Smoke Point Of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
October 14, 2016
The smoke point of any edible oil depends a lot on the free fatty acidity (FFA or acidity) of the oil. The lower the acidity the higher the smoke point.
All refined oils such as canola, vegetable, sunflower, peanut, flaxseed, rice bran etc etc have pretty well close to zero acidity as the refining process removes all of the free fatty acids.‘Pure olive oil’, ‘Light olive oil’ and ‘Olive oil’ are also refined and as such they smoke at a respectable 230C.
On the other hand, Extra virgin olive oil is a natural product and as such its acidity varies greatly from brand to brand. Some carefully made artisan oils have acidities as low as 0.07%, but a good EVOO will typically come in around 0.2 to 0.25%. However, your typical inexpensive supermarket extra virgin olive oil from the EU will probably be around 0.5% acidity with some even nudging the comical International Olive Council limit of 0.8%. These seemingly small differences in acidities actually have a significant influence on the temperature at which the oil will begin to smoke.
The following diagram shows the influence of FFA on the smoke point of an extra virgin olive oil. The green band shows the smoke point range of good quality low acidity extra virgin olive oil. The reddish band shows the smoke point of lower quality high acidity oils. In culinary terms, these real differences are huge!
