Knowledge Base > Char Nolan - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Char Nolan - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

This event was on Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Char Nolan in her virtual office as she welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to ask anything – from cooking techniques to cou… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

Just read in the PlantBased Pro course that olive oil (and flax, hemp, nut oils) shouldn't be used with heat and maybe should be refrigerated! Can you talk more about why this is? I've always cooked with EVOO and never thought to put it in the fridge.

— Samantha Fulciniti

Answer:

The interesting thing again is this isn't something that's normally in my wheelhouse because I don't even have oil in my house having grown up in an Italian household where a gallon of olive oil was always next to the refrigerator. My grandparents never worried about anything, but when I was at hope when I looked at Whole Foods, sometimes we would have the owner of an olive oil company come in to talk to us. And you want to buy olive oil that's in a green bottle so that there isn't any chlorophyll reaction to the oil if it's exposed to sunlight. Some people will tell you that olive oil because it's the fruit of the Olive Tree that it should be stored in the refrigerator like any other fruit juice then there's the whole plethora of lists on which oil is better to fry from and I think I was maybe 40 years old until I realized that not everybody use olive oil to cook with and I have fond memories of my grandmother always crying on a medium heat. I don't ever remember anything being burnt. I don't remember anything. Other than the fact that there was a gallon of olive oil and it never ever burned but about the oil. I think you might want to go back to that unit and look at it a little bit more when looking for oil if it's something that you use remember that you want to think about Flavor affordability and what the smoke point is and the other the other thing about oils is that you could move away from an olive oil say and might use a mixed oil and if you're at a I'll use a state fair as an example because so I can think about right now, but if you're out of state fair and you're going to get those curly swirly Potato Sticks fried, you don't know if the oil has peanuts in it and you don't even know if the food vendor knows if there's peanut oil in it, but if you were with someone who had an allergy to peanuts, then you might want to become aware of or ask them if they know the ingredients are in there. I do think that some of my friends who are chefs like using avocado oil because it has a High smoke point but it's also very very expensive. So I don't know. Samantha back to the question some people see it as being a fruit you can try it and see if there's a difference, you know, the other thing is oils can get rancid and you don't want to spend a great deal of money on buying some beautiful beautiful organic vegetables only to find that your oil is rancid and that it could ruin your whole dish. That's another element. Anyway, I hope that's helpful to you. It's a very, you know, it's sort of like it could be a discussion. It could be a debate because everyone has their beliefs about the use of oil but I'm really glad to see the question here because I think that it gets everyone thinking about How to body have stored what's the best way to use it Etc? So thank you so much for that.
Char Nolan

Char Nolan

Chef Instructor

@char_nolan