To Cook or Not to Cook With EVOO

The answer is yes, cook with it! Please!

We're done here, right? 

Not so fast. Seeing as how we love talking about olive oil, we're going to dive in deeper. 

EVOO fact: Extra virgin's smoke point is actually quite high, with its precise smoke point varying based on the quality of the oil. Suffice it to say you can safely cook, roast and bake with EVOO.

Yep, you can pretty much use extra virgin for any purpose that you might use another oil. We swap it out for allll the things. Butter? Swap. Canola oil? Swap. Coconut oil? Swap. You name it. Swap!

But there is a method to our madness. Apart from cooking low and slow (that is, lower temperature, for a longer time), in general, we recommend using a more mild extra virgin olive oil for cooking and baking. That's because, when you heat the oil up, you cook off a lot of its aroma anyway, so it's reasonable to use a less complex oil whose flavor profile you won't sacrifice over flames. On top of that, when cooking, one tends to consume quite a bit more oil, so using mild oils — which are often produced from high-volume olive crops, sold in larger quantities, and typically cost less — also makes for a wise EVOO usage strategy (yeah, that's a thing...well, we're trying to make it a thing). 

That said, you can 100% use PRMRY for all your cooking, baking and finishing needs. And that PRMRY will add extra personality to your dish whether you add it before or after you cook. But we're keeping it real here: we recommend having a more mild extra virgin on hand for olive oil-heavy cooking endeavors, and then generously using PRMRY as a finishing oil. (Read more about how to compare mild versus medium and robust extra virgins, on our Compare page.)