Piccardo & Savorè - Olive Oil (1L)

Most Italian kitchens keep two bottles of olive oil on the shelf. One is the good extra virgin - for finishing and raw applications where the flavour should be present and obvious. The other is a more workmanlike oil: still made from olives, still Italian in character, but refined to a higher smoke point and a more neutral flavour that makes it the better tool for most of the actual cooking.

Piccardo's olive oil is that second bottle. It is a blend of refined olive oil and a percentage of extra virgin, which gives it some of the character and health properties of olive oil without the low smoke point that makes a cold-pressed extra virgin a poor choice for anything involving serious heat. The refinement process removes impurities and raises the temperature the oil can withstand before it begins to break down and produce unwanted flavours.

The practical upside is significant. When you're sauteing onions at the base of a ragu, frying breadcrumbs for a topping, or roasting vegetables at high heat, you want a fat that handles the temperature without becoming bitter or acrid. Piccardo's olive oil does that reliably, and because it's still an olive oil rather than a neutral seed oil, there's a subtle underlying richness that vegetable or canola oil simply doesn't have.

It's also noticeably more stable under heat than extra virgin, which means less risk of off-flavours when you're working a hot pan. Save the EVOO for the finish. Use this for everything else.

For everyday cooking across a wide range of techniques, this is the bottle that gets used most. There's no reason it shouldn't be good.

Best for: Sauteing, roasting, frying, building pasta sauces, marinating meat and vegetables, and any application involving sustained or high heat.