When olives are harvested early, the chlorophyll is particularly intense, and that makes the oil a dark green hue. Some olives make for light oil, while others produce darker oil. The color is affected, too, by pigments in the flesh and skin, which are pressed into an olive paste, a delicious ingredient in, for example, olive pomade, a marvelous dip eaten with crackers, vegetables, or bread slices.
Neither golden yellow nor dark green signals the quality of the oil. Green simply reflects the content of chlorophyll. It is a myth that the greener the oil the better the taste, but some disreputable business people and companies take advantage of consumer ignorance and insist their oil is best because of its green color.
Furthermore, chlorophyll can be added during production, artificially changing the color and thereby duping unsuspecting buyers.
Getting back to our analogy of oil and wine: oil must be judged by its flavor, not its color. However, like wine, the color of olive oil does give away some clues about its taste. Generally speaking, greener oils are fruitier, and perhaps a little grassy. Yellow or golden olive oil usually has a spicier, stronger flavor, so the one you choose should be determined by your taste preference, not color.
That way, what they see cannot unduly influence what they report about flavor. Olive oil color is determined by how long the fruit ripens before harvest.
However, even once the olives are pressed and the oil is bottled, the color changes over time. There is one simple reason for this: improper storage, which leaves the olive oil vulnerable to heat, moisture, and air. One study in Australia discovered that these environmental factors are terrible for olive oil, all of them impacting it negatively.
Tasting it brings to mind a pumpkin, of all things, and its rich flavor and fruitiness will be long gone. That's just what makes it unique!
Image source. Topics: Quality Control. The color of bulk olive oil is important to some food manufacturers. And not at all important to others. It depends on the product that you're making and the grade If you were used to eating cereal with skim milk for years, you would sure notice if you poured heavy cream on that cereal instead of your routine skim milk.
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When In The Season The Olives Were Harvested Many varieties of olives are green as they're growing and turn into a deep purple slowly as they become ripe. Member ID. Featured Review. What We're Cooking Now.
Menu A Vegan Thanksgiving Dinner. Menu A Cozy Fall Brunch. Find the inspiration you crave for your love of cooking. Videos View All. Fine Cooking Magazine. All Rights Reserved. Sign Up Log In Follow. Double Check Do you really want to delete the list,? Cancel Delete. The oil made using the steps above is a virgin or, depending on the quality, extra virgin olive oil. However, if the olives were not of a high enough quality or if processing did not happen as intended, the quality of this oil might not be suitable for consumption.
For example, the olive oil might contain too many free fatty acids. In such a case, the oil is refined further. During this refining process a lot of additional molecules are stripped from the oil. This makes it more neutral in flavor and increases shelf life, but decreases the overall quality and value of the oil.
Apart from the oil, there are some minor chemical components such as polyphenolics and pigments. Even though they make up only a tiny amount of the olive oil, they are very important for the overall quality of the oil!
Triglycerides are a group of molecules, with a very similar structure. The backbone of the molecule is made up of a glycerol molecule hence tri glyceride. Attached to this backbone are three hence tri fatty acid chains. Fatty acids are linear chains of carbon atoms. They might be attached to one another with just one bond, or a double one. Note : A proper introduction on the topic of triglycerides can be found in our food chemistry basics post.
Triglycerides can contain three of the same fatty acids, or three different ones. Within a fat or oil you might have a wide range of different types of triglycerides.
The types of fatty acids present in a fat or oil impact the behavior of that fat or oil. An important factor here is the presence or absence of one or two double bonds between carbon atoms in a molecule. The ones with double bonds, called unsaturated fatty acids, tend to be perceived as healthier. The major fatty acid in olive oil is oleic acid, it makes up over half of all the fatty acids in the olive oil see table below.
Apart from oleic acid, there are 5 other common fatty acids in olive oi. Polyphenols are a group of molecules with a similar molecular structure. They are relatively common in a variety of foods. The bitterness of tea is mostly caused by polyphenols and they undergo various reactions during the processing of tea. They also play an important role in enzymatic browning reactions which you might see on cut apples and bananas for instance.
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