Cooking with Olive Oil: Choosing from Olive Oil Varieties

I like to enter a lot of contests and sometimes win. This year, I won a big bottle of Rachael Ray's Extra-Virgin Oil from Redbook. I love to watch 30-Minute Meals, so I was really excited about winning the prize. I like to use a little olive oil in my cooking. Spreading some on my pizza pan for homemade pizza is one thing that I use it for. Italian dishes are great to put olive oil in. But what does Extra-Virgin Olive Oil mean? What is virgin olive oil? This is what I found out.

This is a list of the different grades of Olive Oil and what they mean.

Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
When you press olives the first time, you have Extra-Virgin Olive Oil. It is the best of the Olive oils. It has the best taste of all of them and has no more than .8 % acid. If you see a bottle of Extra-Virgin Olive oil in the store, buy it. The price will be more expensive, but the taste will be worth it. The bottle of Rachael Ray's Olive oil I won was the best. I'm sad because the bottle is already empty.

Virgin Olive Oil
Virgin Olive Oil has a really good taste. The taste is not as good as the Extra-Virgin Olive Oil but it is worth buying a bottle. Virgin Olive Oil has less than 2 % acid. I buy this mostly because it's not as expensive as the Extra-Virgin Olive Oil. I recently purchased a big bottle of it on clearance at Kroger's for only $2.99. I couldn't believe the price.

Pure Olive Oil
Pure Olive Oil is a mixture of refined and Extra-Virgin or Virgin Olive Oil.

Olive Oil
Olive Oil is a mixture of refined and Virgin Olive Oil. It contains no more than 1.5 % acid. This Olive Oil doesn't have a strong taste.

Olive-Pomace Oil
Olive-Pomace is a mixture of Pomace Olive Oil and Virgin Olive Oil. You can't hardly find it in the grocery store. Olive-Pomace Oil is used for cooking in restaurants.

Lampante Oil
This is made from Olive oil. You can't consume Lampante Oil. It has industrial uses.

The next time you're looking at all the bottles of Olive oil at the grocery store, you'll know what all the grades mean. If you're needing a Olive oil with the most flavor, buy the Extra-Virgin. If you're still wanting a good taste but be lighter on the pocket book, buy the Virgin. Be creative in your cooking and come up with some new dishes using Olive oil.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil