Hey all, Dr. Wang was kind enough to to respond to some common questions here in the comments, and she also wanted to offer one clarification of her statements in the vid. Everything that follows was written by her: As to why the smooth and buttery oil was cheaper, I want to add to the discussion about smooth and buttery oils: Some varieties of olives are naturally low in phenolic content, some olives are harvested late to achieve that profile and many consumers appreciate that flavor profile. Several people commented on the issues about re-using oil. Here are a couple good literature reviews: "Changes in PAHs levels in edible oils during deep-frying process” doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2016.02.012 "Impact of consumption of repeatedly heated cooking oils on the incidence of various cancers- A critical review” doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2017.1379470 Some people are interested in antioxidants in olive oil and how it helps against oxidation. Here are some references that showed virgin olive oil/olive oil has more stability than other oils in their studies. Frying oils with high natural or added antioxidants content, which protect against postprandial oxidative stress, also protect against DNA oxidation damage" link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-016-1205-1 "Monitoring of Quality and Stability Characteristics and Fatty Acid Compositions of Refined Olive and Seed Oils during Repeated Pan- and Deep-Frying Using GC, FT-NIRS, and Chemometrics" pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf503146f
@Adam Ragusea I suspect you may have missed an important point. Non-stick coatings degrade when oil polymerizes and forms a sticky layer on top of it. Though I have no proof, it is possible that olive oil may form more of such polymers when used for frying compared to refined oils - a theory that I see repeated faily often. My assumption is that this is why some people discourage others from using olive oil for frying. As you didn't consider the difference between regular pans and non-stick-coated pans, this may appear nonsense at first glance, as you expressed in the video.
@@adev8565 so that would mean that if you pop said sticky pan in the oven for a long while you'd build up seasoning like on cast iron cookware and woks?
@@markkalsbeek5883 Putting a non-stick pan in the oven and seasoning it like cast iron? I'm quite sure you wouldn't have a good time, not only because a lot of such pans have plastic handles.
@@adev8565 well, you can screw those off right? Like I'm not saying people should go out and ruin their perfectly good non-stick pans but if you fry with a lot of olive oil and it polymerizes on the surface making it sticky it might be a way to re-use it? If you have a pan that you can't use because it became too sticky you might want to try and rescue it. The polymerisation is basically the start of seasoning so it might be worth an experiment?
In my food science classes I was never taught that olive oil turns bad when it reaches the smoke point, or that being related to cancer causing compounds at all. Smoke point was usually only brought up when deep frying since typically a low smoke point would mean you have a flaming vat of oil faster than one with a high smoke point.
😂i like to drink nu olive oil smoking hot hoger het with blackened bbq steak on burned toast. Then I end with a cigarette. And I'm 120 years old and still RUN half marathons. Secret but expansieve olive oil not the cheap ones
Adam - nice video and good science (though yes, I do think you relied too much on someone paid by the olive industry). But a few things: - for the taste test, I’ve done blind tests with large groups of people and found that most people do find olive oils tastes more bitter when cooked, and when blended at high speed in a blender. You did a taste test as a single person with a clear agenda, which is going. Slew your results - but of course you can dry with olive oil. I do it all the time. You just have to be aware that in most cases is will taste more bitter, though clearly not as terrible as many people make it out to be. - more importantly, there’s another culinary reason to use other oils for frying, especially for things you want to get crisp like with deep drying: generally, the higher the saturated fat content, the crisper foods become. Fries or fried chicken made in olive oil will not get as crisp and will get soggy much faster than those made with peanut oil or something like shortening. - final point: you don’t always want t flavor of olive oil. The reason I sometimes use canola pe grape seed and sometimes olive oil is that sometimes I don’t want olive oil flavor in my food. Neutral oils are neutral in flavor. (And generally cheaper!)
I'm so, so confused by all the tons of conflicting information about olive oil in the internet. Sometimes I buy an expensive bottle of olive oil and I read an article by scientists telling me my brand of olive oil is fake, lol. Then other times I read another article by other scientists, that says the first article that exposes fake olive oil brands, is also fake/biased. Geez.
Kenji, your analysis is inaccurate: 1- Peanut oil is 17% while olive oil is 14% saturated fat, the 3% will not make a difference. Compared to all other so called vegetable oils , olive oils has more saturated fat (except coconut, palm and soybean) 2- taste test: you say “olive oil tastes bitter”: but compared to what? to fresh olive oil, of course it would! but the relevant comparison is relative to other cooked vegetable oils ( so u decide what to use ) that actually taste like car engine oils after being used 3- matter of taste. I love how olive oil french fried or falafel taste like . especially compared to “vegetable oil” french fries.... and of course the much enhanced taste and superior safety of olive oil (since much less aldehydes are produced than all other oils (except coconut/lard) make it the best choice
As a Greek I'd say that me and a large group of people I know put olive oil in almost every single meal including salads and we have gotten so used to the bitterness of the olive oil that it is slightly tasty and most importantly gives the food character
I was making brownies once and didn’t have vegetable oil, but I had olive oil. I didn’t feel like going to the store just for oil, so I thought I’d try baking them with olive oil. It really was so much better than any brownies I’d made with vegetable oil, and I never went back
Really? I remember having to resort to olive oil to make box brownies and i thought it tasted disgusting lol. I'm almost curious enough to test this again.... almost
@@monsay12 Yeah the balcony that the original owners turned into the area for the slaves to stay out of view during meals or parties, the button in the floor blew my mind. Must have been wild growing up and learning (at what age?) that the "help" wasn't psychic and it was Mum or Dad pressing on the button to summon them.
Certainly one reason why I used to use tons of very-tight shots (which people complained about) is because my old kitchen had very few deep sight lines that looked good. We redesigned the kitchen to offer longer sight lines, so that not every shot has to be an extreme close-up. I do think I overdid it this time and shot too wide. But I'm still re-learning how to shoot in there.
In Italy we cook with EVOO all the time, but we tend to fry with refined olive oil or peanut oil because EVOO imparts a lot of flavor we may not want on what we are frying.
Same in Spain but we use sunflower oil for frying. If you drive through the countryside here you will see endless fields of sunflowers 🌻 and olive trees 🫒. We also eat the inside of the sunflower seeds, we call them "pipas". It's a really popular snack so I guess that's also why there's so much production of sunflower.
Some people get really anti-olive oil for no reason. I think its seen as hoity-toity because its always mentioned as a healthier oil. People assume that it MUST taste worse if its healthier.. nope its just that good.
Having being raised in Spain and having only come to the usa a couple years ago, it blew my mind how many oils you can buy here. In spain there is only olive oil and sunflower oil (used for baking), we even deep fried in olive oil
@@anastasiakrisman5430 uh i didn't know that, maybe it's italians who think olive oil isn't well suited for deep frying? Personally i do find the aftertaste nasty but i wonder if i find it like that because we believe it does?
@@KyrieFortune As mentioned in the video, potentially more of a cost-effective thing for culinary reasons? If you're heating it, olive oil is fairly expensive for little taste benefits, especially in volumes for deep-frying. Unless you're Greek and thus have a history of olive-love, are practically the cause for the popularisation of olive oil, and want to use olives in everything, of course :D If you're finding the aftertaste nasty, maybe try a different olive oil? There's a huge range in taste there!
@@Asiliea i literally come from the Italian region that produces most of the Italian olive oil, I have tasted plenty and of quality (and also of not-so quality), and I still find the aftertaste of deep frying in olive oil nasty.
As a Spaniard whose been cooking with olive oil his entire life, it's true that olive oil, specially the extra virgin ones, has a very intense flavor that makes it into a mix between a cooking fat and a spice, which might alter the flavor experience for some dishes, like french fries, which to me tastes more like potato when fried with a less tasty oil like sunflower's.
I EAT FRIES IN OLIVE OIL ALL THE TIME,, U JUST COAT THE PAN, THAN MIX OR TURN THE FRIES OVER IN THE OIL ADD MORE IF NECESSARY SO LONG AS THEY GET A GOOD COAT OF OIL ,,NOT NECESSARY TO DEEP FRY THEM,,YUMMY, K.🙌🙌🙌☺☺☺😍😍🌹🌹🌹🥓🥓👄👄👄
I want to see Adam deep fry with olive oil and compare the final taste of the food to say peanut oil. Considering the other flavours in the food and the high heat I really wonder if I'm going to taste the supposed characteristics here. Another question - so if restaurants not replacing their frying oil = food that's cancer-causing, what does that make Dyer's burgers (the restaurant known for its hundred-year-old grease)? I suppose that's technically beef fat but surely the self-replenishing burger grease suffers the same issues?
NiiCh This is actually a fascinating question and I’d be interested to know because using beef tallow I’m sure makes a difference, but how much? That’s gonna need some research
The Dyer's burgers question was exactly what popped into my head when she mentioned restaurants that don't change their frying oil. I've been longing to try those burgers, but honestly watching this scared me a bit? I'm sure its not like I'll get cancer after eating one burger though.
NiiCh Or trying 4 things The question is “ will oil change the flavor of fried foods” 1 is ghee 2 is safflower oil 3 is extra virgin olive oil 4 is roasted duck fat
Well, I suppose beef fat is a saturated fat, and is therefore very resistant to oxidation. That's why processed, shelf-stable foods are made with shortening, palm oil and other saturated fats. Nonetheless, there are other break-down processes that occur, so yeah, you probably don't want to be eating Dyer's every day. Regarding frying in olive oil, I've done it many times. It's delicious, but it does taste like olive oil, whereas peanut oil has a much more neutral flavor. As I said at the end of the video, one perfectly legitimate reason to not cook with olive oil is if you don't want your food to taste like olive oil.
Right like some of us can't take the batteries out... Or somehow avoid breathing the smoke? Are we supposed to cook at home with a gas mask on? It's already annoying wearing the normal mask at work all day
@@arafferty330 Cover your fire alarm with a shower cap for the meantime before you're cooking if you expect it to get triggered, and just take it off when you're done.
My mom's family is Greek, and like the Italians, we just grew up using EVOO for literally everything, so I'm glad the science has confirmed my experiences. I still use it for everything, save for situations when I don't want the olive oil flavor
@Robert Tuttle Idk maybe it depends on where you live? At least where I live, I learned from my first days in the kitchen to only use olive oil on things that go up to medium heat max. Glad to see the myth debunked though because I love the taste, but I am really trying to stay healthy.
Ive never heard of it being dangerous or anything. I just dont do it because the taste it imparts on the food is kinda strong and nasty to me when frying at high heat for a long time. Whereas things like canola oil are much more neutral.
My dad is from Spain. He doesn’t have any other oil in his house. Now, he doesn’t feel dry but he pan fries all the time with olive oil. You go to Spain and they really don’t have other oils in the grocery. You see some coconut or avocado oils in high end shops.
Actually, here in Greece, nobody says you shouldn't cook with extra virgin olive oil. It would be weird to say so when you live in the Oliveland. :'') But I'm glad more people have come to realize that olive oil is the gigachad of cooking. Edit: NO. It does not taste bad when fried. Not bad at all.
This just shows how much of the population just go with what we're told by professionals (myself included). I didn't even question that olive oil heated to high heat was bad, I just took the general consensus even though it's clearly anecdotal evidence and scientifically wrong. Great video!
However he did say that the fumes themselves weren't particularly good to breath in. Olive oil having lower smoke point does mean that for woks/deepfrying it will produce a lot more smoke than canola no ?
Jeremy Kyle well dont just take adam’s word for it either, if this was a topic i gave a shit about id personally do more research, the two papers he explicitly mentioned were funded by the olive oil industry, he then says theres ‘lots of other papers’, but the spanish study that he links in the description for example also has a declared conflict of interest with a company that sells olive oil. Peer review isn’t an automatic indicator of truth either, as many in the scientific community know. Especially with adam’s well known propensity to oversponsor his videos, it wouldnt be a huge suprise if he was being paid to make this video, though im not going to make the leap of that sort of accusation. All this is just to say that healthy skepticism is about critical thinking and not about blindly accepting a contrarian opinion. Personally, i never deep fry anything and i like the taste of olive oil so i usually cooked with it, and when it comes to cooking a steak i dont really give a shit about the antioxidants so ill pick the oil that smokes out my apartment a little less
@@stevitos 1) I always tell you exactly what is an ad and what is not. That's pretty reckless for you to baselessly claim otherwise. I make money from ads so that I don't have to take secret, FEC-violating, under-the-table money. If I was taking that kind of money, there'd be no reason for me to do ads; 2) The Australian study was not paid for by the olive oil industry. It was performed by a lab that does other work for olive growers. The Italian study has no relevant conflicts; 3) Just google this. None of this is scientifically controversial. If you want to look directly at the science, go to pubmed and search "olive oil" and "stability."
So much bad science is around. And all them are peer-reviewed. Much due to fragile evidences leading to far-fetched conclusions. But this is not a scientific method issue, it's the paper readers and journalists taking data out of preliminary research as the "absolute truth" we need many layers of proof and repetition to really be sure of something.
please also note that different kinds of olives make oils that are better suitable for frying. Venetian traders in the eastern Mediterranean always stocked their ships with Koroneiki variety olives. these small olives produce an oil that is very resistant to heat and also lasts very long (i once had a bottle that tasted fine after 5 years in the pantry - you could never do that with a Taggiasca or a Cailletier. Also note that in the US olive oil quality is not as closely monitored as in the EU and olive oils there are often adulterated
My Greek family has always cooked with olive oil, and I've always been taught that the issue is not flavour or health but just that olive oil spits a lot more than other oils so things can get a bit messy
Not only Greek cooking, but most indian home cooking is done with olive oil, too. The store bought stuff is not. Here in Australia the other oils are a lot cheaper so people tend to cook with them instead
TheSlushy Most Indian Home cooking is not done with olive oil!! It's usually Vegetable Oil. Your household is an anomaly. Curries made w/ olive oil?? Nope.
I and all my family cooks everything with Extra Virgin Olive Oil (in Spain it is cheap) and we never had any problems with smoky olive oil nor burning nor bad tasting food. Olive Oil + 2 halfs of a garlic, not peeled, not smashed with a garlic press, just the garlic cut in half, this two things + some salt are prefect for chicken 9:56.
I had actually researched all this stuff a couple of years ago and am really happy that the truth of these studies is reaching the masses. I totally agree with the points and only use say cold pressed canola oil in a cake or something when I want a more mild flavour
Coming from an olive-oil producing area, I can add the following: Olives are really, really, really bitter. The ones that you buy in a store have gone through a de-bitterness process. Good olive oil should taste and smell like olive juice (as that is what it essentially is) and be a bit bitter as well. As a matter of fact, there is a type of olive oil called something like "unripe olive oil" that is pressed from very early harvests of unripe olives, that is even more bitter, even more tasty, perfect for salads, and a lot more expensive. As a side note, oil-producing olive varieties are much smaller than what you think (like a quarter of the size of the smallest of table olives)
There are table and oil olives, in my region in Portugal we use the "Galega" and the "Cordovil" that are suited for both. They are also pretty big. Info in English about the Galega : tradicional.dgadr.gov.pt/en/categories/olive-oils-and-olives/1059-azeitona-galega-da-beira-baixa-2 Info in Portuguese about the Cordovil : www.vidarural.pt/insights/cultivares-de-oliveira-cordovil-de-castelo-branco/
My parents have a habit of using EVOO to cook and have been doing so for years. My dad would import gallons of it from Italy. I had never noticed in the years I lived with them that the food tasted bad. I knew that there was something off about what is commonly said about EVOO.
Being transparent about the connections researchers have to what they are researching and writing papers on is very important in preserving the scientific method.
Yeah, I'll also point out that just because they studies are peer reviewed doesn't mean they're useful or correct - often times these industry funded studies are only published when they selectively find a result that looks good for the industry in a statistically significant way. To give an example of the sort of selective data that often gets used, let's look at this Polar Compounds example from the video, you can see they're rising it to high heat for hundreds of minutes. I don't know about you but I definitely don't have my oil of any kind of past it's smoke point for anywhere near that long, it's a completely unrealistic scenario. Let's also keep in mind that olive oil has a decent amount of saturated fat in it, I'd be a bit iffy suggesting it for health reasons as the jury's still out on that one.
I remember some researchers sent fake research about midi-chlorians (Star Wars organisms which gave people Force powers) and got some peer reviewed journals to publish it. Peer reviewed does not automatically mean it's good.
I'm a pretty experienced home cook. People always say: "Never use olive oil in cooking." but I was always confused because I cook with it all the time. I needed an answer, so thanks for addressing my issues!
I'm from Spain, cooking with olive oil is very common, but we don't usually start cooking with "smoking oil", just when it's very hot. Still, It's safe to cook with it, but the good ones (virgin) are more expensive. Plus, "drinking olive oil" it's not so odd like in America, we eat toast with raw olive oil and some stuff, like sugar, jam or slices of tomato for breakfast.
This is GREAT info. I pretty much only cook with butter and olive oil. I always worried a little about heating it up too much. My mom was a super health nut and we literally never had things fried in oil my entire childhood as she had read they were carcinogenic. She only ever steamed, boiled or baked things. My dad would occasionally make pancakes which he fried in butter. Speaking of butter, I'm hoping I find a video you've done on it, cause I pretty much slather everything I eat in butter :D ALSO, hopefully one day you have time to do one on where to get good olive oil. I remember a few years ago they did this big expose that nearly all extra virgin olive oil was cheap vegetable oil with some chlorophyll added. The BEST olive oil i EVER had was in Portugal back in 1999. It was fresh pressed and milky at room temperature with little chunks of olive fruit in the bottom. It wasn't bitter at all, tasted like an oily fruit juice. It was made locally with a variety of olives. When the olives get ripe enough they put a blanket around the tree, beat the olives off and then haul that in to the local press. They weighed the olives and it all gets dumped in with everyone else's harvest. Once its all pressed you get your share according to the weight of olives you brought in. Since refrigeration wasn't common loads of fresh foods were stored in the olive oil, with a few peppercorns and olive leafs, I guess to enhance the flavour and preserving qualities. My favourite was a fresh cheese made from a mixture of sheep, goat and the odd cow. Ahhh I miss the food there >.
Hey Adam, I'd love to see your take on the science around antioxidants themselves. It seems that the idea that antioxidants are always healthy is actually a myth. Would be a really good topic for your channel I think. Though in this case the presence of antioxidants is certainly indirectly healthy.
well as explained in the video, they at least keep the oil from seperating early. If they are actually beneficial for your health directly though is a whole other question I'm not qualified to answer.
What I do know is that your cells needs them in certain amounts, but I don’t have enough info to answer if eating antioxidant-rich foods is beneficial. I also know that, as with any nutrient, taking too much of only one or a few types of antioxidants might actually be harmful. So I’d avoid antioxidant supplements altogether and just eat different fruits and vegetables.
Antioxidants are found to have positive corelation towards blood circulation. Doctors will prescribe you refined antioxidants called MPFF (Micronised purified flavonoid fraction), basically extracting flavonoids of all antioxidants (things that you get in olives or more in parsley) to cure blood-circulation related ailments like hemorroids, swelling, or inflammation. Both the condition and the role of antioxidants are still not fully understood, but that doesn't mean it is a myth. You also get prescribed lecithin capsules too to treat fatty liver, things that you can also get in soy beans. Yet, when lecithin is listed as "emulsifier", it is suddenly unhealthy chemical additives. At least for my own experiment, it takes MPFF 10 minutes to cure it, and antioxidant-rich green tea 3-5 hours.
@@yohannessulistyo4025 Good info, thanks. I agree that there are many documented benefits of antioxidants. I was simply meaning that one cannot say that antioxidants are healthy in every form and situation. The vitamin industry preys on this for example and it can be harmful.
@@Malandirix agree, there are so many kinds of antioxidants. Vitamin C is one of them. It is considered safe to consume them in excessive amount, because they will be safely dumped through our urine. This means your kidney will do the work. While the rest is absorbed by the body. However, most people generally are under-hydrated, and thus force their kidney to work harder filtering this extra vitamin C without adequate hydration. That might or might not contribute to the higher number of renal failures among regular Vitamin C supplement consumers.
I didn't know that people were worried about the olive oil becoming dangerous to consume. I was always worried about breathing the smoke. I found it funny that he mentioned this once in the middle, but seemingly not as a real concern. In general, I use avocado oil for most of my cooking and avoid creating smoke in my kitchen as much as possible. If money is really tight or on the rare occasion that I want to deep fry, I'll reach for something like canola or peanut. (I do have olive oil but I guess I use it like those TV chefs)
One of the best videos I’ve seen about olive oil. I’m a 6th generation olive/olive oil farmer, we are fortunate to use our olive oil that we press for everything, eat, cook and yes to fry with and have been for ages. For eating, we use it for about year and a half then it’s sold for cosmetic uses. The problem with olive oil is who control it.. commercial companies/mafia..They buy it from small producers, mix with inferior oils, color it, add flavors and control the price of the final product. Most of what is sold is counterfeit or a mixture of bunch of inferior rancid flavored oils! Vegetable oil producers and their lobby have totally convinced people around the world that their oils are better to cook and fry with than olive oil, and I think they won. So thanks to your video and others like it hoping it will open people’s eyes to what they’re eating.
@@LaVaneBea the fact that there’s different types of glasses for each type of alcohol just scares me… I know there’s a rule about not mixing certain wines with certain meats: red wine is paired with red meat and white wine is paired with white meat. Although I want to know where Duck stands since duck is red… or is duck only red because I undercooked it.
It's a misconception that fats cause weight gain. The _real_ cause of weight gain is, and has always been, refined sugar and flour. Fats contain nutrients that actually fight weight gain; refined sugar and flour, due to their lack of nutrients, convert into fat for storage rather than energy. Stay away from refined sugar; substitute it with fruit, honey, sap, and sugarcane. Substitute flour with wholegrain mixture. Those are healthy alternatives due to their nutrients maintained when kept natural and unprocessed. Watch Weston A. Price's documentary; he is considered “the Charles Darwin of nutrition.”
@@benireges yes sugarcane and honey have nutrients but the sugar sees your body still as sugar. Be like adam and go keto for weight loss and drink olive oil 😂👍
I really appreciate this video and I do cook mostly with EVOO. That said, I still prefer to deep fry with sunflower oil or other high smoke point oils just because they don’t seem to splatter as much as EVOO. I use a pan with fairly high and nicely curved sides which helps a lot with spatter but I’m still afraid of getting hand burns from dancing EVOO when I’m adjusting the food… Also their neutral flavor is preferred for many dishes. Hopefully discarding the oil frequently keeps things as healthy as possible.
You should get a frying cover. I have old ones from the 70s i took from my parents' house after they died. It's a big flat ring covered in metal mesh, and a handle on one side. It's kinda like a screen door, but the holes are slightly smaller. It doesn't trap ALL the oil from sizzling out, but most of it. My countertops and rangetop are a hell of a lot cleaner after i started using it.
OMG I'm from Spain and this video is just absolutely hilarious. I didn't even know there was a controversy about this. Here we've been cooking with extra virgin olive oil for literally 2000+ years. Of course there are economic reasons to use cheaper oils, specially if your country has to import it...
Idk why people make such a big deal, Mediterranean nations have some of the longest life spans and it’s likely due to their diet. Also imported oil is just as cheap as Californian oil where I live
It's a snob thing. Like how so many Italian-Americans faint everytime Adam breaks dry pasta to fit. My Italian grandmother, who taught me how to cook ( in Italy) never reused oil used for frying. She used Olive Oil for nearly every thing to be deep fried. Lard for occasions when she wanted no extra taste or scent.
@@ethelryan257 you can't get too mad at people just listening to the current science, I worked at a healthfood store and our nutritionist was taught this and so she taught others. Not because we didn't like olive oil. 🤷♀️
This is good to know. I have been avoiding using olive oil for sautéing due to this misconception. We don't eat anything fried in oil. And we only use fruit oils and nut oils, never any grain or seed oils. Olive, coconut, and avocado are fruit oil sources. Walnuts are a favorite nut oil. Peanuts are seeds, so no peanut oil for us. Using fruit and nut oils while consuming oily fish provides a good omega fatty acid ratio, close to 50-50. So that's why we do it this way.
I live in an olive growing region. When you go for a drive it's olive trees as far as the eye can see. We have access to locally pressed, early harvest unfiltered milky olive oil and we love the spicy, grassy, bitter taste of it. My wife and I use it for everything except when we cook Asian. I don't know what I'd do if we moved somewhere else and couldn't get similar quality olive oil.
I've always cooked steak with sunflower seed oil. After watching this video I decided to use olive oil instead. The only negative is that it produced so much smoke my fire alarm went off lol. The steak, and especially the left over sauce, tasted a bit more rich. I feel like the olive oil meshes much better with the butter, garlic, rosemary, and thyme. It was the best steak I've personally cooked. Just need to figure out a better ventilation system.
I can't distinguish something fried in regular vegetable oil vs in olive oil. I've even fried food for my family and told them afterwards it was fried in olive oil and they were surprised because there was no difference in taste. I would suggest people actually try using olive oil in their cooking before believing internet comments about how it supposedly changes the taste of foods. Raw oil on salad is totally different though, EVOO overpowers so many flavors in salads.
I used olive oil to fry meat when I had run out of sunflower oil. Worked perfectly fine, so I was wondering what the fuss was about ever since. Thanks for clearing that up!
Hi Adam, I just wanted to thank you for such a well-researched video. I wish that other semi-educational videos would reference their sources in a similar way. Your channel always meets a high standard of journalistic integrity and I applaud you for the work you put in to each video.(:
Well, the study you're citing shows very clearly in Figure 6 that K232 levels increase sharply as the "low-temp" oils approach 240C, whereas they don't in the "high-temp oils." And the study itself calls into question whether its varied-temperature trial was flawed, in that there was no cooking and the oils were merely raised to the given temperatures and then sampled in the variable-temperature trial, instead of holding it at each of those different temperatures in a separate trial. The fact that there is such a noticeable change in the "low-temp" oils in Figure 6 despite it only being raised to that temperature and not held there for any signification duration makes me think it'd keep shooting up even further. That Figure seems to pretty clearly show that there is a legitimate scientific basis for the traditional wisdom about low-temp oils and ones that are good for approaching 500 F for frying tough vegetables and such. It shows that low-temp oils are relatively unaffected by heat until around 200C, where they start to approach the properties of more highly-refined oils -- meaning, if you let your nice olive or avocado oil get that hot, you may as well have used something that was a bit more refined and won't run the risk of having that sharp increase in K232 levels. If this study were done by anyone but an olive-funded company, they'd have a very different Conclusion section.
Hello there, your comment actually made me check out the De Alzaa et al. paper from 2018 :-) Looking at figures 6 and 8, I‘m very surprised how EVOO performs (assuming polar compounds and K232 are bad - which I accept and haven‘t checked). I agree that levels start increasing rapidly above 210 deg C, but I usually do all my frying around 180 deg C. So this is personally not my take away from those figures. I will take away that my trusted canola oil is not doing well at all... shame on me, for years of trusting „hear say“ (and my mom)!
My grandma always “burns” the olive oil before cooking. It gives it a particular very good taste. We are from Spain, the biggest olive oil producer in the world. 👍🇪🇸
@@parate8628 wait what? I mean, it's criminal if you use the high quality stuff for things that require a lots of oil for not so much food, like deep frying - but at least here in Spain olive oil is the first choice for cooking, just not using the highest quality one you have at home for frying and sauteing.
I’ve read the papers and I am now convinced that using EVOO for high temperature cooking doesn’t contribute to oxidative stress through fatty acid oxidation. However, I have several gripes with the issues presented: 1. The taste test is way too vulnerable to bias. It could be protected from bias if you give the cooked oils and a sample of uncooked oils to your wife and let her rebottle them into containers and then you test it. 2. The paper citing EVOO extracting polyphenols was not comparing EVOO with other oils. If I have to guess, other oils could have done as good a job as EVOO at improving bioavailability. 3. While the presence of natural antioxidants shielded the fatty acids from oxidation, they themselves generate radicals. And because antioxidants reacts with oxygen more easily, there could be more radicals in a cooked EVOO than a cooked neutral oil, especially palm oil and coconut oils. 4. This video trashed Canola oil multiple times for its lack of stability towards oxygen, but the Australian paper you cited actually showed that they retained their air stability after 6 hours of cooking better than olive oil. You also said it’s unhealthy, even though PUFA, the culprit for susceptibility towards oxidation, is beneficial to health across many many studies and validated through many meta analysis
Great points, I don't think the last word on cooking oil controversy has been said. Also wasn't these studies funded by the olive oil industry itself? Always good to be extra critical of one sided findings, although I suspect it's not on the level of controversy as with the likes of Pfizer.. 🙄
Can you help me understand how natural antioxidants are generating free radicals? Or link a source? That doesn't really seem to line up. Another note: as I understand it, the beneficial-to-health aspect of PUFAs is specifically the well-known omega-3 fatty acids ALA, DHA, and EPA (the latter two being extremely important in our bodies, and these just happen to be polyunsaturated fats). Canola oil only has a bunch of ALA, ALA being the one usually from plant sources which also is not converted into usable forms very well in our bodies, so much of it is just used like any other fat, for energy. So canola oil's supposed health benefits in that regard are extremely limited and debatable. And oxidative stability of EVOO remains far superior for around 2 hours(!!!) of cooking while canola's starts out low to begin with! Who cooks vegetable oil for 6 hours at 180C/356F? I suppose if one does that often, for some reason, they should consider using coconut oil or animal fat for the stability of saturated fats. Finally, add to that that the levels of trans fats in canola are far worse than natural oils like olive, coconut, or avocado both BEFORE AND AFTER cooking, and you can see canola oil should be pretty atrocious from a health standpoint. I'd love to be proven wrong. Thanks for bringing up some interesting points.
PUFAs are only beneficial if they're Omega-3 fats. Canola oil, as well as other seed oils like soybean, corn, and peanut, are high in Omega-6s which still can have some benefits but only when it's consumed in small amounts (i.e., not when food's essentially soaked in a bunch of it for several minutes). Another issue is that, to wring out as much oil as they can from those aforementioned seeds, they have to harshly process them, beat them to a pulp, and afterward they're in a state that's extremely harmful to the body since it recognizes this processed fat molecule as a toxin, and regular consumption of stuff like this can lead to autoimmune diseases, and these processed oils also contribute to insulin resistance about as badly as sugar does. At that point, any health benefits the Omega-6s in the PUFA might have offered is rendered pretty much moot. I do agree, however, that I don't personally give much trust to studies funded by the very corporations this kind of study benefits most, and "peer-reviewed" from my experience means little when studies go in with an idea of what they're looking for, and don't usually get published when they don't find that.
This makes me feel a lot better about the fact that I've been cooking with EVOO for half my life all the while ignoring all the people telling me not to.
During this lockdown period, this channel has become my favorite place to learn cooking and understand the science behind it. Way to go, Adam Ragusea 👏. Best wishes from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
It would've been interesting to see you taste testing different types of cooked foods (pan frying chicken vs. frying potatoes, vs. sauteing greens, etc.). I've noticed, for me at least, that certain types of foods do seem to actually taste more bitter than others when cooked with oils (specifically EVOO) that have reached their smoking point, even with removing them from heat and oil altogether, not burning the food, etc. There seems to be a certain bitter component that's pronounced in the final product. Whether or not it's from the oil or the food itself, I'm not sure.
It would have also been preferable to have included a colab with an endocrinologist with say 40 years of experience in lipid research than someone with a PhD employed by the olive oil industry.
Olive oil is often tasted via sipping to determine it's quality. Remember Olive oil it's not only used as any other oil. It's flavor also matters and it varies from brand to brand. Hell. I sometimes take spoonfuls of it because a good quality olive oil it's delicious raw.
Tomáš Bednár it just wastes oil, if all your oil smoked you got nothing left to cook with, which is why I prefer regular vegetable oil. Though if money were no object I’d use ghee (clarified butter) for everything.
@@boygenius538_8 regular vegetable oil straight up causes cancer like you don't even have to heat it up that much for it to get toxic. It is on it's own very toxic
My greatest take away was stick with avocado oil. The neutral flavor works for seering , stir frying, and coming anything else over higher than medium heat.
Ay Adam just gotta say I love the attention to detail when you're citing your sources to make sure you're giving out accurate info. What I'm studying is about as far away from journalism you can get but you really opened up my eyes for things to look for wether I'm researching or just getting the news. Don't think it's said enough but we really appreciate it man keep it up 💪🏿💪🏿
As someone who only cook in olive oil because i hate the taste of other oil and butters/margarins are annoying. This video didnt change my mind about olive oil
So if the smoke point isn't when the oil starts "breaking down", what does the smoke mean then? Is there any reason to choose low vs high smoke point oil other than as a heat indicator?
Pang I’ve always used it as a heat indicator, in fact In the 10+ years I’ve been studying cooking I haven’t heard of olive oil being bad for cooking and I’ve never worried about oils breaking down to much. Just don’t use oils meant for low heat when cooking a high heat dish and you’ll be good
Why does it need to "mean" anything of significance? Can't it just be something that happens at a certain temperature, without being a signal to you about anything that's relevant to your cooking process? It has a cause based on physics and chemistry, sure, just like the maillard reaction has a scientifically demonstrated cause ... but you can definitely safely eat things whether you got the Golden Brown Perfect Crust (tm) on it or not. The point of the video is to stop considering it as a factor at all. Celebrity chefs are great to listen to for technique advice, but they also propagate myths like this all the time. They're great cooks, creative, and have a ton of practical experience -- but that doesn't make them literal physicists and chemists.
@@VideogamesPang The same reason any type of smoke happens. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke Essentially, the oil is a fuel source, but it's not able to "combust" under the heat (which would mean a fire) because of the properties of the oil at that temperature. Most of what makes smoke itself dangerous is ash content and other vapors when solid matter burns, like wood ... but that's not happening in this unique case. You're seeing some locked particles in the oil being released into the air as a gas. The thing that most people 'think' makes the smoke point dangerous is that cooking oil CAN deform under extremely high temperatures, and can form some icky particles ... but the thing most people don't understand is the temperature at which that happens for each oil type is NOT related to the smoke point at ALL. That's a different process, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil is actually one of the most stable oils at higher temperatures around. People just panic because they can see something visible with it. The transformation of oil molecules at high temperature is INVISIBLE, and it also only occurs at VERY high temperature well beyond the smoke point ... higher than you've probably ever heated food in your life. It can happen in re-used oil (like in fast food joints) that's being heated on an industrial level in super-strong power-guzzler deep fryers, but at home ... it's a complete non-issue. You'd never recycle oil like 100 times without letting it cool, and you'd never bring something up to like 600 degrees fahrenheit. One other lesser danger that people worry about regarding the smoke point is an alteration in taste, which can happen for other reasons at very high temperature, but it's not connected to the smoke point.
As someone that grew up eating a latin diet (which uses a ton of olive oil), thank you for this video! It is such a common internet refrain ("olive oil is toxic when heated") that a good debunking video that can be linked to is very helpful.
Hey Adam, great video, thanks for asking the real questions and getting to the bottom of this! Serious question though: you say that antioxidants in EVOO can counteract the potential harmful effects of oxidized oil, but are you sure it works as directly as that? If the oil oxidizes, is the amount of antioxidants in it actually enough to prevent some harm? I'm curious because it *sounds* like it makes sense, but I know science/health doesn't always work intuitively. Thanks again for the video!
