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Cooking with extra virgin olive oil
You have probably been told to save the good oil for salads and cook with something else. That advice is mostly wrong — and it comes from a misunderstanding of what smoke point actually measures.
Yes, cook with it. Extra virgin olive oil handles sautéing, roasting and shallow frying comfortably. Its smoke point of roughly 190–210°C sits above the temperature most home cooking actually reaches. The only job worth handing to another oil is deep frying — not because olive oil fails, but because it is expensive to fill a pot with.
What smoke point really tells you
Smoke point is the temperature at which an oil begins to visibly smoke. It is easy to measure, but it is a poor predictor of how an oil behaves in a hot pan.
What matters more is oxidative stability: how quickly an oil breaks down under sustained heat. Olive oil is roughly three-quarters monounsaturated fat and carries polyphenols and vitamin E, which act as built-in antioxidants.
Temperature guide
| Job | Typical heat | Use EVOO? |
|---|---|---|
| Salad dressing | No heat | Ideal |
| Finishing & drizzling | No heat | Ideal |
| Gentle sautéing | 120–150°C | Ideal |
| Roasting vegetables | 180–200°C | Ideal |
| Shallow frying | 170–180°C | Good |
| Deep frying | 180–190°C | Use refined oil |
Where it genuinely shines
Roasting vegetables
Olive oil browns vegetables beautifully at 180–200°C and its peppery character survives the oven.
Gentle sautéing
Onions, garlic and greens. A medium pan runs 120–150°C — nowhere near the smoke point.
Eggs, any style
Fried in a shallow pool of olive oil until the edges frill and crisp, as they are across the Aegean.
Finishing off the heat
Over soup, grilled fish, beans or yoghurt, where the polyphenols and aroma are fully intact.
Three myths worth dropping
“Save the good oil for salads.”
This conflates smoke point with stability. Extra virgin olive oil is more resistant to oxidative breakdown than most oils with higher smoke points.
“Olive oil turns toxic when heated.”
Any oil pushed far past its smoke point produces degradation compounds. Normal cooking does not do this.
“Higher smoke point means better for cooking.”
Smoke point tells you when an oil visibly smokes, not how well it holds together over twenty minutes in a hot pan.
How to store it so it lasts
Heat, light and oxygen ruin olive oil. Keep it in a cupboard away from the stove, sealed, and use it within a few months of opening.
Oil worth putting in a hot pan
Single-origin, cold-extracted within 24 hours of harvest, and packed in a 1L tin that keeps light out.