Extra Virgin Olive Oils Archives

How to Use Extra Virgin Olive Oil in Your Kitchen

Feb 05 2024

Extra virgin olive oil is a delicious and healthy type of oil. It is very popular in the Mediterranean diet, especially in Puglia, which is famous for its high-quality olive oil. In this post, you will discover why EVOO is a must-have in your kitchen arsenal, and learn simple ways to incorporate it into your cooking with some flavorful Italian recipes.

Why EVOO is good for your health

Extra virgin olive oil is considered to be the healthiest type of olive oil. EVOO has healthy fats and antioxidants. Healthy or “good” fats are the ones that help your heart and your brain, and lower your bad cholesterol. Antioxidants on the other hand protect your cells from damage and aging; they also prevent or fight some diseases, like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Plus, it provides some vitamins E and K, adding to its nutritional value.

At Especially Puglia, we’re dedicated to sourcing only the finest extra virgin olive oils from independent, organic farms. Our focus on sustainable practices, small-batch production, and transparent supply chains guarantees the freshest and purest taste.

How to use EVOO in your cooking

EVOO is an incredibly versatile ingredient. You can use it for salads, soups, pasta, meat, and even desserts. From baking to frying, sautéing, roasting, and drizzling, its uses are endless. Here are 3 tips and suggestions on how to incorporate EVOO in your kitchen:

Choose the right EVOO for your dish: EVOO must be fresh, ideally within one year from the harvest. EVOO comes in various tastes, ranging from mild and fruity to bitter and spicy. Mild and fruity EVOO is perfect for salads and dressings, while the bitter and spicy types add depth to grilled or roasted dishes. You can try different kinds of EVOO and find your favorites.
Use EVOO sparingly: EVOO is a healthy and tasty oil, but remember it is still an oil! To avoid eating too much fat and calories, use it sparingly, and measure it with a spoon or a dispenser. A good rule is to use no more than 3-4 spoons of raw EVOO per person per day.
Use EVOO at the right temperature: EVOO can handle high temperatures, up to 410°F (210°C), without losing its health benefits or making bad substances. However, it can lose some of its taste and aroma when heated, so it is better to use it raw or add it at the end of cooking. If you want to use EVOO for frying, choose a mild and refined kind – and don’t reuse the same oil multiple times.

Recipes with EVOO

EVOO is a wonderful ingredient that can make your dishes more flavorful. Here are some examples of Italian and Pugliese easy recipes with EVOO that you can try at home.

Bruschetta: a classic Italian appetizer, made with toasted bread slices, rubbed with garlic, and topped with chopped tomatoes, basil, salt, and EVOO. It is a simple and appetizing snack, perfect for any occasion. If you want to try a Pugliese variation of bruschetta, add burrata on top.

Friselle: originating from Puglia, these round and crunchy bread slices are made with wheat flour, water, salt, and yeast. They are baked twice and then dried. After wetting them in water for a few seconds, top them with chopped tomatoes, basil, salt, and EVOO. They are a refreshing snack or appetizer, especially in summer.

Spaghetti aglio e olio: a traditional Italian pasta dish, made with just spaghetti, garlic, red pepper flakes, and EVOO. It is a quick and easy meal, full of garlicky flavor and a hint of spice.

Focaccia barese: this soft and fluffy bread is typical of Bari, the capital of Puglia. Made with wheat flour, potatoes, yeast, salt, and EVOO, it’s topped with cherry tomatoes, olives, oregano, and a sprinkle of coarse salt. It is a satisfying and filling meal.

Conclusion

EVOO is a gift from nature – and from the farmers keeping time-honored methods of olive oil production alive! It is not just a powerhouse of health benefits, but it’s a wonderful ingredient that can make your cooking more delicious. But don’t take our word for it… Grab a bottle of EVOO and experiment with it in your kitchen! And if you want to get the best and freshest EVOO, you can adopt an olive tree from Puglia and receive your own EVOO directly at home.

Buon appetito!

How to Taste Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Sep 25 2018

Objective tasting assessments have as much bearing on the Italian olive-oil industry as they do on the Italian wine industry. Similar to the Court of Master Sommeliers, which improves the standards of wine service in restaurants and hotels, Italy's Organizzazione Nazionale Assaggiatori Olio di Oliva, or the National Organization of Olive Oil Tasters (ONAOO), uses unbiased sommeliers and a high degree of scientific rigor to improve the standards of olive-oil quality for producers, distributors and consumers alike.

But just like you don't have to be a sommelier to taste wine, you also don't need to be one to taste olive oils either! With this guide, you will learn how to assess olive oil quality like a pro.