That's a good question. If I recall correctly Nutrition Diva (a registered dietician podcast and blog) stated that the healthy compounds in olive oil break down with heat and so there's little point cooking with EVOO over refined olive oil because you're not getting most of the health benefits of EVOO. And I suppose it's possible that, regarding that statement, the good compounds are breaking down because they are neutralizing oxidative chemicals, but my guess is that she was referring to the good compounds being destroyed by the application of heat itself, and if that's the case, I wonder to what degree they'd get the chance to react with the oxidative chemicals and neutralize them.
The "Yuck" when cooking with olive oil for me comes from it's saturated flavor, especially with breaded items. It's something about the olive oil itself because I can even fry with coconut oil and not be turned off by the flavor. I usually just stick to vegetable oil when frying most foods and peanut oil occasionally for potato items.
The main issue is that the studies are all done with verified extra virgin olive oil, meanwhile most olive oil in the US, whether labelled evoo or not isn't actually "extra virgin" olive oil, normal olive oil or virgin olive oils are not as stable, lower smoke points and more carcinogens at high heat.
Being Greek I thank you Adam! This is great to know as I only use extra virgin olive oil ... plus others it will help my country’s economy if more people are convinced! 😊 also the bitterness is what tells me the olive oil is of the best quality
I think the issue (at least in the US, where I live,) is that most things in grocery stores marketed as "olive oil" contain very little of that product. The ingredients can claim only olive oil, and still be mostly a cheaper oil that does break down, like canola.
I agree. My wife and I are ordering EVOO from California now as we're fed up with the counterfeit Italian EVOOs. California appears to be the only jurisdiction in the world which has been able to keep the Mafia out. I hear Australia may be close to doing the same.
I didn't really read much about the subject and the few times I've seen this popping, I always assumed that an oil with a low smoke point would be an oil with a low self ignition point. So, it was safer to use an oil with a high smoke point (thus self ignition point) while frying at high temperature.
Glad I now have scientific backing for the thing I've been saying all this time: cooked olive oil isn't bitter! Cooking flattens the taste a bit but that's basically it! I've been cooking with it for years and it never gave me issues. And in fact most recipes I've read that don't use it do it for the reason you stated: because olive oil has a very distinctive flavor that might not be okay in that dish!
Super informative my friend. Thank you. I've heard that olive oil isn't good as a coating for cast iron. It goes "rancid" could you clarify here? Or maybe try a cast iron myths video? I feel like I hear so many different things about cast iron that it can be confusing for someone who just started cooking with it.
Asking the right questions! As a Lebanese human, I have been using mass amounts of olive oil in all my cooking. A little smoke never bothered me. Good to see this backed up. Thank you!
The only reason i usually dont sear stuff in olive oil is that the smoke point is so low. My smoke detectors are sensitive and i hate having to shut them up every time i cook. So i switched to avocado oil for searing and its been working much better. If i dont need to get oil roaring hot tho, then i dont really care what i use 🤷🏻♂️
I heard EVOO is for drizzling and regular olive oil for cooking, so I decided to switch to that. I have noticed that regular OO does, in fact, not smoke as much as EVOO. It's also not as pungent, much more like how vegetable oil acts (which is just soybean oil if you look at the ingredient list), but imparts some of that Italian olive flavor we all love.
Wow, I gotta say, you are the best Adam. I love how you support your cooking methods with actual primary sources and mix in your subjective feedback too, so it becomes more relevant to everyday cooking. I've always wondered if chefs actually fact-check the tips that they give, and you are a breath of fresh air. You've also gotten me to actually cook more than anyone. Thank you for the time and effort you put into these videos from one of your many loyal subscribers! Oh also i'm getting surfshark through your link so thanks for that too haha
Just make sure you don't question any of his subjective stuff that he sometimes treat as the objective truths...or else you might get a 500 words essay explaining to you to the finest details why you're wrong lol. But this minor issue aside(all of us have weird quirks anyway), his videos are certainly entertaining, haha
@@zanaros2606 That’s the same kind of mentality as bragging one made it through High School without reading a single book entirely, and/or thinking anything longer than a paragraph is too much to read so the writer is at fault in some way. If his follow-up “essays” provide informative details, then you should be reading them because you need them. He’s giving you enough credit to think you are capable of understanding them, so read them and appreciate that he took the time to add such detail.
I am Spanish and here cooking with anything else than olive oil (except maybe pork fat or butter for deserts or some concrete dishes, and people stopped used them because doctors said they are bad) is considered disgusting. But the olive oil we used for cooking used to be quite refined, despite some people use the virgin one. Unfortunately, restaurants use vegetable oil, which also the worst fat you can use for cooking because is so bad. Also is used in many infustrial products (like mayonnaise which originally used olive oil, that was the only oil 100 years ago, and now it uses soy oil).
@@exxonrcg well Spain is the third country in the world with the most life expectancy after Japan and I believe Switzerland, it's about 82 and a half years, so I say olive oil is pretty safe hahaha
@@exxonrcg The cancer myth was probably started by the industrial "canola oil" companies; the same ones who came up with the fake name "canola oil" for what is actually processed rapeseed oil.
Hey all, Dr. Wang was kind enough to to respond to some common questions here in the comments, and she also wanted to offer one clarification of her statements in the vid. Everything that follows was written by her:
As to why the smooth and buttery oil was cheaper, I want to add to the discussion about smooth and buttery oils: Some varieties of olives are naturally low in phenolic content, some olives are harvested late to achieve that profile and many consumers appreciate that flavor profile.
Several people commented on the issues about re-using oil. Here are a couple good literature reviews:
"Changes in PAHs levels in edible oils during deep-frying process” doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2016.02.012
"Impact of consumption of repeatedly heated cooking oils on the incidence of various cancers- A critical review” doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2017.1379470
Some people are interested in antioxidants in olive oil and how it helps against oxidation. Here are some references that showed virgin olive oil/olive oil has more stability than other oils in their studies.
Frying oils with high natural or added antioxidants content, which protect against postprandial oxidative stress, also protect against DNA oxidation damage"
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-016-1205-1
"Monitoring of Quality and Stability Characteristics and Fatty Acid Compositions of Refined Olive and Seed Oils during Repeated Pan- and Deep-Frying Using GC, FT-NIRS, and Chemometrics"
pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf503146f
@Adam Ragusea I suspect you may have missed an important point. Non-stick coatings degrade when oil polymerizes and forms a sticky layer on top of it. Though I have no proof, it is possible that olive oil may form more of such polymers when used for frying compared to refined oils - a theory that I see repeated faily often. My assumption is that this is why some people discourage others from using olive oil for frying. As you didn't consider the difference between regular pans and non-stick-coated pans, this may appear nonsense at first glance, as you expressed in the video.
@@adev8565 so that would mean that if you pop said sticky pan in the oven for a long while you'd build up seasoning like on cast iron cookware and woks?
@@markkalsbeek5883 Putting a non-stick pan in the oven and seasoning it like cast iron? I'm quite sure you wouldn't have a good time, not only because a lot of such pans have plastic handles.
@@adev8565 well, you can screw those off right? Like I'm not saying people should go out and ruin their perfectly good non-stick pans but if you fry with a lot of olive oil and it polymerizes on the surface making it sticky it might be a way to re-use it? If you have a pan that you can't use because it became too sticky you might want to try and rescue it.
The polymerisation is basically the start of seasoning so it might be worth an experiment?
THankYOU! Dr Wang.
0:16 Why I oil my throat instead of the food
lmaoo
Lube it, that's what she said
HAHAHAH
Are people really that salty about seasoning the board?
How old is this joke
This guy just started frying with white vine and drinking olive oil
rofl
Is this the darkest timeline?
@@kurogane2638 I mean, look around.
Yeah the Toronto Raptors won the NBA Championship, we're on the second "worst" timeline or around there.
cooking with white wine is pretty standard, at least in mediterranean countries. We even have cheap, box wines that are meant just for cooking.
In my food science classes I was never taught that olive oil turns bad when it reaches the smoke point, or that being related to cancer causing compounds at all. Smoke point was usually only brought up when deep frying since typically a low smoke point would mean you have a flaming vat of oil faster than one with a high smoke point.
So cooks avoid low smoke points for fire safety reasons as well? Makes sense, when those kitchens usually have gas stoves
smoking things are breaking down, cooking oils too. It is very unhealthy
@@sinusnovi3826 it's like you didn't even watch the video, what are you doing here?
@@KRSorba get a live
@@sinusnovi3826 Water doesn't break down when you boil it, it turns into vapor. You are dumb.
0:16 Why I sip olive oil instead of white wine
He puts white wine in all his food, then serves it with a glass of olive oil
I take a shot a virgin olive oil in the morning
Actually, one sip or a small shot of raw olive oil a day can be healthy and help with your vitality.
whythe only one It can actually be healthy.
😂i like to drink nu olive oil smoking hot hoger het with blackened bbq steak on burned toast. Then I end with a cigarette. And I'm 120 years old and still RUN half marathons. Secret but expansieve olive oil not the cheap ones
Adam - nice video and good science (though yes, I do think you relied too much on someone paid by the olive industry). But a few things:
- for the taste test, I’ve done blind tests with large groups of people and found that most people do find olive oils tastes more bitter when cooked, and when blended at high speed in a blender. You did a taste test as a single person with a clear agenda, which is going. Slew your results - but of course you can dry with olive oil. I do it all the time. You just have to be aware that in most cases is will taste more bitter, though clearly not as terrible as many people make it out to be.
- more importantly, there’s another culinary reason to use other oils for frying, especially for things you want to get crisp like with deep drying: generally, the higher the saturated fat content, the crisper foods become. Fries or fried chicken made in olive oil will not get as crisp and will get soggy much faster than those made with peanut oil or something like shortening.
- final point: you don’t always want t flavor of olive oil. The reason I sometimes use canola pe grape seed and sometimes olive oil is that sometimes I don’t want olive oil flavor in my food. Neutral oils are neutral in flavor. (And generally cheaper!)
Note to anyone reading the above: replace the word "dry/drying" with "fry/frying"
Thanks for pointing this out. Made for infuriating watching.
This comment needs more likes! Thank you.
I'm so, so confused by all the tons of conflicting information about olive oil in the internet. Sometimes I buy an expensive bottle of olive oil and I read an article by scientists telling me my brand of olive oil is fake, lol. Then other times I read another article by other scientists, that says the first article that exposes fake olive oil brands, is also fake/biased. Geez.
Kenji, your analysis is inaccurate:
1- Peanut oil is 17% while olive oil is 14% saturated fat, the 3% will not make a difference. Compared to all other so called vegetable oils , olive oils has more saturated fat (except coconut, palm and soybean)
2- taste test: you say “olive oil tastes bitter”: but compared to what? to fresh olive oil, of course it would! but the relevant comparison is relative to other cooked vegetable oils ( so u decide what to use ) that actually taste like car engine oils after being used
3- matter of taste. I love how olive oil french fried or falafel taste like . especially compared to “vegetable oil” french fries....
and of course the much enhanced taste and superior safety of olive oil (since much less aldehydes are produced than all other oils (except coconut/lard) make it the best choice
As a Greek I'd say that me and a large group of people I know put olive oil in almost every single meal including salads and we have gotten so used to the bitterness of the olive oil that it is slightly tasty and most importantly gives the food character
You guys also fry the fries in souvlaki with olive oil, right? That's what I heard, don't know if it's true.
@@ajs787 they produce tons of olive oil so yeah probably, just like how eastern slavs use sunflower oil for everything
I'm Spanish and I agree with you.
@@ajs787most restaurants use sunflower oil but yes ..many greeks fry potatoes in olive oil
Generally, taste tests don't take into account repeat exposure the way culture does.
Even Adam's camera is partaking in social distancing
What a sad year indeed 😢
😂😂😂😂
Social distancing, quarantine, corona-I'm so fed up with those words!
Beni Reges get used to them then
I think he’s just showing off his new kitchen
Did you mean "physical distancing"?
Who does even cook with olive oil nowadays? I mean EVERYBODY cooks with white wine these days.
Whoa your comment gets on so many levels
no, everybody cooks with seasoned cutting board
.
