UK: Are we using too much olive oil?
As olive oil became the fashionable fat, so did a set of confident warnings : never cook with extra virgin, heating it makes trans fats, save it for salads. Some of this is sensible and much of it is wrong. Untangling the smoke-point myth tells you how to use your oil well — and stop wasting the good stuff.
Somewhere along the way, olive oil picked up a folklore of cooking rules, repeated with great confidence : extra virgin has too low a smoke point to fry with, heating it destroys the goodness or even creates toxins, so it must be hoarded for dressings alone. There is a grain of truth buried in there, but a lot of it is simply wrong, and it leads people to cook badly and waste money. It is worth separating what the science supports from what the kitchen mythology invented.
The smoke point, in perspective
Extra virgin olive oil’s smoke point sits somewhere around 190°C or higher — comfortably above the temperature of most home cooking, including sautéing, roasting and shallow frying. It is lower than a refined oil bred for deep-frying, so for a hard, sustained deep-fry a higher-smoke-point oil makes sense. But the idea that ordinary pan cooking instantly ruins extra virgin is false. And smoke point is not even the most important measure : oxidative stability — how well a fat resists breaking down when heated — matters more, and here extra virgin does surprisingly well.
Why it is more stable than people think
Two things protect olive oil in the pan. It is high in monounsaturated fat and low in the fragile polyunsaturated fats that oxidise fastest, so it degrades more slowly than many seed oils marketed as heat-friendly. And a good extra virgin is loaded with polyphenol antioxidants that further slow that breakdown. Laboratory tests that heat oils for long periods repeatedly find extra virgin among the more stable cooking fats — not the fragile flower it is painted as. The popular claim that gently heating it turns it into trans fats is overblown : significant trans fats come mainly from industrial hydrogenation, not from a domestic sauté.
| Oil | Rough smoke point | Best role |
|---|---|---|
| Extra virgin olive oil | ~190°C+ | Raw finishing; also fine for everyday cooking |
| Refined / light olive oil | ~230°C+ | Higher-heat frying, neutral flavour |
| Sunflower / seed oils | Varies | Neutral high-heat frying; more prone to oxidation |
| Butter | ~150°C | Low-heat cooking, flavour, baking |
So why save extra virgin for raw?
There is a good reason to keep your best extra virgin off the heat, but it is about flavour and value, not toxicity. Heat drives off the delicate aromas and softens the peppery polyphenols you paid a premium for : cook with a grand single-estate oil and you boil away exactly what makes it special. So the sensible practice is simple : cook happily with a decent, mid-priced extra virgin or a refined olive oil, and save the expensive, characterful bottle to drizzle raw at the end, where every note survives. That is thrift and good taste, not a health rule.
What to take from it
- You can cook with extra virgin — its smoke point clears normal home cooking.
- It is more heat-stable than its reputation, thanks to monounsaturated fat and polyphenols.
- The trans-fat scare from gentle heating is exaggerated.
- Save your best bottle for raw use — to protect flavour and value, not your health.
Cooking with olive oil: common questions
Can you cook with extra virgin olive oil?
Yes. Its smoke point of around 190°C or higher covers most home cooking, and it is more heat-stable than commonly believed.
Does heating olive oil create trans fats?
Not to any meaningful degree in normal cooking. Significant trans fats come mainly from industrial hydrogenation, not from a home sauté.
Is smoke point the best guide to a cooking oil?
Not really. Oxidative stability — how well a fat resists breaking down when heated — matters more, and extra virgin performs well on that measure.
Why do people say to save extra virgin for salads?
Because heat drives off its delicate aromas and softens its polyphenols, wasting the qualities you pay a premium for — a flavour and value point, not a safety one.
Which oil is best for deep-frying?
For hard, sustained deep-frying a higher-smoke-point oil, such as refined olive oil or a neutral seed oil, is practical ; extra virgin is better kept for lighter cooking and raw use.
Most of the stern rules about never cooking with extra virgin are kitchen folklore. Its smoke point clears everyday cooking, and because it is high in monounsaturated fat and rich in polyphenols it is actually one of the more heat-stable oils — the trans-fat scare from a gentle sauté is badly overblown. There is a good reason to keep your best bottle off the heat, but it is flavour and money, not toxicity : cooking boils away the delicate aromas you paid for. So fry with a modest extra virgin, and save the grand one to pour raw at the end.
Drawn from background on olive-oil smoke point and oxidative stability.