Today, I want to share some hints about how to choose a really good olive oil from another .
In general, what is our biggest problem when we need to distinguish good food from low quality food?
What do I mean by this? It’s easy to tell if Granny’s bolognese sauce is better than Auntie’s. It’s easy to tell if the baked aubergines from you favourite restaurant are better that the ones in that new restaurant down the road. Why? A question of taste? No, or at least not only. Actually, we are not just talking about ingredients but also about recipe and technique. No two recipes are the same and no two chefs are the same. Ingredients, time, temperature, environment and other factors all play their part in preparing a meal.
So now let’s try to think about the vegetable garden: is Grandad’s salad better that his neighbours? Or are the carrots from Tesco better than the carrots from Sainsbury’s? Here it gets more difficult, doesn’t it?
Let’s try to solve this puzzle by looking at our beloved oil. The answer lies in the COMPARISON.
What does this mean exactly? Simply put, it means that you have to taste at least two oils at once. First one, they wash out your mouth and try the other one. Which one first? The one that smells best, followed by the one with a less fresh, clean smell. This way you won’t “dirty” your mouth with the lower quality oil. This is the tasting method used by the professionals and it gives you an immediate answer. If you taste one oil now and the other one next week, you will already have forgotten some of the smells and the sensations of the first oil…except in the case of the most expert oil tasters who are so well trained and experience that they can remember the tastes for a long time after.
The comparison will let you know straight away which oil you like best. Trust your senses: after a few times, you’ll soon see that the oil that you like most is generally the best quality. And don’t forget that the best is also the healthiest!
P.S. this evening I’m going to give the comparison a try with carrots!
