| HN Mirror

The majority of chefs from countries bordering the Mediterranean would laugh at your claim that extra virgin olive oil is not suitable for frying. Obviously you shouldn't go using your fancy $100 bottle for deep frying, but mostly because it would be a waste of money, and because frying dulls the flavor. You want to save the really flavorful and expensive oils for salads and as a finishing touch.

I've been pan frying eggs, onions, pork chops, chicken, potatoes, fish, basically anything interchangeably in extra virgin olive oil and butter/ghee for decades. There is certainly a flavor difference, but that's because the olive oil is much milder in flavor than butter, and the process of frying dulls the flavor of the olive oil, as mentioned.

I - along with millions of people in countries bordering the Mediterranean - enjoy the flavor of food cooked in olive oil.

Adam Ragusea did a great video on the topic, with cited sources. I highly recommend watching it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_aFHrzSBrM

Sources:

https://actascientific.com/ASNH/pdf/ASNH-02-0083.pdf

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02786...

https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/24/8/1555/htm

Including this famous chef using it for deep frying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZSPDYAUn7E

Additional sources:

https://www.nutritionadvance.com/cooking-with-olive-oil-good...

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/can-you-fry-with-olive-oil

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24360472/

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/healthiest-oil-for-deep...

The bottom line is that extra virgin olive oil is more heat stable than other cooking oils with higher smoke points. Just don't use it to sear steaks or something.

So much of the conventional wisdom around cooking is not based on scientific fact, but rather on unsubstantiated observations and gut feelings. The viability of extra virgin olive oil for cooking is one of those pieces of faulty conventional wisdom, the need to sear steaks to "seal in the juices" used to be another big one, until we finally got the record set straight.