leloup_legarou

That's interesting, and unexpected. Then it really must be a very different kind of olive oil you were using.

Why did you continue to cook with it if it was smoking so easily?

> All store bought “extra virgin” olive oils in my experience also burn closer to 300-350 degrees fahrenheit.

Yes, of course. Because of the "air quotes".

I am not vegetarian. I cook everything with olive oil, including searing meats in my French oven. So does everyone I know. I think what you are talking about and what I'm talking about are entirely different substances. I suspect the information on wikipedia, and in your sources, is also far off the reality of olive oil as it's used by people in the region of the world where it's traditionally the shortening of choice. Otherwise, we'd have stopped using it long ago.

> You said most people cook well below 405 degrees.

To clarify, that wasn't me, but wikipedia. I don't personally know what temperatures most people cook with and, I suspect, neither do you. What I know is that there's a few million people in countries around the Mediterranean that cook almost exclusively with olive oil and if it was as easy to burn it as you insist, that wouldn't be the case.

I suspect that you are relying on second-hand information but do not have first-hand experience of a lifetime (and a long tradition) of cooking with olive oil. I've heard more weird things coming from the same place, of lack of first-hand experience, for example that olive oil turns bitter if you heat it, something that I heard for the first time from an American dude with a youtube foodie channel, but not of course from my many friends, family and acquaintances that cook with olive oil as a matter of course. Again, if that sort of thing were true, we wouldn't be using it.

This is really the question to ask yourself: where does your information come from? Is there any evidence to the contrary?

The OP said that "virgin" olive oil has a "very low smoke point" that "makes it unsuitable for most types of food" and neither of that is true.

That, and also if you've grown up eating EVOO, even not the best quality one you can get from the village etc, you won't tolerate other vegetable and seed oils in your food, and certainly not in your salad.

I had a friend from Canada who returned Home a while ago and he went to the supermarket to buy oil to put on his salad. He saw the price of EVOO and came back with a bottle of sunflower oil, scoffing about the "scam" of EVOO. A couple of weeks later he told me "well, it's really better though isn't it?" and he started buying EVOO after that. I don't know what changed his mind.

Anyway I get it that EVOO sounds like a class marker and I've no doubt it is, in some parts of the world. Another poster was talking about virtue signalling. But in the neck of the woods I'm from (the Mediterranean) it's just not considered posh, or hip, to buy good olive oil, nor do you ever hear anyone bragging about it. It's just how people eat, and they prefer the best quality stuff than the lower quality stuff. Of course, the low quality stuff also sells just because some people can't afford the good quality stuff, and I guess there's also people who are not used to it, even if they're born in one of the places that are famous for it.

There's just a completely different mentality about EVOO (and some other foodstuffs: bread, wine, cheese maybe) in some parts of the Old World. It's about culture and (gulp) identity rather than fashion and those preferences will not change when EVOO (etc) goes out of fashion.

> Virgin olive oil has a strong flavor and very low smoke point, which makes it unsuitable for most types of food.

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) doesn't have a "very low smoke point". This table on wikipedia gives the smoke point of "Extra virgin, low acidity, high quality" EVOO at 207°C/405 °F:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point#Temperature

The same page gives standard home cooking temperatures as follows:

  Pan frying (sauté) on stove top heat: 120 °C (248 °F)
  Deep frying: 160–180 °C (320–356 °F)
  Oven baking: Average of 180 °C (356 °F)

So premium-quality EVOO has a smoke point comfortably above the temperatures where most people will cook with it. I suspect the idea that EVOO has a low smoke point comes from confusion between extra virgion olive oil and "extra virgin" olive oil (i.e. between the real deal and the stuff sold in its place). Anyway anecdotally, me, both my grandmothers, my mother, and everyone else I know has been cooking with EVOO for ages and I've never heard of anyone actually managing to make it burn (though I've certainly burned the food cooking in it). And we cook most, or rather, all, types of food in it.

You're perfectly right though that EVOO has a strong flavor. That's the whole point.

> Edit: reading this back, it sounds somewhat like an attempt to shill a product.

I don't know about that, but you may be right to be suspicious. In my experience, most research into the health effects of extra virgin olive oil is funded by Spanish, Italian or Greek institutions. For example, the affiliations of the authors of the study in the article above are mainly to Spanish institutions.

If the study was done in the US, then maybe. But it was done in Spain:

> 12,161 individuals, representative of the Spanish population ≥18 years old, were recruited between 2008 and 2010 and followed up through 2019.

Where nobody can prepare food without olive oil. It's the law.