bite" that you mention, and a long shelf life. This means that it is the most exported one. That is probably why you (and others) have associated olive oil with that strong profile. It is however not the only kind out there!
* Cornicabra is the second most popular one. It is milder than Picual in taste, but still strong and durable. You might find it in some specialist shops.
* Arbequina has less of that "bite" that you mention at the end. Unfortunately it has a shorter shelf life as well, which means that it also tends to be exported less.
Because of this is unlikely that you will find it outside of Spain. At the same time it would be the best kind for making mayonnaise, especially if you don't like the bite at the back of the throat (that some people actually enjoy).
And these are just the 3 more popular varieties. There's many more local, smaller ones.
To give an idea of the massive contribution that Jaen (and marginally the rest of Spain) gives to olive oil supply, Spain olive oil exports are about ~45% of world supply. There’s a lot of olive oil in Jaen, and most of it is some of the best olive oil you can try. Most of the worldwide award winners in EVOO competitions are from Jaen, though not all, as other parts of Spain also contribute excellent olive oil.
I subscribe to an olive oil club, which buys a planeload of olive oil bottles each quarter from producers wherever it's harvest season, and ships them out to US subscribers. They send three bottles each time, including a mild which is often Arbequina. So thanks, I'll start using that one first :)
I use olive oil for mayonaise all the time and I don’t mind the sharpness/bitterness that comes from emulsification, it’s just another style.
I tried it and found that the taste mellowed a lot after a day or two in the fridge.
There is no better olive oil than local greek one in my experience although what you describe sounds good too. Of course taste is highly subjective, but that simply works the best for me (and I am a visitor to all those countries, no strong emotional attachment to one from my country since we don't grow olives at all, its often shown by folks from southern Europe as you experienced too).
Also rapeseed oil doesn't have all the benefits extra virgin olive oil has but its a healthy choice too. It seems more temperature stable so doesn't burn as easily as EVOO so maybe better for various cooking.
Just fyi, virgin Rapeseed oil in English *
You don't ever want to utter or write the words "virgin rape"
I think this is really cool! I don't think Texas will make a significant dent in the global supply of olive oil any time soon, kind of the same way wine from Texas doesn't make a dent in global wine production. I imagine it'll be a small but high-quality regional thing. The weather is just too volatile. I can't see a farmer investing huge amounts of money and land in olive trees when a polar vortex can wipe them out (and then having to cut them back and wait for them to regrow which takes much longer than traditional crops). But nonetheless I think it's really cool to see how farmers are adapting and growing new things at scale like olive trees in Texas.
My family has a bunch of land in central/south texas and this was my dad's dream for it. I am curious about resources on how to get started. Where to get the trees is probably the first big step.
looks like the A&M Agrilife extension has a pretty good reading resource: https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/fruit-nut/wp-content/upl...
I saw machine harvesting on youtube. Machine assisted, that is. This is in Apulia which one of the southern states in Italy, so also Southern Olive Oil. Apulia is the biggest producer of olive oil in Italy.
>>> American South
I lost some neurons trying to understand the locution, then it talked about texas.
yeah... so it not from the "south of the americas" (think brazil, urugay, argentina...) but "the south of the u.s.a."
not really clear from someone from the other part of the atlantic
I could see how that happens. Generally American <location> means the US, where if you were talking about the southern or central continent, you'd see South America, or Central America, much like North America. American South generally refers to the area south of what is called the "Mason-Dixon Line" and as far West as Texas. Texas is also part of the American Southwest, which includes California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Texas, maybe sometimes Colorado.
It’s going to be interesting seeing how the world changes over the coming decades. I’m definitely pro-olive oil so more olive oil is more good, but never seeing snow again is going to suck.
I live near the Dell's Favorite olive oil farm, was happy to see them in this article.
Olives are landscape tree in Phoenix Arizona and no one (well very few people) eat the olives.
When the olives ripen and fall, it creates a big mushy mess all over the yard and sidewalks, so there are services that go around and spray olive trees with a growth regulator to prevent fruiting.
I always felt the whole thing was a bit wasteful and they should have been turned into oil but I suppose harvest isn't practical at scale.
Doesn't seem that impractical since good olive oil producers pick by hand anyway. One example is Woodpecker Trail from the article.