*gordon ramsay has left the chat*
@@louisc8873 i put lots of salt on my cutting board and it really brings out the taste!! try it sometime.
I was making brownies once and didn’t have vegetable oil, but I had olive oil. I didn’t feel like going to the store just for oil, so I thought I’d try baking them with olive oil. It really was so much better than any brownies I’d made with vegetable oil, and I never went back
chocolate and olive oil are best friends!
Italians bake with it, tastes awesome. I do too.
Really?
I remember having to resort to olive oil to make box brownies and i thought it tasted disgusting lol.
I'm almost curious enough to test this again.... almost
@@80sgirlwhamduran do it
@@80sgirlwhamduran box brownies in general are disgusting
Feel like Adam be using those wide shots to show off his brand new kitchen. Either that or Adam wants us to know he's not at home.
This is definitely his new kitchen, see the left side of his kitchen, its the same home add on nook thing
Jubei Del And on the opposite side you can just see a vinegar leg (in its proper place)
@@monsay12 Yeah the balcony that the original owners turned into the area for the slaves to stay out of view during meals or parties, the button in the floor blew my mind. Must have been wild growing up and learning (at what age?) that the "help" wasn't psychic and it was Mum or Dad pressing on the button to summon them.
Certainly one reason why I used to use tons of very-tight shots (which people complained about) is because my old kitchen had very few deep sight lines that looked good. We redesigned the kitchen to offer longer sight lines, so that not every shot has to be an extreme close-up. I do think I overdid it this time and shot too wide. But I'm still re-learning how to shoot in there.
Don't lie to us Dad-am, you're trying to fit those mad gains in the frame
In Italy we cook with EVOO all the time, but we tend to fry with refined olive oil or peanut oil because EVOO imparts a lot of flavor we may not want on what we are frying.
I actually love the earthly flavor evoo adds but I can totally understand why others wouldn't.
The only recipe where i actually prefer olive oil is breaded chicken breasts, they add flavor to the chicken
Same in Spain but we use sunflower oil for frying. If you drive through the countryside here you will see endless fields of sunflowers 🌻 and olive trees 🫒. We also eat the inside of the sunflower seeds, we call them "pipas". It's a really popular snack so I guess that's also why there's so much production of sunflower.
Exactly EVO oil is for raw seasonigs
"extra" virgin as the extra pregnant or extra dead?
Exactly what my mum told me 30 years ago. Every one in UK criticise me for frying eggs with olive oil. Thanks for confirming what I already knew.
Some people get really anti-olive oil for no reason. I think its seen as hoity-toity because its always mentioned as a healthier oil. People assume that it MUST taste worse if its healthier.. nope its just that good.
TRY BUTTER & OLIVE OIL IT WON'T KILL YOU& THEY FLIP OVER EASIER!!!!👍👍👍👍
Fry eggs in lard. It's so much better.
People have an irrational fear of salt in the UK too.
Having being raised in Spain and having only come to the usa a couple years ago, it blew my mind how many oils you can buy here. In spain there is only olive oil and sunflower oil (used for baking), we even deep fried in olive oil
Not even Italians deep fry in olive oil, preferring sunflower seed oil, peanut oil or mixed seed oil
@@KyrieFortune greeks deep fry in olive oil
@@anastasiakrisman5430 uh i didn't know that, maybe it's italians who think olive oil isn't well suited for deep frying? Personally i do find the aftertaste nasty but i wonder if i find it like that because we believe it does?
@@KyrieFortune As mentioned in the video, potentially more of a cost-effective thing for culinary reasons? If you're heating it, olive oil is fairly expensive for little taste benefits, especially in volumes for deep-frying. Unless you're Greek and thus have a history of olive-love, are practically the cause for the popularisation of olive oil, and want to use olives in everything, of course :D
If you're finding the aftertaste nasty, maybe try a different olive oil? There's a huge range in taste there!
@@Asiliea i literally come from the Italian region that produces most of the Italian olive oil, I have tasted plenty and of quality (and also of not-so quality), and I still find the aftertaste of deep frying in olive oil nasty.
As a Spaniard whose been cooking with olive oil his entire life, it's true that olive oil, specially the extra virgin ones, has a very intense flavor that makes it into a mix between a cooking fat and a spice, which might alter the flavor experience for some dishes, like french fries, which to me tastes more like potato when fried with a less tasty oil like sunflower's.
but fries are Potato. what is french about it Cabron !
I EAT FRIES IN OLIVE OIL ALL THE TIME,, U JUST COAT THE PAN, THAN MIX OR TURN THE FRIES OVER IN THE OIL ADD MORE IF NECESSARY SO LONG AS THEY GET A GOOD COAT OF OIL ,,NOT NECESSARY TO DEEP FRY THEM,,YUMMY, K.🙌🙌🙌☺☺☺😍😍🌹🌹🌹🥓🥓👄👄👄
I like my olive oil smothered in Mediterranean food
Jellal be stalking me
Also the middle east, so much olive oil is used there
@@ClashingWithThunder America wants to know your location
Little bit of olive oil, gives it that mediterranean...
Romans supposedly drank the stuff too
I want to see Adam deep fry with olive oil and compare the final taste of the food to say peanut oil.
Considering the other flavours in the food and the high heat I really wonder if I'm going to taste the supposed characteristics here.
Another question - so if restaurants not replacing their frying oil = food that's cancer-causing, what does that make Dyer's burgers (the restaurant known for its hundred-year-old grease)? I suppose that's technically beef fat but surely the self-replenishing burger grease suffers the same issues?
NiiCh This is actually a fascinating question and I’d be interested to know because using beef tallow I’m sure makes a difference, but how much? That’s gonna need some research
The Dyer's burgers question was exactly what popped into my head when she mentioned restaurants that don't change their frying oil. I've been longing to try those burgers, but honestly watching this scared me a bit? I'm sure its not like I'll get cancer after eating one burger though.
NiiCh
Or trying 4 things
The question is “ will oil change the flavor of fried foods”
1 is ghee
2 is safflower oil
3 is extra virgin olive oil
4 is roasted duck fat
@@osamatayeb4027 I'll die of heart diseases long before the cancer takes hold if I eat deep fried burgers regularly, but I'm still curious.
Well, I suppose beef fat is a saturated fat, and is therefore very resistant to oxidation. That's why processed, shelf-stable foods are made with shortening, palm oil and other saturated fats. Nonetheless, there are other break-down processes that occur, so yeah, you probably don't want to be eating Dyer's every day. Regarding frying in olive oil, I've done it many times. It's delicious, but it does taste like olive oil, whereas peanut oil has a much more neutral flavor. As I said at the end of the video, one perfectly legitimate reason to not cook with olive oil is if you don't want your food to taste like olive oil.
very informative. i always fried food in butter because i thought extra virgin olive oil was bad. now i can do both :)
Frying in olive oilr is healthier than frying in butter. You only nave to keep the olive oil under 180 ºC.
@@josemiguelmunoz6985can you efficiently cook a steak like that?
My concern with smoking oil isn't toxins it's my fire alarm, lmao.
Right like some of us can't take the batteries out... Or somehow avoid breathing the smoke? Are we supposed to cook at home with a gas mask on? It's already annoying wearing the normal mask at work all day
@@arafferty330 Cover your fire alarm with a shower cap for the meantime before you're cooking if you expect it to get triggered, and just take it off when you're done.
@@joemochi I´ll try that. My smoke alarm and cooking endeavors often interact in a positive way, though not so positive for my ear drums.
Grab that cast iron and head to the grill!
@@joemochi I don't want my apartment smelling like something is burning for days?
In Spain (we mostly use olive oil), we kind of "know" that olive oil is the best oil. We might not know why, but we know.
I know because I know
@White Working Class Pride Blackacaust while we still can
And you are right, as we Portuguese are too :)
Romans, greeks and phoenicians used it has to be good.
Plus olive oil is sometimes treathed like wine with various varieties and radically different tastes.
My mom's family is Greek, and like the Italians, we just grew up using EVOO for literally everything, so I'm glad the science has confirmed my experiences. I still use it for everything, save for situations when I don't want the olive oil flavor
I've seen a hummus spray bottle
i just thought people didn’t like high heat with olive oil because they don’t like the smoke
@Robert Tuttle Idk maybe it depends on where you live? At least where I live, I learned from my first days in the kitchen to only use olive oil on things that go up to medium heat max. Glad to see the myth debunked though because I love the taste, but I am really trying to stay healthy.
Ive never heard of it being dangerous or anything. I just dont do it because the taste it imparts on the food is kinda strong and nasty to me when frying at high heat for a long time. Whereas things like canola oil are much more neutral.
people panic when they see cooking oil smoking
Yeah I use it often honestly cuz I read through bullshit
I use the smoke point as a guide that my non stick platina has coated my stainless steel pan ready for frying.
"Olive oil is not safe to cook with!"
*_Laughs in mediterranean_*
Exactly.
This deit is currently changing my life tbh
*Laughs in Palestinian*
My dad is from Spain. He doesn’t have any other oil in his house. Now, he doesn’t feel dry but he pan fries all the time with olive oil. You go to Spain and they really don’t have other oils in the grocery. You see some coconut or avocado oils in high end shops.
Evlad-ı S.P.Q.R yes under the yolk of Rome
Actually, here in Greece, nobody says you shouldn't cook with extra virgin olive oil. It would be weird to say so when you live in the Oliveland. :'') But I'm glad more people have come to realize that olive oil is the gigachad of cooking.
Edit: NO. It does not taste bad when fried. Not bad at all.
So can i pan sear a steak efficiently with the extra virgin olive oil
This just shows how much of the population just go with what we're told by professionals (myself included). I didn't even question that olive oil heated to high heat was bad, I just took the general consensus even though it's clearly anecdotal evidence and scientifically wrong. Great video!
Yeah I'm in spain and here we only use other oils for deep frying. I've always wondered why people avoided it.
However he did say that the fumes themselves weren't particularly good to breath in.
Olive oil having lower smoke point does mean that for woks/deepfrying it will produce a lot more smoke than canola no ?
Jeremy Kyle well dont just take adam’s word for it either, if this was a topic i gave a shit about id personally do more research, the two papers he explicitly mentioned were funded by the olive oil industry, he then says theres ‘lots of other papers’, but the spanish study that he links in the description for example also has a declared conflict of interest with a company that sells olive oil. Peer review isn’t an automatic indicator of truth either, as many in the scientific community know. Especially with adam’s well known propensity to oversponsor his videos, it wouldnt be a huge suprise if he was being paid to make this video, though im not going to make the leap of that sort of accusation. All this is just to say that healthy skepticism is about critical thinking and not about blindly accepting a contrarian opinion. Personally, i never deep fry anything and i like the taste of olive oil so i usually cooked with it, and when it comes to cooking a steak i dont really give a shit about the antioxidants so ill pick the oil that smokes out my apartment a little less
@@stevitos 1) I always tell you exactly what is an ad and what is not. That's pretty reckless for you to baselessly claim otherwise. I make money from ads so that I don't have to take secret, FEC-violating, under-the-table money. If I was taking that kind of money, there'd be no reason for me to do ads; 2) The Australian study was not paid for by the olive oil industry. It was performed by a lab that does other work for olive growers. The Italian study has no relevant conflicts; 3) Just google this. None of this is scientifically controversial. If you want to look directly at the science, go to pubmed and search "olive oil" and "stability."
So much bad science is around. And all them are peer-reviewed. Much due to fragile evidences leading to far-fetched conclusions. But this is not a scientific method issue, it's the paper readers and journalists taking data out of preliminary research as the "absolute truth" we need many layers of proof and repetition to really be sure of something.
10:05 that isn't smoke? It's steam? Steam from the steamed clams we're having? Mmm steamed clams?
It's the Aurora Borealis
This time of year? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?
@@hughgeerekshan6228 May I see it?
No.
