hello! there’s a bunch of new subscribers around here since the last newsletter. thank you so much for joining along :) i’m lala, i’m from iraq and armenia and now i call boston home. i love to cook and make ceramics. i love the trees and any camera and the people in my life. i was cooking started as a recipe newsletter until i realised i hate recipe development.
now, i’m writing about food in a broader sense — from lists like this about excellent things to keep in the pantry to labour in the restaurant industry. i spent about four months travelling throughout 2023, much of it solo, so i write about the places i visited, too. my last piece, on tulum’s eco-disastrous tourism industry, can be found here.
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the basics
There’s a dozen excellent guides online on tasting and buying olive oil (see here, here, and here) and I’m not an experienced olive oil taster by any measure. BUT I am an excellent cook and I fervently believe that my ability is partly due to practice but also owed to my ingredients, each being the best (not necessarily priciest!) version of themselves. Which is to say, this is not a comprehensive guide but rather a peak at what I look for and a list of my favourite bottles as well as the flops you shouldn’t bother with.
Most of us need need just one decent olive oil for cooking. However, if you love experimenting and making every meal a little more special, you can kick it up a notch and buy a fancier bottle of olive oil for drizzling on finished dishes. I bought my first nice bottle this year, the Jenin one below, but got by for years with a single multipurpose bottle.
Remember that olive oil has a low smoke point, meaning that you can only heat it up to 190C (375F) until it starts to burn. You’ll know the oil is burning if it emits smoke, at which point the oil turns bitter. Olive oil is not the right oil for searing, deep frying, using in woks, or any other high-heat cooking.
Not a single product/link on this list is an ad, promotion, or affiliate link. I do not make money from you buying any of these products.
the harvest
In the northern hemisphere, olives are harvested from October to January of the following year. In the southern hemisphere, the harvest season runs from April to July. Olive oil is best consumed within 12-14 months of the harvest date. This means that if you are buying a bottle in 2024, then the olives need to have been harvested in 2023 at the latest.
LOTS of olive oil bottles don’t claim a date of harvest at all. This is a red flag. aim to purchase bottles that are transparent about the date of harvest.
country of origin
Olives need to be pressed into olive oil as quickly as possible after harvest to avoid an aberration called “fustiness,” which makes an oil taste like swampy vegetation. But still, some olives are grown in one country and shipped to another to be pressed. The longer the olives spend in a sack being shipped from one place to the next, the more they deteriorate.
When purchasing a bottle, pay attention to the label on the back: was the olive grown in Spain but shipped to Italy for pressing (“Made in Italy”) or was the olive grown in Italy and pressed in Italy (“Product of Italy”)? Go for bottles made of olives that were grown and pressed in the same country.
where to buy
I buy my day to day oil from my grocery store but have started venturing out to checking out the selection at my local cheese shop and other speciality grocers here in Cambridge. The speciality grocers seem to be the ones that stock what restaurants use (high quality olive oil) as well as oils made in smaller batches from smaller producers.
price point
I do think that price gets you better quality to a certain extent. I won’t raise my eyebrows over buying a $24/liter bottle that will last me for 1-2 months, but I won’t indulge in a $75 bottle unless there was something incredibly unique about it. I also wouldn’t buy an $8/liter bottle.
Something around 9-12 kilos (20-26lb) of olives goes into making a single liter of olive oil, with hand-harvesting being the most common method used around the world. When I see bargain bin prices, it makes me wonder about the quality of the olives and the compensation of the people who picked and pressed them.
storing it
Store your bottle of olive oil in its original dark glass bottle or metal tin, away from light, in a cool environment (but never in the fridge). If you must add a metal spout to the bottle for easier use, know that the oil will deteriorate quickly since it is being exposed to oxygen.
uses
obvious ways like using it to make salad dressing and sautéing proteins and vegetables
drizzled on bowls of bean or lentil soup to add creaminess
mixed with an equal amount of zaatar to create a dip for flatbreads
poured into a pan to warm some olives
poured onto a bowl of hummus, labneh, or baba ghanoush
mixed with herbs and spices to create a marinate for feta
drizzled on ice cream with maybe some maldon salt
drizzled on avocado toast
used in bakes, especially in cakes that are particularly savoury like this olive + olive oil cake or Claire Saffitz’s nut tart. Baking with olive oil lends a savoury dimension that’s perfect for people who hate cloying sweetness.
in my pantry
Lucini Everyday Argentinian ($22 for 1 liter). I’ve loved this oil for nearly ten years. It’s herby, smooth, almondy, and goes with everything, from cooking to baking to drizzling on finished dishes. It used to be $24 at Whole Foods but steadily climbed to $34 in the last few years. That price hike is precisely why I started looking into other oils, but I’ve been around the block and want to come back to Lucini. I’ve been meaning to make a bulk purchase through California Olive Ranch’s website to offset the cost of shipping.
California Olive Ranch Global Blend ($20.49 for 1 liter). Solely based on price, this has become my day to day cooking oil. It has an herbaceous smell and smooth taste. It is a good staple olive oil and a great step above Trader Joe’s.
Jenin ($32 for 500ml). This Palestinian olive oil ($64/liter), produced and sold by Canaan Collective, has a grassy, deeply complex warm flavour and is spicy in the throat. The Collective works with 1000 families across 43 villages to market Palestinian olive oil to the world outside the Middle East. I drizzle it on avocado toast + bowls of soup, and mix it with zaatar for a snack with flatbread.
ins and outs
oils i’m coveting
Nazareth’s Kalamata ($78.19 for 500ml). This Palestinian olive oil made from black kalamata olives is high on my wish list. The olives are harvested and pressed in the West Bank. The price tag is exorbitant ($156/liter), I know, but the collective behind the bottle, Olive Odyssey, claims to pay above average rates to the Palestinian farmers and pressers that produce it. The company sells a variety of other oils and bottle bundles from the 2023 olive harvest (more on that below).