ONAOO and Italian Olive Oils

Founded in 1983, ONAOO has trained over 300,000 students in the official method of olive-oil sensory evaluation, making the sommelier a vital player in quality assurance. Do you need to travel to ONAOO in Imperia to learn how to evaluate and savor premium extra-virgin olive oils? Of course not. But knowing the basics of olive-oil evaluation, which you can learn at home, is a fundamental skill of every connoisseur, particularly in the U.S., where deceptive labeling and lack of a centralized quality-assurance authority can make informed purchasing particularly challenging.

A host of factors distinguish Italian olive oils from other internationally produced olive oils. Differences in terroir, topography, and climate of the olive's growing region, along with the sheer number of olive varieties to choose from, results in a wide variety of flavor profiles from one olive oil to the next. One can use an aroma wheel to describe an olive oil's unique characteristics, not unlike that used to describe the profile of a wine.

Olive variety plays as important a role in the taste and aroma of an olive oil as its production method. For example, by working directly with farmers in Northern Puglia, we have unfettered access to premium olive varieties, such as Peranzana, Santa Caterina and Coratina, which we use to craft small-batch, artisanal extra-virgin oils of the highest order.

Get Tasting!

Always taste our small-batch oils before using them in a recipe or dish. A quality assessment will not only help you distinguish a high-quality oil from a subpar or rancid oil, but will also give you an idea of what kind of dishes to use it in.

While the olive-oil tasting technique largely mirrors that of wine tasting, you'll find olive oil's viscosity influences how you perceive flavor sensations—they tend to linger longer on the palate and in the finish. When tasting more than one variety of oil, cleanse your palate with water and a neutral food, such as unsalted water crackers or bread. Enjoy your olive oil as soon as possible after opening for the best taste and aroma.

See our varieties

At Especially Puglia, we offer extra virgin olive oils from seven independent family-run farms in Puglia. Take a look at our farms and olive oil varieties here. Each olive oil is listed with information on the farm and the best way to use it in your recipes at home.

Here’s why our gourmet olive oils are your best choice for this season!

Nov 16 2017

It’s that time of the year again! The holiday season is just around the corner. And this year, we have added three new groves, which means three new gourmet olive oils for you to explore and celebrate with!

At Especially Puglia, all our extra-virgin olive oils (EVOO) are made using single-sourced olives that are harvested in different groves – making each olive oil truly unique. So pre-order your 2017 harvest olive oil gift boxes now to get them by mid-December, right around the holidays. Here’s more on why you should:

Harvest in 2017 has been excellent!

Single-source gourmet olive oils made using olives from our family groves. — Handpicked olives at the olive press in Puglia.

Thanks to the olives being in the pink of health this year, the harvest has been par excellence. And you know what that means – the oil is of truly exceptional quality. We are taking limited quantities of pre-orders for our 2017 gourmet olive oils.

Freshly-pressed gourmet olive oils

Gourmet olive oils from Puglia, Italy — Olives are pressed within eight hours of being picked to ensure the best quality olive oil.

As Julia Child once said – “You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces – just good food from fresh ingredients.” One of the freshest ingredients you can use in your food is our olive oils. Our olives are pressed within eight hours of being handpicked to ensure maximum freshness. And if you’re reading this in Autumn, it means olives are being harvested, freshly pressed, and bottled in our family farms in Puglia.

High on health and happiness

You are what you eat! No wonder then that Italians are such healthy and happy folks. Their healthy Mediterranean diets make generous use of extra-virgin olive oil.

EVOO’s much talked about health benefits are due to the high level of polyphenols – one of the many antioxidants found in olive oil. However, their numbers do take a downswing over time, which is why it is recommended that you consume only freshly-pressed EVOO.

We work with family-owned olive estates to bring single-source olive oil to our customers. — Michele’s grandfather who is the first-generation olive oil maker in Puglia.

Crafted by our family farmers

“Every family in Puglia has an olive grove for personal use and they can take their olives to the press. On my visit, there was a woman watching over the pressing of her olives to make sure they didn’t get mixed up with someone else’s.” One of our FarmStay guests, Jessica, who was in Puglia recently, said this on her Instagram account. The craft of producing authentic olive oil using traditional methods is a way of life for us here in Puglia and has been kept alive by local farmers and producers for many centuries now. At Especially Puglia, one of our biggest endeavors is to share this age-old Pugliese tradition with the rest of the world.

100% authentic olive oils

At Especially Puglia, we have redefined how food is made, distributed and consumed. Our farm-to-table approach ensures that you get the most authentic extra-virgin olive oil. We have made the entire process transparent to our customers. Our FarmStay program allows consumers to become an active part of the life on our farms, and get a hands-on experience of how we actually make our gourmet olive oils.

How to Use Extra Virgin Olive Oil in Your Kitchen

Why EVOO is good for your health

How to use EVOO in your cooking

Recipes with EVOO

Conclusion