Seymour the house is on fire!
please also note that different kinds of olives make oils that are better suitable for frying. Venetian traders in the eastern Mediterranean always stocked their ships with Koroneiki variety olives. these small olives produce an oil that is very resistant to heat and also lasts very long (i once had a bottle that tasted fine after 5 years in the pantry - you could never do that with a Taggiasca or a Cailletier. Also note that in the US olive oil quality is not as closely monitored as in the EU and olive oils there are often adulterated
My Greek family has always cooked with olive oil, and I've always been taught that the issue is not flavour or health but just that olive oil spits a lot more than other oils so things can get a bit messy
Not only Greek cooking, but most indian home cooking is done with olive oil, too. The store bought stuff is not. Here in Australia the other oils are a lot cheaper so people tend to cook with them instead
TheSlushy You're so blatantly incorrect
@@kiy5278 mate,you can't just call me out for being incorrect and not explain
TheSlushy Most Indian Home cooking is not done with olive oil!! It's usually Vegetable Oil. Your household is an anomaly. Curries made w/ olive oil?? Nope.
W Kiyani we cook our curries in olive oil
I and all my family cooks everything with Extra Virgin Olive Oil (in Spain it is cheap) and we never had any problems with smoky olive oil nor burning nor bad tasting food. Olive Oil + 2 halfs of a garlic, not peeled, not smashed with a garlic press, just the garlic cut in half, this two things + some salt are prefect for chicken 9:56.
You are giving yourself cancer causing chems then
Same, if I'm using my hot wok, sometimes I use peanut oil if I remembered to get more (I didn't), but thats it haha.
Love olive oil...
Same in Italy. Never heard people say it's bad, and almost everyone i know never use any other type of oil.
I had actually researched all this stuff a couple of years ago and am really happy that the truth of these studies is reaching the masses. I totally agree with the points and only use say cold pressed canola oil in a cake or something when I want a more mild flavour
What about beef tallow is it a better alternative if i want to fry but not get the olive oil taste ? I am talking in terms of health
10:43
I like how he looked so embarrassed getting caught sipping olive oil.
"It's... olive oil?!"
this is the comment i was looking for
Coming from an olive-oil producing area, I can add the following: Olives are really, really, really bitter. The ones that you buy in a store have gone through a de-bitterness process.
Good olive oil should taste and smell like olive juice (as that is what it essentially is) and be a bit bitter as well. As a matter of fact, there is a type of olive oil called something like "unripe olive oil" that is pressed from very early harvests of unripe olives, that is even more bitter, even more tasty, perfect for salads, and a lot more expensive.
As a side note, oil-producing olive varieties are much smaller than what you think (like a quarter of the size of the smallest of table olives)
There are table and oil olives, in my region in Portugal we use the "Galega" and the "Cordovil" that are suited for both.
They are also pretty big.
Info in English about the Galega : tradicional.dgadr.gov.pt/en/categories/olive-oils-and-olives/1059-azeitona-galega-da-beira-baixa-2
Info in Portuguese about the Cordovil : www.vidarural.pt/insights/cultivares-de-oliveira-cordovil-de-castelo-branco/
My parents have a habit of using EVOO to cook and have been doing so for years. My dad would import gallons of it from Italy. I had never noticed in the years I lived with them that the food tasted bad. I knew that there was something off about what is commonly said about EVOO.
i once managed to make some pretty sour and salty pancakes that was pretty hard to eat.
but haven't noticed any bitter olive flavor otherwise.
Wine, olive oil..Adam's so italian he even has Ragu in his last name.
he IS actually an italian descent
an absolute SEA of ragu
Ragu is as Italian as McSpaghetti
@@junkiejackflash *several residents of Bologna are typing*
@@junkiejackflash Ragù is pretty much the Italian name for what Americans call Bolognese sauce.
Being transparent about the connections researchers have to what they are researching and writing papers on is very important in preserving the scientific method.
Also at the same time, the stamp of "peer reviewed" doesn't hold true all the time. I remember a certain citation needed episode with cello scrotum.
Yeah, I'll also point out that just because they studies are peer reviewed doesn't mean they're useful or correct - often times these industry funded studies are only published when they selectively find a result that looks good for the industry in a statistically significant way. To give an example of the sort of selective data that often gets used, let's look at this Polar Compounds example from the video, you can see they're rising it to high heat for hundreds of minutes. I don't know about you but I definitely don't have my oil of any kind of past it's smoke point for anywhere near that long, it's a completely unrealistic scenario. Let's also keep in mind that olive oil has a decent amount of saturated fat in it, I'd be a bit iffy suggesting it for health reasons as the jury's still out on that one.
I remember some researchers sent fake research about midi-chlorians (Star Wars organisms which gave people Force powers) and got some peer reviewed journals to publish it. Peer reviewed does not automatically mean it's good.
Just because they are up front about who is funding the study doesn’t mean it’s legit. The last time i got olive oil smoking it smelled rotting fish.
And yet he just glossed over it in 5 seconds.
Also, he mentions monounsaturated fats, but it's polyunsaturated fat that has health benefits.
In Portugal we use EVOO for everything. EVERYTHING. All the time.
Why i cook my olive oil and then drink it then eat my steak raw until my steak is cooked inside my stomach
You drink hot oil? Psssh outta here cold oil gang for life
@@ansonhu5551 you don't drink boiling olive oil instead of water every day?? its so good 😌👌
I drink cold olive oil, eat my steak raw, eat the seasonings, and set myself on fire. It gets me a nice cooked flavor.
@@opossumontheinternet9864 a bit overcooked imo
@@opossumontheinternet9864 You'd be better off seasoning the pan you set yourself on fire in
I'm a pretty experienced home cook. People always say: "Never use olive oil in cooking." but I was always confused because I cook with it all the time. I needed an answer, so thanks for addressing my issues!
My family has always cooked with olive oil
Same
I'm from Spain, cooking with olive oil is very common, but we don't usually start cooking with "smoking oil", just when it's very hot. Still, It's safe to cook with it, but the good ones (virgin) are more expensive. Plus, "drinking olive oil" it's not so odd like in America, we eat toast with raw olive oil and some stuff, like sugar, jam or slices of tomato for breakfast.
anyone who has ever said never cook with olive oil has always been wrong.
The idea that you shouldn't cook with EVOO is prettty common tho
This is GREAT info. I pretty much only cook with butter and olive oil. I always worried a little about heating it up too much. My mom was a super health nut and we literally never had things fried in oil my entire childhood as she had read they were carcinogenic. She only ever steamed, boiled or baked things. My dad would occasionally make pancakes which he fried in butter.
Speaking of butter, I'm hoping I find a video you've done on it, cause I pretty much slather everything I eat in butter :D
ALSO, hopefully one day you have time to do one on where to get good olive oil. I remember a few years ago they did this big expose that nearly all extra virgin olive oil was cheap vegetable oil with some chlorophyll added.
The BEST olive oil i EVER had was in Portugal back in 1999. It was fresh pressed and milky at room temperature with little chunks of olive fruit in the bottom. It wasn't bitter at all, tasted like an oily fruit juice. It was made locally with a variety of olives. When the olives get ripe enough they put a blanket around the tree, beat the olives off and then haul that in to the local press. They weighed the olives and it all gets dumped in with everyone else's harvest. Once its all pressed you get your share according to the weight of olives you brought in.
Since refrigeration wasn't common loads of fresh foods were stored in the olive oil, with a few peppercorns and olive leafs, I guess to enhance the flavour and preserving qualities. My favourite was a fresh cheese made from a mixture of sheep, goat and the odd cow. Ahhh I miss the food there >.
perhaps replace your butter with ghee = clarified butter much healthier
Hey Adam, I'd love to see your take on the science around antioxidants themselves. It seems that the idea that antioxidants are always healthy is actually a myth. Would be a really good topic for your channel I think. Though in this case the presence of antioxidants is certainly indirectly healthy.
well as explained in the video, they at least keep the oil from seperating early. If they are actually beneficial for your health directly though is a whole other question I'm not qualified to answer.
What I do know is that your cells needs them in certain amounts, but I don’t have enough info to answer if eating antioxidant-rich foods is beneficial. I also know that, as with any nutrient, taking too much of only one or a few types of antioxidants might actually be harmful. So I’d avoid antioxidant supplements altogether and just eat different fruits and vegetables.
Antioxidants are found to have positive corelation towards blood circulation. Doctors will prescribe you refined antioxidants called MPFF (Micronised purified flavonoid fraction), basically extracting flavonoids of all antioxidants (things that you get in olives or more in parsley) to cure blood-circulation related ailments like hemorroids, swelling, or inflammation. Both the condition and the role of antioxidants are still not fully understood, but that doesn't mean it is a myth. You also get prescribed lecithin capsules too to treat fatty liver, things that you can also get in soy beans. Yet, when lecithin is listed as "emulsifier", it is suddenly unhealthy chemical additives.
At least for my own experiment, it takes MPFF 10 minutes to cure it, and antioxidant-rich green tea 3-5 hours.
@@yohannessulistyo4025 Good info, thanks. I agree that there are many documented benefits of antioxidants. I was simply meaning that one cannot say that antioxidants are healthy in every form and situation. The vitamin industry preys on this for example and it can be harmful.
@@Malandirix agree, there are so many kinds of antioxidants. Vitamin C is one of them. It is considered safe to consume them in excessive amount, because they will be safely dumped through our urine. This means your kidney will do the work. While the rest is absorbed by the body.
However, most people generally are under-hydrated, and thus force their kidney to work harder filtering this extra vitamin C without adequate hydration. That might or might not contribute to the higher number of renal failures among regular Vitamin C supplement consumers.
I didn't know that people were worried about the olive oil becoming dangerous to consume. I was always worried about breathing the smoke. I found it funny that he mentioned this once in the middle, but seemingly not as a real concern. In general, I use avocado oil for most of my cooking and avoid creating smoke in my kitchen as much as possible. If money is really tight or on the rare occasion that I want to deep fry, I'll reach for something like canola or peanut. (I do have olive oil but I guess I use it like those TV chefs)
I've never even _seen_ a bottle of avocado oil anywhere. I thought that's only a component of some cosmetics.
One of the best videos I’ve seen about olive oil. I’m a 6th generation olive/olive oil farmer, we are fortunate to use our olive oil that we press for everything, eat, cook and yes to fry with and have been for ages. For eating, we use it for about year and a half then it’s sold for cosmetic uses.
The problem with olive oil is who control it.. commercial companies/mafia..They buy it from small producers, mix with inferior oils, color it, add flavors and control the price of the final product. Most of what is sold is counterfeit or a mixture of bunch of inferior rancid flavored oils!
Vegetable oil producers and their lobby have totally convinced people around the world that their oils are better to cook and fry with than olive oil, and I think they won. So thanks to your video and others like it hoping it will open people’s eyes to what they’re eating.
Drinking olive oil out of a wine glass has to be the most Italian thing I’ve seen Adam do
That is more a glass for cognac or rhum than wine. But fancy
It's a brandy snifter.
@@LaVaneBea the fact that there’s different types of glasses for each type of alcohol just scares me… I know there’s a rule about not mixing certain wines with certain meats: red wine is paired with red meat and white wine is paired with white meat. Although I want to know where Duck stands since duck is red… or is duck only red because I undercooked it.
@@animebrat76 lol.
Everyone in quarantine trying their hardest not to gain weight. Our boy Adam making videos of himself drinking olive oil.
Keto AF
It's sugar that makes you fat, not oils
How are ppl gaining weight?...ppl should be losing weight and getting fit.
It's a misconception that fats cause weight gain. The _real_ cause of weight gain is, and has always been, refined sugar and flour. Fats contain nutrients that actually fight weight gain; refined sugar and flour, due to their lack of nutrients, convert into fat for storage rather than energy. Stay away from refined sugar; substitute it with fruit, honey, sap, and sugarcane. Substitute flour with wholegrain mixture. Those are healthy alternatives due to their nutrients maintained when kept natural and unprocessed.
Watch Weston A. Price's documentary; he is considered “the Charles Darwin of nutrition.”
