No, I don’t need suggestions on how to cook or season with it. I’ve been buying extra virgin olive oil for my larder for a comparatively short period (that is, a few years), and my question relates to its packaging.
Every other oil I have ever stocked in my cupboards (except perhaps peanut) has come in a bottle with a screw cap that I could tighten. When I tighten the cap on the EVOO, however, the threads slip past one another, and leave me with a loosely-capped bottle of oil. Why is this?
I tried reasoning from the direction of: why do the other oils cap so tightly? And my only guess for that one is that it prevents the free introduction of new oxygen molecules into the container, and thus retards the process by which the oils can go rancid. If this is true, I wonder if olive oil (and perhaps peanut oil) does not go rancid by its very nature, in much the same way that honey does not spoil.
That strikes me as unsatisfying, however. Even if EVOO is not subject to that kind of degradation, that wouldn’t seem to be a good reason to prevent the user from capping the bottle tightly. Then I remembered something I heard on the radio about the home user preserving his own sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil. The gist of the advice was: “DON’T DO IT; IT’S NOT SAFE; YOU COULD BE PUTTING YOURSELF AND YOUR DINNER GUESTS AT RISK OF CONSUMING BOTULISM,” and other such cheerful stuff.
I know that the botulinus bacterium is anaerobic, and that it thrives best when it is isolated from oxygen, but is that the answer? Or is there some more mundane reason for packaging my olive oil so I can’t feel comfortable about storing the bottle on its side?
I think it is more likely some oddity with the packaging of your preferred brand of EVOO. Either that, or you overtightened the top and stripped the threads.
I’ve used probably a dozen different brands, and all those with screwtops tightened securely.
And as to the botulism issue, that is not olive oil specific but just due to the nature of covering something in oil; you’re excluding air, thereby creating an anaerobic environment. Whether the lid is sealed is really irrelevant, as there’s already air in the bottle. Commercially infused oils usually contain additional ingredients such as acids to impede bacterial growth.
I’m pretty sure the botulism thing happens with items with moisture in them, like garlic cloves and the like. I’ve never heard anything bad about infusing dried herbs in oil.
I don’t know why some olive oils have that loose top. I’ve had a few of them like that as well. I don’t think it’s intentional, or if it is maybe it’s just cheaper? I do know that olive oil will go rancid faster than most other cooking oils. And as for botulism, I think the oil needs to contain some kind of food item, such as sun dried tomatoes, garlic, whatever, before the spores can grow.
yar, I’ve had it happen to me too. It’s probably not random but I haven’t noticed which bottles do it. I have, however, a habit of infusing my own oils, and now I’m paranoid. Going to throw out my year-old bottle of oil with once-fresh rosemary in it, though I haven’t had a problem yet.
I’ve experienced this with more than half the brands I’ve tried, and it has nothing to do with stripped threads. You twist it normally, and instead of reaching the point where it feels tight, it gets a little tight, then loosens up again. It’s similar to the way some cars’ gas caps work.