Aria ($59.95 for 3L). This olive oil from Crete, Greece, is sold in a large tin at a reasonable price point of $20/liter. I’m seeing Aria used as the main cooking oil in a lot of restaurants here in Cambridge.
Merula ($21.95 for 500ml). I’m a sucker for beautiful packaging, and this oil from Extremadura, Spain, boasts a gorgeous blackbird on the tin. At this high a price point ($44/liter), I would use this oil strictly as a “finishing oil” to drizzle on ice cream or hummus, rather than as a cooking or baking oil.
oils i’m not buying
Brightland ($74 for 2 bottles, each 375ml). There’s something about internet virality that repels me, and I think part of it is that I start to get suspicious that a company spent more on marketing than on the product itself. I get the sense that these bottle are more about the status symbol than quality. The olives come from California and I seriously doubt their taste is unique enough to make up for the price point ($99/liter).
Trader Joe’s olive oil ($12.99/liter). Whatever TJ’s process is, it’s stripping the natural flavour of olive oil out of the bottle. There’s no distinctive olive oil smell nor taste, no deep green olive oil colour. The oil tastes greasy, more like drinking straight canola oil than olive oil.
i tried the viral olive oil so you don’t have to
Graza (Sizzle is $16 for 750ml, Drizzle is $21 for 500ml). The Glossier of olive oil. A common product, repackaged in a fun, easy to use plastic squeezy bottle. It’s olive oil for people who don’t yet know olive oil. Graza made two bottles for the confused young home cook: one for general purpose cooking, Sizzle ($21/liter), and another for dressing finished dishes, Drizzle ($42/liter).
I really wanted to love these two, but they’ve become unwelcome inhabitants on my limited counter space and I can’t wait to get rid of them. Sizzle has a grassy taste that quickly turns bitter, and has a spicy heat that can be felt in the back of the throat. Drizzle is a bit smoother, but still grassy and quite bitter. Their bitterness doesn’t mellow out and is intrusive enough that it overpowers the taste of whatever I’m eating: fried eggs, bread dipped into zaatar with olive oil, baked tofu, salad dressing. I’ve been too scared to use them to sauté more precious foods like chicken and beef, for fear of them ruining a larger meal.
The bottles are fun, yes, but the product just isn’t worth it. If you want to live your chefy dreams of artfully drizzling oil on a dish, buy a small squeezy bottle instead and store a better olive oil in it. Just beware, olive oil degrades quickly when stored in clear bottles with an open spout due to light and oxygen exposure.
in palestine
October signals the beginning of the olive harvest in Palestine. Palestinians have tended their olive orchards for hundreds of years. The trees are not only a source of livelihood, but a symbol of Palestinian identity, the people’s ties to the land and to their ancestors.
Since 1967, it is estimated that one million olive trees have been uprooted by the Israeli regime, with the goal of clearing land for illegal settlements and border walls, and keeping the Palestinian population from accessing economic mobility. The remaining olive orchards are regularly set on fire by nearby settlers.
During the olive harvest, some Palestinian farmers living in the West Bank are required to file for permits allowing them to access their own land or risk getting harassed (taunted, beaten, shot, killed) by illegal settlers while tending to their trees. It’s not uncommon for Israeli authorities to delay issuing the permits, allowing the olives to fall to the ground and rot.
Violence against Palestinians in the West Bank escalated severely since October 7, and the threat to physical safety deeply impacted the olive harvest, which is a major source of income for thousands of families. Saad Dagher, a Palestinian agronomist, noted that “Palestinian farmers produce between twenty-five thousand and thirty-five thousand tons of olive oil (Zeit Zeitoun) yearly; Dagher predicts that this year’s season will yield, at best, between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand tons” (Jacobin).
The violence I list above is taking place in the West Bank, the land internationally recognised as Palestinian territory, governed by a party that is not Hamas, and yet the Palestinians there are being murdered, too. As of December 2023, 483 Palestinian residents of the West Bank have been murdered by the IDF or illegal settlers, 280 of whom were killed between October to December, with another 13,000 injured.
It’s shocking and heartbreaking, over and over again, to learn about the depth of the depravity of the Israeli regime. The system of apartheid is real, it is planned, deeply entrenched, and inextricable from Israel’s existence.
I know, obviously, that talking about or buying olive oil won’t change a thing, materially, for anyone in Palestine right now, least of all not anyone in Gaza. I write about it to normalise talking about Palestine, to give myself (and hopefully you, the reader) a way to engage with Palestinian culture. More directly, you can donate below to several families’ funds to evacuate from Gaza. And if you’re perplexed about the steep cost of evacuating into Egypt, read this.
further reading
In the West Bank, Israeli Settlers Are Burning Palestinians’ Olive Trees — Carolina S. Pedrazzi, Jacobin.
Bilal went out to harvest his olives, an Israeli settler shot him — Ayman Nobani, Al Jazeera.
Fact Sheet: Olive Trees - More than Just a Tree in Palestine — press release from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs.
“Our hearts burn”: Gaza’s olive farmers say Israel war destroys harvest — Linah Alsaafin and Ruwaida Amer, Al Jazeera.
The uprooting of life in Gaza and the West Bank — Raja Shehadeh, The New Yorker (paywalled, accessed via 12 ft ladder).
Photos of the olive harvest in Gaza, 2022, by Yousef Masoud.
More photos of the olive harvest — Palestine Chronicle.
I did not realize some of what you wrote about olive oil! Thanks for the tips.