@@benireges yes sugarcane and honey have nutrients but the sugar sees your body still as sugar. Be like adam and go keto for weight loss and drink olive oil 😂👍
I really appreciate this video and I do cook mostly with EVOO. That said, I still prefer to deep fry with sunflower oil or other high smoke point oils just because they don’t seem to splatter as much as EVOO. I use a pan with fairly high and nicely curved sides which helps a lot with spatter but I’m still afraid of getting hand burns from dancing EVOO when I’m adjusting the food… Also their neutral flavor is preferred for many dishes. Hopefully discarding the oil frequently keeps things as healthy as possible.
You should get a frying cover. I have old ones from the 70s i took from my parents' house after they died. It's a big flat ring covered in metal mesh, and a handle on one side. It's kinda like a screen door, but the holes are slightly smaller. It doesn't trap ALL the oil from sizzling out, but most of it. My countertops and rangetop are a hell of a lot cleaner after i started using it.
Why I drink my olive oil, NOT my white wine
lol
OMG I'm from Spain and this video is just absolutely hilarious. I didn't even know there was a controversy about this. Here we've been cooking with extra virgin olive oil for literally 2000+ years. Of course there are economic reasons to use cheaper oils, specially if your country has to import it...
Idk why people make such a big deal, Mediterranean nations have some of the longest life spans and it’s likely due to their diet. Also imported oil is just as cheap as Californian oil where I live
It's a snob thing. Like how so many Italian-Americans faint everytime Adam breaks dry pasta to fit.
My Italian grandmother, who taught me how to cook ( in Italy) never reused oil used for frying. She used Olive Oil for nearly every thing to be deep fried. Lard for occasions when she wanted no extra taste or scent.
@@ethelryan257 you can't get too mad at people just listening to the current science, I worked at a healthfood store and our nutritionist was taught this and so she taught others. Not because we didn't like olive oil. 🤷♀️
This is good to know. I have been avoiding using olive oil for sautéing due to this misconception. We don't eat anything fried in oil. And we only use fruit oils and nut oils, never any grain or seed oils. Olive, coconut, and avocado are fruit oil sources. Walnuts are a favorite nut oil. Peanuts are seeds, so no peanut oil for us. Using fruit and nut oils while consuming oily fish provides a good omega fatty acid ratio, close to 50-50. So that's why we do it this way.
I will have to say I’ve cooked with olive oil and it in my opinion spits a lot more than vegetable oil.
Might be down to the water content of the olive oil, perhaps?
I’ve never had a problem with spitting unless there was water in the pan
I live in an olive growing region. When you go for a drive it's olive trees as far as the eye can see. We have access to locally pressed, early harvest unfiltered milky olive oil and we love the spicy, grassy, bitter taste of it. My wife and I use it for everything except when we cook Asian. I don't know what I'd do if we moved somewhere else and couldn't get similar quality olive oil.
lul ur life sucks
I've always cooked steak with sunflower seed oil. After watching this video I decided to use olive oil instead. The only negative is that it produced so much smoke my fire alarm went off lol. The steak, and especially the left over sauce, tasted a bit more rich. I feel like the olive oil meshes much better with the butter, garlic, rosemary, and thyme. It was the best steak I've personally cooked. Just need to figure out a better ventilation system.
This is the best video you’ve done in a long time. I love it when generally accepted ideas get questioned and properly refuted.
I think the reason why most people don’t fry with olive oil is that it changes the taste of the foods and they don’t want their smoke alarms going off
If you fry olive oil it is transformed into transfats. Same as saturated fats. That why you shouldn't use it for frying.
I can't distinguish something fried in regular vegetable oil vs in olive oil. I've even fried food for my family and told them afterwards it was fried in olive oil and they were surprised because there was no difference in taste.
I would suggest people actually try using olive oil in their cooking before believing internet comments about how it supposedly changes the taste of foods.
Raw oil on salad is totally different though, EVOO overpowers so many flavors in salads.
@@TheSilverwing999 " it is transformed into transfats"
And? What if the sun is rising into Aquarius, should I just order delivery?
I used olive oil to fry meat when I had run out of sunflower oil. Worked perfectly fine, so I was wondering what the fuss was about ever since. Thanks for clearing that up!
Hi Adam, I just wanted to thank you for such a well-researched video. I wish that other semi-educational videos would reference their sources in a similar way. Your channel always meets a high standard of journalistic integrity and I applaud you for the work you put in to each video.(:
Well, the study you're citing shows very clearly in Figure 6 that K232 levels increase sharply as the "low-temp" oils approach 240C, whereas they don't in the "high-temp oils." And the study itself calls into question whether its varied-temperature trial was flawed, in that there was no cooking and the oils were merely raised to the given temperatures and then sampled in the variable-temperature trial, instead of holding it at each of those different temperatures in a separate trial. The fact that there is such a noticeable change in the "low-temp" oils in Figure 6 despite it only being raised to that temperature and not held there for any signification duration makes me think it'd keep shooting up even further.
That Figure seems to pretty clearly show that there is a legitimate scientific basis for the traditional wisdom about low-temp oils and ones that are good for approaching 500 F for frying tough vegetables and such. It shows that low-temp oils are relatively unaffected by heat until around 200C, where they start to approach the properties of more highly-refined oils -- meaning, if you let your nice olive or avocado oil get that hot, you may as well have used something that was a bit more refined and won't run the risk of having that sharp increase in K232 levels.
If this study were done by anyone but an olive-funded company, they'd have a very different Conclusion section.
Hello there, your comment actually made me check out the De Alzaa et al. paper from 2018 :-) Looking at figures 6 and 8, I‘m very surprised how EVOO performs (assuming polar compounds and K232 are bad - which I accept and haven‘t checked). I agree that levels start increasing rapidly above 210 deg C, but I usually do all my frying around 180 deg C. So this is personally not my take away from those figures. I will take away that my trusted canola oil is not doing well at all... shame on me, for years of trusting „hear say“ (and my mom)!
My grandma always “burns” the olive oil before cooking. It gives it a particular very good taste. We are from Spain, the biggest olive oil producer in the world. 👍🇪🇸
I appreciates
I wonder how my family would react if I just opened the pantry and poured myself a glass of olive oil...
In the Middle East we just say "enjoy your breakfast" to that
People in spain or italy: wtf do you mean dangerous
nobody frys with olive oil here. thats criminal
@@parate8628 we all know that the italians, even after all the research done in this video, are gonna claim that cooking with EVOO is bad
@@parate8628 wait what?
I mean, it's criminal if you use the high quality stuff for things that require a lots of oil for not so much food, like deep frying - but at least here in Spain olive oil is the first choice for cooking, just not using the highest quality one you have at home for frying and sauteing.
In Greece we often even deep fry in olive oil
@Yasmin E. Yup, im from Portugal and can say we sure do, we pretty much dont really use any other oil except maybe for deep frying lol
I’ve read the papers and I am now convinced that using EVOO for high temperature cooking doesn’t contribute to oxidative stress through fatty acid oxidation. However, I have several gripes with the issues presented: 1. The taste test is way too vulnerable to bias. It could be protected from bias if you give the cooked oils and a sample of uncooked oils to your wife and let her rebottle them into containers and then you test it. 2. The paper citing EVOO extracting polyphenols was not comparing EVOO with other oils. If I have to guess, other oils could have done as good a job as EVOO at improving bioavailability. 3. While the presence of natural antioxidants shielded the fatty acids from oxidation, they themselves generate radicals. And because antioxidants reacts with oxygen more easily, there could be more radicals in a cooked EVOO than a cooked neutral oil, especially palm oil and coconut oils. 4. This video trashed Canola oil multiple times for its lack of stability towards oxygen, but the Australian paper you cited actually showed that they retained their air stability after 6 hours of cooking better than olive oil. You also said it’s unhealthy, even though PUFA, the culprit for susceptibility towards oxidation, is beneficial to health across many many studies and validated through many meta analysis
"extra" virgin as the extra pregnant or extra dead?
Great points, I don't think the last word on cooking oil controversy has been said. Also wasn't these studies funded by the olive oil industry itself? Always good to be extra critical of one sided findings, although I suspect it's not on the level of controversy as with the likes of Pfizer.. 🙄
Can you help me understand how natural antioxidants are generating free radicals? Or link a source? That doesn't really seem to line up.
Another note: as I understand it, the beneficial-to-health aspect of PUFAs is specifically the well-known omega-3 fatty acids ALA, DHA, and EPA (the latter two being extremely important in our bodies, and these just happen to be polyunsaturated fats). Canola oil only has a bunch of ALA, ALA being the one usually from plant sources which also is not converted into usable forms very well in our bodies, so much of it is just used like any other fat, for energy. So canola oil's supposed health benefits in that regard are extremely limited and debatable. And oxidative stability of EVOO remains far superior for around 2 hours(!!!) of cooking while canola's starts out low to begin with! Who cooks vegetable oil for 6 hours at 180C/356F? I suppose if one does that often, for some reason, they should consider using coconut oil or animal fat for the stability of saturated fats. Finally, add to that that the levels of trans fats in canola are far worse than natural oils like olive, coconut, or avocado both BEFORE AND AFTER cooking, and you can see canola oil should be pretty atrocious from a health standpoint.
I'd love to be proven wrong. Thanks for bringing up some interesting points.
but the pufa found in seed oils is extremely high in omega 6, massively pro inflammatory and easily prone to oxidation
PUFAs are only beneficial if they're Omega-3 fats. Canola oil, as well as other seed oils like soybean, corn, and peanut, are high in Omega-6s which still can have some benefits but only when it's consumed in small amounts (i.e., not when food's essentially soaked in a bunch of it for several minutes). Another issue is that, to wring out as much oil as they can from those aforementioned seeds, they have to harshly process them, beat them to a pulp, and afterward they're in a state that's extremely harmful to the body since it recognizes this processed fat molecule as a toxin, and regular consumption of stuff like this can lead to autoimmune diseases, and these processed oils also contribute to insulin resistance about as badly as sugar does. At that point, any health benefits the Omega-6s in the PUFA might have offered is rendered pretty much moot.
I do agree, however, that I don't personally give much trust to studies funded by the very corporations this kind of study benefits most, and "peer-reviewed" from my experience means little when studies go in with an idea of what they're looking for, and don't usually get published when they don't find that.
The bit about the extraction of polyphenols and carotonoids seems a bit insincere, since to my knowledge that's what all fats do
These studies were done at low temps 180c or 350f. No thanks I’ll keep using my avocado oil to sear my steaks at 550f
This makes me feel a lot better about the fact that I've been cooking with EVOO for half my life all the while ignoring all the people telling me not to.
"extra" virgin as the extra pregnant or extra dead?
Hey, if it works, it works.
I really love how you bring your journalistic background into these food myths and debunk them! Keep it going man!
During this lockdown period, this channel has become my favorite place to learn cooking and understand the science behind it. Way to go, Adam Ragusea 👏. Best wishes from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
It would've been interesting to see you taste testing different types of cooked foods (pan frying chicken vs. frying potatoes, vs. sauteing greens, etc.). I've noticed, for me at least, that certain types of foods do seem to actually taste more bitter than others when cooked with oils (specifically EVOO) that have reached their smoking point, even with removing them from heat and oil altogether, not burning the food, etc. There seems to be a certain bitter component that's pronounced in the final product. Whether or not it's from the oil or the food itself, I'm not sure.
It would have also been preferable to have included a colab with an endocrinologist with say 40 years of experience in lipid research than someone with a PhD employed by the olive oil industry.
did he just drink olive oil? I-
The Italian in him is coming out
Yummy, even better when mopped up with bread.
It's not all that uncommon, especially with older generations, to have a small shot of olive oil in the morning. Lots of purported health benefits.
Tanvi Try it with bread, you wont regret it
Olive oil is often tasted via sipping to determine it's quality. Remember Olive oil it's not only used as any other oil. It's flavor also matters and it varies from brand to brand.
Hell. I sometimes take spoonfuls of it because a good quality olive oil it's delicious raw.
Man, that kitchen DOES pop.
This is a real eye opener, I'm guilty of having thought the smoke point corresponds to break down 🤦🏻♂️
YES YES IT DOES MATTER! I burned my olive oil once trying to prep my grilled cheese because i left the pan on high while i prepped.
don't do that.
