Does Expensive Olive Oil actually taste better?

today I want to answer something I've been wondering about for a long time and maybe you have two and that is can you actually tell a difference between expensive extra virgin olive oils so in today's video we're going to run through four different experiments with a neutral oil a mid-tier extra virgin olive oil and the most expensive extra virgin bottle I could find at the store that one article has called the Ferrari of olive oil and specifically here are the taste tests we're going to be running first we have a leafy greens dressing test second a warm pasta salad third some roasted vegetables and fourth and finally a chicken cutlet test that may make some Italians cry because of olive oil misuse and this video is really all about putting cooking Theory to practice and I was definitely surprised by some of the results that is hard holy smokes did not expect this however before we get to testing we need to understand a few big picture questions that really help shape the conclusions of how to get the most out of olive oil as a home cook and explain why I chose to do the specific tests with these different oils and these are why do we add fats to food in the first place and what makes one extra virgin olive oil taste different from another like what am I actually getting in terms of flavor if I drop an extra thirty dollars on a bottle of olive oil before we dive in thank you to today's sponsor made in almost all of my cookware is from maiden's professional quality products for the home cook but today I want to highlight the stainless steel frying pan in this video you'll see me use this pan for the chicken cutlet test and maiden's premium five-ply stainless steel material is what sets it apart from other pans out there the five layers crafted in Italy allow for Superior heat retention even Heating and ease of heat control on both induction and gas ranges I have both the 8 and 12 inch versions which can handle searing Stakes or larger pasta dishes so if you want to check out Maiden stainless cookware and get 15 off your order head to the link in my description and thank you again made in for sponsoring this video so now let's answer why do we add fats and oils to food in the first place so we need to do a 33 second recap of the video I made 18 months ago because today's video is really a continuation of where we left off in that one in that video I answered questions like how is olive oil made then I broke down the differences between refined olive oil regular olive oil and extra virgin olive oil which included talking about characteristics of the oil such as the smoke point and free fatty acid levels and really the conclusion from that video was for most home Cooks don't bother with anything else but extra virgin olive oil look for a bottle that smells good to you has a harvest date for freshness and fits in your price range that first video was kind of like olive oil Theory 101 but even if you were looking for only extra virgin olive oil at the store you'll quickly be overwhelmed with more options than Wine these days and if you were like me I'm wondering well is there a noticeable difference from Green olive oil or Spanish olive oil or Italian olive oil or why is everyone calling olive oil spicy these days is spicy olive oil even a good thing and in order to start evaluating differences between these it makes most sense to just answer why do we add any fats or oils to food in the first place and in short there's really just five use cases first is to introduce the aroma molecules of the fat for example olive oil has Aroma molecules that are different from beef fat butter and has Aroma molecules that are different from other olive oils second leap is to introduce the taste of the fat now of the five tastes most fats are pretty neutral tasting and it's actually the aroma molecules providing most of the flavor but olive oil can have a slightly bitter taste that plays nicely in a lot of dishes thirdly fats and oil will enhance existing fat soluble flavor compounds in the dish so anything a fat or oil touches like spices vegetables while cooking or salads ingredients has their own flavor compounds and those fat soluble flavor compounds will be enhanced by the added fat fourth fats enhance the mouth feel so oils will Linger on our tongue providing that luscious texture and also causing those fat soluble flavor compounds from number three to linger on our taste buds prolonging that experience and then lastly bats and oils can be used as a cooking medium so as we learned in that last video filtered extra virgin olive oil is actually a great cooking Medium as it has stable at high temperatures with a smoke point above 400 Degrees the reason why people tell you not to cook with some of this stuff we'll get to later can you guess which two of those five matter most when it comes to evaluating different bottles of extra virgin olive oil when raw well it's primarily all about those first too and if most of this comes down to taste and Aroma naturally I've got two questions first is what affects the flavor of extra virgin olive oil and secondly what do those different flavors actually taste like much like the beans used for coffee or the grapes used for wine how the olives are grown and processed to make olive oil has an effect on the flavor variables such as the country in which the olives are grown the actual Olive varietal that is planted the maturity of that Olive when it is picked the storage conditions the olive oil processing and filtering all can influence the flavor components of the oil and its Aroma and taste and here's this cool reference chart with a bunch of Aromas that different olive oils can potentially have and I'm sure Italy Greece Spain California all say they're olives taste the best and make the best olive oil but I'd love to hear from an industry expert on this because I think what probably makes the most difference is the actual Olive varietal itself and when that Olive was picked for example the graza cooking oil is produced and flavored primarily with mature olives while the lodimio olive oil is made from a larger before portion of younger Greener olives and this leads to a couple of key differences so in general younger olives are generally going to produce less oil leading to increased cost and additionally from a flavor perspective they will have a more