Cost of olive oil

[Comedycook]

Wow!

Olive oil always used to be a staple for me but I switched a while back to veg/sunflower oil as much cheaper.

But today I wanted to buy some for a particular dish I'm making. I was blown away by the prices. Just a standard bottle of supermarket stuff...not extra virgin, was about £6/7. I found the tiniest bottle of supermarket own brand for £3.30...not ev or particularly special. The really decent stuff was closer to £10+.

So wondering...when you see TV chefs they start so many recipes with olive oil and I always used it too...but seems like it's going to be a luxury product now rather than a staple.

Do you use it for standard frying and cooking?

Cold pressed rapeseed oil just has a mild, slightly grassy taste that complements most foods well.

Thanks. I thought so but wasn’t sure of my facts.

I use rapeseed oil in much of my cooking, Indian in particular. It is one of the oils, along with olive, that are more beneficial for your health but that has gone up in price too.

Aldi. It's about £5 for a litre

The price hikes were predicted more than a year ago. I stocked up on 3l containers for me and my mum. Usage hasn't changed much - I use it for some frying depending on flavour profile. Have a separate more delicate olive oil for salads. Rapeseed for other dishes, or a mix of clarified butter and rapeseed for still others. Goose fat for potatoes. Lard for some cabbage dishes and also Mexican food.

That recent MN Ottolenghi chickpea recipe called for so much olive oil, I think I mixed rapeseed to EVO oil 3:1!

It’s like liquid gold. I plan my purchases and use vouchers and discounts to get it below €8 a liter. Previously €7 normal price in my local Italian Co-op.

In the past I used it with gay abandon but currently it’s only for finishing touches. Half a liter lasts me about 6 weeks. I’ve gone back to saving congealed pan fat for starting soups or stews, something my grandmother did in the 30s. Not very health conscious. Kerrygold Irish butter has returned to our table for toast as it’s not MUCH more expensive any more. And tuna olive oil no longer goes down the sink to be replaced by better quality, oh no!

I’ve heard that Italy and Spain have had failed or low crops again this year and sunflower oil is still expensive because of Ukraine.

Rapeseed crops are sprayed with glyphosate weedkiller prior to harvest, not sure that's great for the environment or health.

I'd never use it for cooking like frying or roasting as it's completely pointless to me but I love it as dressing etc

Oh no, didn’t know this! Just seems like nothing is without some kind of cost these days :(

it has gone up in lidl

I literally drink the stuff (honestly - a tablespoon with cayenne pepper and turmeric each morning).

I don’t use it for cooking, I use coconut oil or ghee, but it is an expense.

Other oils are bloody horrible for you, vegetable oils and rapeseed oil.

Is rapeseed oil bad for you? I was using it but the GP told me to avoid seed oils so I went back to olive oil. Is rapeseed what they meen by seed oils?

Yes. Lots of people (me included) avoid all seed oils. It’s up to you, but you can read up on how they are made and how they can affect you. it’s in most UPF though so it’s a big commitment to get rid of it all.

Climate change is impacting olive oil production massively.
Do you know anyone with a Costco membership? They do really big bottles which work out to be much cheaper overall.

Yes the Mediterranean diet hasn’t proved to be at all healthy so crack on.
Olive oil is wonderful stuff!

I’m not disagreeing on olive oil - I drink a shot of it everyday! it’s seed oils I avoid.

I’ve got 90 litres sitting in my attic - extra virgin, cold pressed from organic trees - and would happily send you some for the cost of postage but I don’t think that’s possible now. Another Brexit bonus 😡

We are mainly rapeseed or rice bran oil users but I did use evoo on my roast cauliflower, capsicum and courgette tonight and it was delicious. I do sometimes find evoo too strong.

i don't like the taste of it. don't know how people can cook roast potatoes in it. That would spoil my dinner

I have one that’s estimated to be about 2500 years old and still produces fruit!

Agreed. I avoid all seed oils as far as possible including rapeseed (bearing in mind as a pp said they are in most processed foods and no doubt used in most restaurants so impossible to avoid entirely). It's not about weight, it's about them causing poor physical and neurological health, they really are so bad for the body, particularly sunflower oil. It's in part down to the excess omega 6. Good olive oil helps to counteract the ill effects to some extent (omega 9).

I spend a lot on my olive oil, and am careful where I buy it as apparently a lot of them are cut with other oils - it's a known problem.

Coconut oil, grass fed butter/ghee/tallow, goose fat etc all much better for you for cooking if you don't want to pay for olive oil. Animals fats have been wrongly demonised at the cost of human health. With those, it's about how the animal is raised and fed. But olive and coconut are good if you don't want to use animal fats.

Costco do canola (?) oil too but I've heard that can be really bad for you too

Doesn't it go off?

They also sell muffins and petrol. Neither of which are that great when consumed.

No, we've got huge tins of it as well.

You can buy the big tins online- dd is at university in the UK and I send her one every so often. Italian speciality shops do them and they don't work out any more expensive than the bottles in the supermarket but are likely to be better quality. (I presume Spanish, Greek food shops also sell oil if you prefer the taste of their oil)

My MIL- 94 and without a bloody wrinkle (and this is what I put it down to 😂 ) drinks half a wine glass a day and can talk about it like sommeliers do about wine.

(I use peanut oil for deep frying, I can't remember which sleb chef recommended it, it's much easier to digest than other vegetable oils and has no taste at all)

Isn't Canola maize/corn oil?
I read somewhere that maize/corn is the worst to use in terms of environmental impact, and health.