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Comment by tempsy | Hacker News Reader

Would suspect a very common mistake a lot of people make is using extra virgin olive oil to cook with at a medium or high temperature. Don't do it.

I've found ghee (clarified butter) to the best thing I've found for anything requiring medium or higher cooking temperatures.

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I used to worry about that but it turns out that cooking (even flying) with extra virgin olive oil is totally fine. The problem with the low smoke point in evoo is a myth.

https://www.aboutoliveoil.org/olive-oil-smoke-point-measured

This is doesn't pass the burnt smell test. First of all, anyone's who's done even a little bit of cooking will notice that extra virgin olive oil smokes / burns very quickly.

Secondly, this article claims "the oil and the food did not exceed 180⁰ F" which is well below the point where Maillard reaction occurs. Maybe in their specific "we represent the olive oil industry" environment, it didn't exceed this temperature, but I'd take that with a grain of salt.

I always cook with virgin oil and NEVER I get it to burn. Even putting the fire to max.

That little snippet misses the entire point. EVOO having a "low smoke point" isn't myth, it's a scientifically measurable fact. The stupidity of that article is yes, their pan didn't go past 180 degrees but its because the moisture content of the item being cooked was removing heat from the pan. The entire problem of smoke point has to do with how you cook.

I deep fry above the temperatures given for evoo. Certainly my stir frying is also above those temperatures, though harder to measure. Certain kinds of shallow frying won't burn evoo but I have burnt it in the past and am not ready to trust the word of an olive oil industry group on this matter.

It's not a myth.

Searing scallops in EVOO produced consistently burnt-oil tasting results until I switched to avocado oil.

My Italian mother growing up would insist on using EVOO to pop popcorn and it always tasted like burnt olive oil. My results are far better using the exact same process but a higher smoke point oil like avocado oil.

I also prefer the results of seared steaks with a higher smoke point oil than EVOO. Especially when I use the iron skillet outside on an oversized bed of glowing hot coals so hot I can barely stand to be near it. I've used EVOO here in a pinch, but it immediately starts to smoke before I've even put the meat on.

That is an extremely unconvincing article.

> Not even close. We used an infrared thermometer to measure the temperature of food (here, Brussels sprouts and garlic) being sauteed in extra virgin olive oil. ... As you can see in the video below, the oil and the food did not exceed 180⁰ F.

I watched the video. Indeed, the Brussels sprouts cooking in oil did not exceed 180F. No kidding — wet food, e.g. Brussels sprouts, won’t exceed the boiling point of water until it’s quite dry. But this is entirely missing the point — the oil in the pan is considerably hotter, hence the sizzling.

There’s a bunch of articles on this site digging into the chemistry of cooking with EVOO. I haven’t dug into the references but it looks like a thorough look at exactly what heating various oils does to the chemistry of fatty acids.

https://suppversity.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-quest-for-optim...

The tradeoff of using clarified butter is taste. Butter (or oil) can really bring a dish together, much like how salt is basically essential when cooking, for taste.

Clarified butter is butter without the milk solids. Depending on what you're going for, that can impact the taste.

You can cook with EVOO. I've done breaded chicken breasts on the stove with EVOO. Just gotta keep the heat low (still hot enough for food safety standards) and leave the chicken on a little longer.

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