vibrant flavor in kind of top and middle Aroma notes and also have that slightly bitter and spicy sensation due to the polyphenols mature olives on the other hand produce more oil which lowers the cause and provided it's the same Olive those notes will kind of mellow out a bit and it's not going to be as spicy bitter or have that Vibrance of flavors and it's a similar idea to Freshly cracked black peppercorns versus adding pepper that was pre-ground a couple of days ago and for testing we theoretically could have grabbed 10 or 20 different bottles as they would all technically have a different flavor profile and if I was an olive oil sommelier or something like that I may be able to tell you the difference between 10 or 20 different bottles but I chose to just stick with two because these kind of represent the class of everyday cooking extra virgin olive oil and what most people call a finishing olive oil that is primarily only supposed to use raw now I'm going to run these through the gamut because I want to answer the question as best I can can you actually tell a difference between olive oil so with that being said let's dive into experiment number one the leafy green test for experiment number one I made a basic vinaigrette with three parts or 60 grams of each oil and one part or 20 grams of vinegar before shaking each of those up to form a basic emulsion then I grabbed out three bowls added a leafy Green Mix and spooned over 10 grams of each dressing before shaking those up now I purposely left this fairly plain because this use case is most applicable to things where you really want the taste and Aroma of unadulterated extra virgin olive oil to shine you can think of dipping bread and olive oil adding a drizzle to a Caprese salad or your morning avocado toast and what I'm most interested in is how big of a difference is there between the neutral oil to the olive oil vinaigrettes and can I actually tell a difference between the mid tier and the expensive flavoring olive oil all right let's uh blindfold up and see if we can actually differentiate any of these I guess I only have three oh man this is going to be hard I'm gonna I'm gonna try to forget which one is which gonna do a couple spins one two three didn't get too much from that I'm assuming that's probably the neutral one didn't taste like olive oil at all yeah and this one you can like you can smell the olive oil that's definitely peanut so yeah obviously massive difference between one and two because again I mean that's got to be the peanut if that's not the peanut then you know something's weird going on with my uh my smell receptors [Music] these two are definitely both the olive oil [Music] it's not evident to me that like one is clearly better um they are a little bit different [Music] they're different but this is hard for me to pick up on maybe this one is like a little bit more mellow-ish a little bit more floral um this this one maybe has some like slightly deeper like bass notes um but they're bait like if if you were tasting these I would I would really not know at all okay so this was the yeah this was the really expensive olive oil this was peanut this was the regular Evo and yeah yeah this one has like uh it like they are different don't get me wrong but it's not like uh it's it's very much gonna be like a preference thing like you could taste both of these and be like yeah they're both good they're fatty they're you know they have like an olive oil taste the peanut oil is fine it just has no flavor from the oil itself which you get from these two and then these two are different um you know is one better or worse like I I'm just one guy like I think this expensive one does have kind of like deeper base notes which actually I kind of do like um but this is in no way bad at all but that being said this was a test about the pure like olive oil taste so what we're gonna do in this next experiment is one make one of my favorite pasta salads but I'm actually gonna add some extra spices to this marinade when we dress everything up so let's hop into that experiment for experiment number two I wanted to see if I can still pick up a difference after changing two big things first is adding spices directly to the dressing itself and then secondly is using the dressing on a pasta salad which has a lot more flavor and ingredients than just some leafy greens so for this I took the existing dressings and added a pinch of oregano red pepper and garlic powder to each one before shaking them up next I grabbed out a big bowl added in some cooked pasta blanched asparagus chopped tomatoes sliced red onion drained chickpeas chopped up grilled chicken and a crumble of feta cheese before mixing that all together after mixing I added equal portions of the salad mix to three different containers and then added 15 grams of each dressing before shaking those up and in this case we are now using the olive oil to provide the flavor itself but also to enhance the fat soluble compounds in the spices and ingredients so again is the flavor of the olive oil still noticeably different than the peanut oil and can I tell any difference between the olive oils with the addition of so many ingredients [Applause] so now we've added a lot more ingredients to kind of this raw version so I still am very interested to see like yes the olive oil tastes different between the two but can I still pick up on it when there are so many extra ingredients and then what does the kind of peanut oil neutral oil look like compared to the other two [Music] actually yeah I'll just try this first one it's got to be one of the olive oils you can already smell that olive oil pretty tasty no complaints there definitely an olive oil one and yeah if I had to guess especially building on my knowledge from the leafy green test I think this is definitely that more expensive one different notes like there are definitely different notes but one's not like it's not like one's way better but they're different they are clearly different in terms of like the smell which is a very important part of kind of your eating experience so it's pretty interesting to me and yeah there's got to be the peanut oil no like you can definitely tell there's no like olive olive oil they smell completely different all right let me go back through hmm okay I'm actually kind of confused on these two now they're definitely the olive oil ones