But why? Did it taste bad?
Tomáš Bednár it just wastes oil, if all your oil smoked you got nothing left to cook with, which is why I prefer regular vegetable oil. Though if money were no object I’d use ghee (clarified butter) for everything.
@@boygenius538_8 regular vegetable oil straight up causes cancer like you don't even have to heat it up that much for it to get toxic. It is on it's own very toxic
This man sold his soul to big olive smh
Patrick Plopper 🤣🤣🤣big olive💀
I'm from California and I am not at liberty to confirm or deny this.
If you're gonna sell your soul, it might as well be for some good olive oil ;)
big olive 🤣
Somehow I think "little soy" is much bigger....
;)
I switched to Avocado because of “olive oil causes cancer” now I’m switching back. Nothing beats Olive oil in taste.
my issue is that when olive oil reaches the smoke point, it tends to cause the whole house to smell even with the fan on
cathartic reverie yes, drop some onions and garlic in it then it smells like dinner is getting ready in any Mediterranean household.
"If you don't want your food to taste like olive oil" I've never wanted that
If it tastes like olive oil then you probably didn’t heat it high enough before adding the food for frying
Have you tried beef gravy tasting olive oil?
@@KAESowicz sadly no, as I am a pathetic & worthless waste of space that they call a vegetarian xD
@@dylanwilliams7868 Olive oil might actually be a great ingredient for vegetarian food.
@@KAESowicz oh I misunderstood did you mean it's beef flavored with no meat in it? b/c that would be awesome for my life
My greatest take away was stick with avocado oil. The neutral flavor works for seering , stir frying, and coming anything else over higher than medium heat.
Ay Adam just gotta say I love the attention to detail when you're citing your sources to make sure you're giving out accurate info. What I'm studying is about as far away from journalism you can get but you really opened up my eyes for things to look for wether I'm researching or just getting the news. Don't think it's said enough but we really appreciate it man keep it up 💪🏿💪🏿
"Extra Virgin"
who tf called me
Oof
My concern with smoking oil isn't toxins it's my fire alarm, lmao.
Lmaooooooo
😂
Lol
As someone who only cook in olive oil because i hate the taste of other oil and butters/margarins are annoying.
This video didnt change my mind about olive oil
So if the smoke point isn't when the oil starts "breaking down", what does the smoke mean then? Is there any reason to choose low vs high smoke point oil other than as a heat indicator?
Pang I’ve always used it as a heat indicator, in fact In the 10+ years I’ve been studying cooking I haven’t heard of olive oil being bad for cooking and I’ve never worried about oils breaking down to much. Just don’t use oils meant for low heat when cooking a high heat dish and you’ll be good
Why does it need to "mean" anything of significance? Can't it just be something that happens at a certain temperature, without being a signal to you about anything that's relevant to your cooking process? It has a cause based on physics and chemistry, sure, just like the maillard reaction has a scientifically demonstrated cause ... but you can definitely safely eat things whether you got the Golden Brown Perfect Crust (tm) on it or not.
The point of the video is to stop considering it as a factor at all. Celebrity chefs are great to listen to for technique advice, but they also propagate myths like this all the time. They're great cooks, creative, and have a ton of practical experience -- but that doesn't make them literal physicists and chemists.
@@capnheehee8103 I'm just curious about what causes the smoke
@@VideogamesPang The same reason any type of smoke happens.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke
Essentially, the oil is a fuel source, but it's not able to "combust" under the heat (which would mean a fire) because of the properties of the oil at that temperature.
Most of what makes smoke itself dangerous is ash content and other vapors when solid matter burns, like wood ... but that's not happening in this unique case. You're seeing some locked particles in the oil being released into the air as a gas.
The thing that most people 'think' makes the smoke point dangerous is that cooking oil CAN deform under extremely high temperatures, and can form some icky particles ... but the thing most people don't understand is the temperature at which that happens for each oil type is NOT related to the smoke point at ALL. That's a different process, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil is actually one of the most stable oils at higher temperatures around. People just panic because they can see something visible with it.
The transformation of oil molecules at high temperature is INVISIBLE, and it also only occurs at VERY high temperature well beyond the smoke point ... higher than you've probably ever heated food in your life. It can happen in re-used oil (like in fast food joints) that's being heated on an industrial level in super-strong power-guzzler deep fryers, but at home ... it's a complete non-issue. You'd never recycle oil like 100 times without letting it cool, and you'd never bring something up to like 600 degrees fahrenheit.
One other lesser danger that people worry about regarding the smoke point is an alteration in taste, which can happen for other reasons at very high temperature, but it's not connected to the smoke point.
@@capnheehee8103 Which is why they drown their foods in salt, butter, and oil.
why does adam always look like he’s about to tell me my mom died
DUDE HAHAHAHAHAH
Holy shit you're right
😆
He should be in movies and always play the role of a doctor delivering the bad news.
Holy shit man hahaha
As someone that grew up eating a latin diet (which uses a ton of olive oil), thank you for this video! It is such a common internet refrain ("olive oil is toxic when heated") that a good debunking video that can be linked to is very helpful.
Smoked oils wait cooked meats cause cancer
You can tell Adam's excited to be filming in his new kitchen from the 5 separate angles used in the first 20 seconds
Hey Adam, great video, thanks for asking the real questions and getting to the bottom of this!
Serious question though: you say that antioxidants in EVOO can counteract the potential harmful effects of oxidized oil, but are you sure it works as directly as that? If the oil oxidizes, is the amount of antioxidants in it actually enough to prevent some harm?
I'm curious because it *sounds* like it makes sense, but I know science/health doesn't always work intuitively. Thanks again for the video!
That's a good question. If I recall correctly Nutrition Diva (a registered dietician podcast and blog) stated that the healthy compounds in olive oil break down with heat and so there's little point cooking with EVOO over refined olive oil because you're not getting most of the health benefits of EVOO. And I suppose it's possible that, regarding that statement, the good compounds are breaking down because they are neutralizing oxidative chemicals, but my guess is that she was referring to the good compounds being destroyed by the application of heat itself, and if that's the case, I wonder to what degree they'd get the chance to react with the oxidative chemicals and neutralize them.
The "Yuck" when cooking with olive oil for me comes from it's saturated flavor, especially with breaded items. It's something about the olive oil itself because I can even fry with coconut oil and not be turned off by the flavor. I usually just stick to vegetable oil when frying most foods and peanut oil occasionally for potato items.
"Why do TV chefs say that you should _never_ cook with EVOO at high heat?" I dunno buddy, but Brad Leone told me to just keep using EVOO.
The main issue is that the studies are all done with verified extra virgin olive oil, meanwhile most olive oil in the US, whether labelled evoo or not isn't actually "extra virgin" olive oil, normal olive oil or virgin olive oils are not as stable, lower smoke points and more carcinogens at high heat.
I don’t recall chefs cautioning against it. They often advise not wasting expensive oils on frying.
Being Greek I thank you Adam! This is great to know as I only use extra virgin olive oil ... plus others it will help my country’s economy if more people are convinced! 😊 also the bitterness is what tells me the olive oil is of the best quality
I think the issue (at least in the US, where I live,) is that most things in grocery stores marketed as "olive oil" contain very little of that product. The ingredients can claim only olive oil, and still be mostly a cheaper oil that does break down, like canola.
Especially with rising costs of creating food. Companies will try to cut costs even more now.
I agree. My wife and I are ordering EVOO from California now as we're fed up with the counterfeit Italian EVOOs. California appears to be the only jurisdiction in the world which has been able to keep the Mafia out. I hear Australia may be close to doing the same.
How is it legal to list only olive oil? I’ve seen oils with misleading labels but they all state that it’s some kind of mix in small pront😊
I didn't really read much about the subject and the few times I've seen this popping, I always assumed that an oil with a low smoke point would be an oil with a low self ignition point. So, it was safer to use an oil with a high smoke point (thus self ignition point) while frying at high temperature.
Im so proud of him for drinking olive oil
Glad I now have scientific backing for the thing I've been saying all this time: cooked olive oil isn't bitter! Cooking flattens the taste a bit but that's basically it! I've been cooking with it for years and it never gave me issues. And in fact most recipes I've read that don't use it do it for the reason you stated: because olive oil has a very distinctive flavor that might not be okay in that dish!
Super informative my friend. Thank you.
I've heard that olive oil isn't good as a coating for cast iron. It goes "rancid" could you clarify here? Or maybe try a cast iron myths video? I feel like I hear so many different things about cast iron that it can be confusing for someone who just started cooking with it.
he seasoned his olive oil tasting glass
He seasoned his tongue instead of the glass
Asking the right questions! As a Lebanese human, I have been using mass amounts of olive oil in all my cooking. A little smoke never bothered me. Good to see this backed up. Thank you!
Hi, I know there is few type of olive oil. Such as extra virgin and extra light. Which one u use for deep fry?
@@iris9877 canola.
@@mrbazoun Canola is not a type of olive oil my dude
@@dikkado yep and I wouldn’t use evoo for deep frying, Hence my canola oil responde
You should do a video about the myths of the eyes/greenness on potatoes
The only reason i usually dont sear stuff in olive oil is that the smoke point is so low. My smoke detectors are sensitive and i hate having to shut them up every time i cook.
So i switched to avocado oil for searing and its been working much better.
If i dont need to get oil roaring hot tho, then i dont really care what i use 🤷🏻♂️
I heard EVOO is for drizzling and regular olive oil for cooking, so I decided to switch to that. I have noticed that regular OO does, in fact, not smoke as much as EVOO. It's also not as pungent, much more like how vegetable oil acts (which is just soybean oil if you look at the ingredient list), but imparts some of that Italian olive flavor we all love.
I thought I was gonna die from “overheating” extra virgin olive oil
Wow, I gotta say, you are the best Adam. I love how you support your cooking methods with actual primary sources and mix in your subjective feedback too, so it becomes more relevant to everyday cooking. I've always wondered if chefs actually fact-check the tips that they give, and you are a breath of fresh air. You've also gotten me to actually cook more than anyone. Thank you for the time and effort you put into these videos from one of your many loyal subscribers!
Oh also i'm getting surfshark through your link so thanks for that too haha
Just make sure you don't question any of his subjective stuff that he sometimes treat as the objective truths...or else you might get a 500 words essay explaining to you to the finest details why you're wrong lol. But this minor issue aside(all of us have weird quirks anyway), his videos are certainly entertaining, haha
@@zanaros2606 That’s the same kind of mentality as bragging one made it through High School without reading a single book entirely, and/or thinking anything longer than a paragraph is too much to read so the writer is at fault in some way. If his follow-up “essays” provide informative details, then you should be reading them because you need them. He’s giving you enough credit to think you are capable of understanding them, so read them and appreciate that he took the time to add such detail.
I am Spanish and here cooking with anything else than olive oil (except maybe pork fat or butter for deserts or some concrete dishes, and people stopped used them because doctors said they are bad) is considered disgusting. But the olive oil we used for cooking used to be quite refined, despite some people use the virgin one.
Unfortunately, restaurants use vegetable oil, which also the worst fat you can use for cooking because is so bad. Also is used in many infustrial products (like mayonnaise which originally used olive oil, that was the only oil 100 years ago, and now it uses soy oil).
The claims in the beggining of the video sound extremely weird to me, here in Spain we cook, fry and do everything with olive oil
@ateb3 I was gonna mention Italy too but since I don't live there I didn't wanna offend anyone lol
I live in Asia I've been taught not to use olive oil for frying because of excessive smoking and cancer risk. Olive oil is less common here as well
@@exxonrcg well Spain is the third country in the world with the most life expectancy after Japan and I believe Switzerland, it's about 82 and a half years, so I say olive oil is pretty safe hahaha
@@masicoler yeah and this video was enlightening. It looks like most Europeans use olive oil for everything
@@exxonrcg The cancer myth was probably started by the industrial "canola oil" companies; the same ones who came up with the fake name "canola oil" for what is actually processed rapeseed oil.