Oils are some of cooking’s most essential ingredients. From greasing pans to making bread dips, salad dressings and marinades, oils are indispensable and versatile components of any chef’s repertoire, whether at home or in a restaurant. But while many of us default to Crisco – or, especially here in Alberta, canola oil – there are a staggering variety of cooking oils.
From vegetable oils like olive oil to nut oils made from hazelnuts or pecans, fruity citrus oils and melon seed oils, high quality, gourmet and artisanal products are finding their way onto store shelves and into Edmonton’s kitchens.
Many of those oils are sold by Evoolution, a shop on 104th Street that specializes in extra-virgin olive oil, also known as “EVOO,” and balsamic vinegar. Extra-virgin olive oil is one of the world’s most popular cooking oils, and it’s renowned for its healthful properties. Low in saturated fats and high in beneficial compounds known as polyphenols, extra-virgin olive oil has to have a specific chemical makeup in order to earn its title.
Its popularity, however, has caused some problems. When you pick up a litre of olive oil at your local grocer, you assume that what’s on the label is what’s in the bottle, but as New Yorker journalist Tom Mueller uncovered in his book Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, that’s not always the case.
Some corrupt producers have passed off other oils like hazelnut or sunflower-seed oil for olive oil. Meanwhile, others have diluted olive oil with other ingredients. The world trade in fraudulent olive oil could give the cocaine trade a run for its money, says Curtis Savage, one of Evoolution‘s owners.
That’s why Evoolution hires a supplier that tests every bottle of oil it buys in a laboratory, to ensure that customers are actually getting the high-quality oil.
The tasting experience at Evoolution is reminiscent of a wine tasting, with eight or nine different varietals made from different species of olive. “We have a variety of oils that cover the range from mild to robust. We’ve found that most people’s palates fall somewhere in the medium range right now,” says Savage. But olive oil, while certainly popular, is just one of many options.