I don't know if I could actually definitively say which one is which they're both olive oil there's no doubt in that the different notes there's a lot of like extra flavors going on that are kind of hard to pick up on they smell a little bit different but not that much but then peanut you know it's peanut oil so blue is expensive yellow is the kind of mid-tier everyday and then yeah last one peanut oil as as expected so after going back through these it's very interesting to think about how you want to use your oil in this type of dish because with the neutral oil all the other flavors shine a lot more you get the spices that I added to the dressing in addition to those various vegetables whereas with these two you're adding the flavor of olive oil itself as well so it's going to mix in with those spices it's going to mix in with the vegetables and maybe those don't pop as much because it's kind of mellowed out among all of the olive oil flavor that you can clearly smell as soon as you bite into it and then when actually comparing these two for me it's kind of tough to pick out clear differences I thought I may have picked up on something in the beginning but then I was just like nah actually going back through these it's kind of tough to see and that's why in Experiment three and four I'm really excited because up until now all we've dealt with with is just uncooked versions so I want to see what happens when we use them in roasted vegetables and then go ahead and do a little shallow fry as well with experiment number three and four we're asking a new question and that is how does the flavor and Aroma change when extra virgin olive oil is used as a cooking medium because the Aromas in these are highly volatile so they can be lost through the air heat or extended cooking time and most people will say you should never cook with a finishing olive oil but my question is well has anyone actually tried using a finishing oil side by side compared to an everyday cooking oil and a neutral oil I mean maybe we are missing out on something and experiment number three surprise me wow all right for experiment number three I first measured out 20 grams of each oil next I added some halved brussels sprouts to a bowl along with a Sprinkle of salt before adding the oil and mixing everything together after mixing I grabbed a sheet pan and made some high-tech aluminum dividers and then I just poured each of those brussels sprouts out onto the sheet pan and place them face down before adding them to a 450 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 25 minutes so during this time since the fat has worked its way around the Brussels it's going to provide flavor but also work as a cookie medium that will get much hotter than the boiling point of water so it can Brown and crisp the food additionally the flavor molecules from those olive oils are going to be volatile and likely changing so again how big of a difference is there between the neutral oil to the olive oils and can you tell a difference between the mid-tier and the expensive finishing olive oil okay so I can already tell at least based on smell this is probably going to be pretty tough like the smell of the Brussels sprouts is the dominant smell when you actually go to bite these but that oil should have really worked in all those crevices so let's see if I can taste any differences between these foreign smell really is just like the Brussels sprouts let's start from the right this time love love roasted brussels sprouts though yeah I mean those taste good not sure if that's it tasted like mainly like brussels sprouts but I'm not sure until I actually compare these oh yeah this is going to be tough this may this may take a few the I short observation is I'm not sure which one was olive oil and which one was neutral unless both of those were the olive oil and this one's neutral I'm not not really sure wow all right that is hard I I I need to go back through these because I first time through I don't even know which one is the the uh the uh the peanut oil wow that is hard holy smokes did not expect this [Music] thank you I am trying but honestly I I have no idea which like they all run together for me and I think you know brussels sprouts are a pretty strong tasting vegetable and it to me it just tastes like brussels sprouts salt and oil in general I'm not picking up any of that olive oil scent that was super obvious in those uncooked versions so I'm not even gonna bother guessing which one is which honestly I have no idea okay so this was the peanut oil this was the mid-tier okay so I actually like didn't mess up the order um and then this was the expense of olive oil wow that is very very interesting that was no idea had no idea which one was which which one was the olive oil which one was not so that's very interesting now because as we move into experiment number four obviously brussels sprouts like I said are pretty strong tasting but how does that work in kind of a breading around chicken both pretty neutral but that oil should really soak in will I be able to tell if it's at least olive oil I don't know but that's why we're gonna try so I did not expect this outcome at all I still assumed it would be fairly easy to tell the difference between the peanut oil and olive oils but this definitely taught me something for example if you wanted the flavor of olive oil in your roasted vegetables to save some money a better option might be to roast vegetables with a cheap neutral oil and then use that finishing oil to just toss with the veggies after they come out and after experiment number three this left me a little bit doubtful about experiment number four but there are a couple of factors that could change the outcome firstly we are using a lot more oil to shallow fry secondly the overall cook time is going to be about six minutes versus 25 minutes in the oven and then lastly we are using fairly neutral tasting ingredients for experiment number four I thinned out three chicken cutlets and then did a basic three-part breading with a flour cornstarch mixture first before moving into beaten egg and then lastly getting a nice coating of the Panko bread crumbs this time I use 150 grams of each oil and added them to a pan and brought the oil to 350 degrees Fahrenheit we're dropping in each of the cutlets and cooking them for about six and a half minutes and during this time the oil is working into the exterior coating of the cutlet as a cookie medium which will allow it to Brown and crisp and additionally there should be some flavor transfer but how big of a difference here I have no idea so after cooking all three cutlets I chopped off a portion added them to the color coordinated pieces and now let's taste test so this is the one I was most looking forward to at the start of this video but after doing the roasted vegetables and not being able to taste the difference I'm pretty skeptical if I'll be able to taste a difference here as well but because we have much more neutral flavors like this is just bread crumbs and chicken there's not really anything strong besides potentially the olive oil maybe I can taste the difference maybe I can't regardless all of them look really good and have fried up beautifully so let's blindfold and see if I can see a difference okay all right let's see what we got here I'm just gonna go for a big bite on each of these I feel like that's gonna give me the best chance rather than like trying to cut it up into like a nice little slice I don't think I smell anything it just kind of smells like you know fried chicken cutlet I mean it tastes really good fried a little salty couldn't tell you if there's much like oil taste going on let's go to number two that one was also really good um it does taste a little bit different from number one I don't know exactly maybe a little like a touch of bitterness which might be olive oil I don't know but it like I'm like very I'm picking hairs so I'm gonna go to the next one then I'll probably do one more bite of each on the way back through all right that one definitely olive oil like a 100 that was the biggest difference yeah like the olive oil flavor one thousand percent like comes through in this um like that's gotta be that's gotta be olive oil let me go one more yeah very very neutral tasting on that one one and two are very very similar um yeah like like it tastes maybe like two tastes maybe a tiny like super small amount different but but yeah like one and two are very very similar for me yeah wow yeah that's really good like you definitely get the olive oil flavor in number three um which could be really nice like for a chicken parm for example put a little marinara sauce and cheese over this like that kind of subtle flavor would I definitely think come through um one and two are very similar I think one is probably the peanut oil just because like it it reminds me of the fried food that I always make and I always use peanut oil tastes like more clean tasting to me I'm just gonna take a quick look though okay so yeah the uh the peanut oil the um Evo like everyday one and then this is the high end which this is very interesting to me because with the roasted vegetables I was like completely lost among all of these um so it's super surprising that this really came through this olive oil taste um that being said not a very economical choice like this was 150 grams of oil so it's probably like 10 bucks worth of that olive oil um and what's very interesting to me too is not a massive difference between uh peanut oil and olive oil um like I said like this just tasted a little bit more clean and like neutral tasting to me um and I always use peanut oil to fry stuff so that's why I think it kind of stuck out for me but I'm pretty pleasantly surprised if I didn't have peanut oil I would have zero issue using like kind of an everyday cooking oil in place of it like I wouldn't be afraid of that at all this one definitely does impart some olive oil flavor and it comes through which like I said depending on the dish you happen to be making definitely has some very interesting use cases yeah the peanut like reminds me of like your classic fried food taste and so I know some of these tests may seem a little silly but every time I test my assumptions or the boundaries of what people say to do or not to do in the kitchen and actually experience these things for myself side by side I learned something and here are my big takeaways that I'm going to be implementing into my day-to-day life so can you actually tell a difference between expensive extra virgin olive oils and yes you definitely can especially in raw applications you can smell that difference and I was pleasantly surprised by that shallow fried chicken cutlet now while that may be true does the average home cook need both an everyday cooking extra virgin olive oil and a more expensive finishing one no I definitely don't think that's the case if it fits into the budgets and you like to spend money on food like I do it's fun to mess around with different flavors and Aromas of olive oils but remember this is about Nuance the cheap versus expensive Tomatoes or using 12 month aged porn versus a 24 month age Farm is a much bigger difference in my opinion than a good everyday Evo versus a high-end Evo and actually the more important question that you should answer when you're cooking is why am I adding this fat to this dish and this really relates those five things we talked about earlier for example I found out that I like the neutral oil more in my pasta salad because it really let those spices shine whereas the olive oil kind of overshadowed them a bit for roasted vegetables I may stop using my cooking Evo and instead just stick to neutral oil then add the cooking or finishing extra virgin olive oil if I want that particular taste now from that last experiment obviously I'm not going to recommend using 10 to 15 dollars of oil for a couple of chicken cutlets but instead the next time that I'm making arancini chicken parm or mozzarella sticks I'll maybe add a drizzle of the extra virgin olive oil in the last 30 seconds of cooking anyway I hope you all have enjoyed the video and learned a little something along the way and let me know down in the comments if you want certain ingredients topics or breakdowns for me to do next but that will wrap it up for me in this one I will catch you all on the next one PCR

Channel: Ethan Chlebowski

Views: 988,886

Keywords: Ethan Chlebowski, extra virgin olive oil, best olive oils, olive oil review, benefits of olive oil, olive oil benefits, olive oils, best olive oil, best olive oil for cooking, best olive oil brands, olive oil test, olive oil uses, olive oil taste test

Id: YCt2txu11d4

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 12 2023